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Drifting House
An unflinching portrayal of the Korean immigrant experience from an extraordinary new talent in fiction.
Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee's stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present.
In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants' unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls. A makeshift family is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door. An abandoned wife enters into a fake marriage in order to find her kidnapped daughter.
In the tradition of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Drifting House is an unforgettable work by a gifted new writer.
Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee's stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present.
In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants' unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls. A makeshift family is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door. An abandoned wife enters into a fake marriage in order to find her kidnapped daughter.
In the tradition of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Drifting House is an unforgettable work by a gifted new writer.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
67 people are currently reading
3290 people want to read
About the author
Krys Lee
7 books118 followersKrys Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in California and Washington, and studied in the United States and England. She was a finalist for Best New American Voices, received a special mention in the 2012 Pushcart Prize XXXVI, and her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Narrative magazine, Granta (New Voices), California Quarterly, Asia Weekly, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and Conde Nast Traveller, UK (forthcoming). She lives in Seoul with intervals in San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 203 reviews
January 3, 2012
Much of what is categorized as "literary" is actually pretentious and annoying. Krys Lee's stories are neither. They were outside my comfort zone, but told with such straight-forwardness and luminosity that the book, once opened, was hard to put down.
The title story in particular came back to my thoughts again and again - two boys, abandoned by their mother, attempting to flee famine in North Korea to China.
I won this book through the firstreads program, and it's not the admittedly escapist fiction I prefer - fiction with insight, grace, and historical realism; yet fiction firmly in the Hollywood tradition of happy endings.
Lee's stories are slices of life so real that a reader longs to drop into the story and put things right. Just as a slice of your life doesn't have an ending - happy or unhappy - so Lee's characters don't have happy or unhappy endings. They rather dissolve into the human condition, full of sin and longing and either focusing on survival or, when survival isn't at stake, misdirecting their energy towards the ephemeral, feeling the wrong feeling and thus saying the wrong thing. There is a magical kind of sorrow here, and also surreal humor, all of it adding up to a glimpse of the drifting house that is the life of the expatriate, or the life at home when home has fallen apart. Worthwhile reading.
The title story in particular came back to my thoughts again and again - two boys, abandoned by their mother, attempting to flee famine in North Korea to China.
I won this book through the firstreads program, and it's not the admittedly escapist fiction I prefer - fiction with insight, grace, and historical realism; yet fiction firmly in the Hollywood tradition of happy endings.
Lee's stories are slices of life so real that a reader longs to drop into the story and put things right. Just as a slice of your life doesn't have an ending - happy or unhappy - so Lee's characters don't have happy or unhappy endings. They rather dissolve into the human condition, full of sin and longing and either focusing on survival or, when survival isn't at stake, misdirecting their energy towards the ephemeral, feeling the wrong feeling and thus saying the wrong thing. There is a magical kind of sorrow here, and also surreal humor, all of it adding up to a glimpse of the drifting house that is the life of the expatriate, or the life at home when home has fallen apart. Worthwhile reading.
March 3, 2012
This collection of moving stories focusing on both Koreas (and on Koreans in America) blew me away from start to finish. The writing is exquisite, haunting, precise, surreal, magical, dark, funny. The stories are fully realized and, although often focusing on the darkest thoughts and actions, have heart and humanity at center. You care about what the characters will do and what will happen to them, even as you flinch because they are in such desperate circumstances. One of the best short story collections I have read in some time.
May 2, 2021
Drifting House is a collection of short stories focusing on the two Koreas, separated families, and the Korean diaspora.
The Salaryman and Drifting House were my absolute favorite stories in here. The first one relates to South Korea's 'economy first' mentality which links people's values to their jobs and efficiency and, if things turn sour, they are invisibilized by society (which often leads to suicide). Drifting House is about two brothers attempting to escape North Korea carrying the weight and guilt of their sister's death.
I'd like to mention I had never seen Itaewon mentioned so often in a book. Me likey.
Anyways, quotes I highlighted for some reason:
"Once, his father had believed in the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il the way the Korean immigrant community around them believed in God." (At the End of the World)
"A woman leaned over the counter, outraging Gilho's aesthetics with her silicone monstrosities." (The Goose Father)
"Do Chinese people really eat children's brains?"
"They don't need to," he said. "They are a land of rice bowls the size of you. (...) They eat rice every day there." (Drifting House)
The Salaryman and Drifting House were my absolute favorite stories in here. The first one relates to South Korea's 'economy first' mentality which links people's values to their jobs and efficiency and, if things turn sour, they are invisibilized by society (which often leads to suicide). Drifting House is about two brothers attempting to escape North Korea carrying the weight and guilt of their sister's death.
I'd like to mention I had never seen Itaewon mentioned so often in a book. Me likey.
Anyways, quotes I highlighted for some reason:
"Once, his father had believed in the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il the way the Korean immigrant community around them believed in God." (At the End of the World)
"A woman leaned over the counter, outraging Gilho's aesthetics with her silicone monstrosities." (The Goose Father)
"Do Chinese people really eat children's brains?"
"They don't need to," he said. "They are a land of rice bowls the size of you. (...) They eat rice every day there." (Drifting House)
July 25, 2013
An astonishing collection, beautifully written, even as it describes incredible pain and sadness. Several of these stories broke my heart.
August 15, 2014
There were many different characters introduced at different points in time...some were post-war, some modern Korean Americans, and although all of their identity stories were quite different, they are all presented with incredible difficulties and heartache. Several of these stories were very well written, but at the end when something "big" transpires it almost seems as the ending does not belong to the same narrative thread.
Character development is something Lee is very good at creating both archetypes (patriarchal male, subservient wife, dutiful children), and she has also created some rebels (the wife in the drifting house; the shaman family in At the End of the World). I truly cared about many of these characters, particularly the children.
My personal favorite was the Salaryman for the gut-wrenching nature of money lost is having in our current society, although I was thrown by Lee's narrative decision to have the story told in the second person. It made this story stick out like a sore thumb.
I wanted to love this book and hoped that it would be a true exploration of Korean-American culture. While I did find some of that here I also found sensationalistic endings that brought the stories far beyond what their limits should have been. I think alienation could have been handled just as hauntingly without including incest or murder. For this reason I could not remain glued to this book and I found it very difficult to finish. That said, I have rated this complete work a three but there were some five star stories in here most notably, A Temporary Marriage and At the Edge of the World.
I am looking forward to hearing more from Krys Lee.
Disclaimer: I received this book for free through the GoodReads First Reads giveaway.
Character development is something Lee is very good at creating both archetypes (patriarchal male, subservient wife, dutiful children), and she has also created some rebels (the wife in the drifting house; the shaman family in At the End of the World). I truly cared about many of these characters, particularly the children.
My personal favorite was the Salaryman for the gut-wrenching nature of money lost is having in our current society, although I was thrown by Lee's narrative decision to have the story told in the second person. It made this story stick out like a sore thumb.
I wanted to love this book and hoped that it would be a true exploration of Korean-American culture. While I did find some of that here I also found sensationalistic endings that brought the stories far beyond what their limits should have been. I think alienation could have been handled just as hauntingly without including incest or murder. For this reason I could not remain glued to this book and I found it very difficult to finish. That said, I have rated this complete work a three but there were some five star stories in here most notably, A Temporary Marriage and At the Edge of the World.
I am looking forward to hearing more from Krys Lee.
Disclaimer: I received this book for free through the GoodReads First Reads giveaway.
April 10, 2017
This collection of short stories gave me all the feels. If you liked Jhumpa Lahiri's Intepreter of Maladies or you're looking for something to read after Pachinko, this is a great book to pick up.
December 31, 2015
When it comes to books written by East Asians, the ones that tend to get the most recognition are Japanese. At least from what I've seen. I've never heard of Krys Lee, I literally found this on Bookoutlet for like four dollars and was attracted to the minimalist typography. (yes, I'm really that dorky.) It wasn't anything too surreal, no magical realism, no post-apocalypse. This was more like a slice-of-life\ collection, I thought it would also be similar to Your Republic Is Calling You by Young-Ha Kim. Which is kind of close in bleakness, with Murakami isolation and prose, and a sort of post-apocalyptic world that is silent and only occurs with the lack of human contact.
This was the best short story collection I have ever read in 2015 other than From Here by Jen Michalski. They both contain oddity, taboo, and societal otherness and isolation. Ranging in topics from Korean diaspora to death in the family to Korean fathers to Post WWII and the Korean War, there's a lot of different perspectives and lives to peek into. One of my favorite stories was "At the Edge of the World" a story about a son who's just discovering himself and navigating his path between Korean and American and a father who can't seem to get his tragic past out of his head. What really touched me the most about this story was the relationship between the father and son, the distance and the barrier, culturally, maybe linguistically, it was just super relatable to me.
Another favorite of mine is the last story in the collection called "Beautiful Women," about a fatherless daughter and her relationship with her mother. Depicted in this story is the stigmatization of a woman who's African American military husband died in the war and is single. Not only is she ostracized for her interracial relationships but is also treated as a second class citizen due to just being a woman. The story explores the world of single women and the daughters born into that world, where they are looked down upon for not fitting tradition. The daughter imagines throughout the story, her missing father figures, what they are like and the meaning of hers and their existence. It's another touching story on familial relationships and the missing fragments of our lives.
There is a lot of speculation in this collection, a lot of brow raising subjects like taboo relationships and the supernatural. There aren't any sci-fi or unicorns, but fantasy does tend to slip in throughout the collection, as the dysfunction and isolation in a character's life seems to break the barrier of logic, reason, and stability.
The writing style is all in third person view and Krys Lee manages to be one of the few writers who can pull it off wonderfully, without characters becoming too cardboard. They actually have physical and emotional movement, they are not merely a name mentioned throughout the story. Her prose is much like free verse poetry, seasoned with simile that just bring up the right imagery. It just works somehow.
Overall, Drifting House is pretty solid. Best short story collection I've read since the summer.
This was the best short story collection I have ever read in 2015 other than From Here by Jen Michalski. They both contain oddity, taboo, and societal otherness and isolation. Ranging in topics from Korean diaspora to death in the family to Korean fathers to Post WWII and the Korean War, there's a lot of different perspectives and lives to peek into. One of my favorite stories was "At the Edge of the World" a story about a son who's just discovering himself and navigating his path between Korean and American and a father who can't seem to get his tragic past out of his head. What really touched me the most about this story was the relationship between the father and son, the distance and the barrier, culturally, maybe linguistically, it was just super relatable to me.
Another favorite of mine is the last story in the collection called "Beautiful Women," about a fatherless daughter and her relationship with her mother. Depicted in this story is the stigmatization of a woman who's African American military husband died in the war and is single. Not only is she ostracized for her interracial relationships but is also treated as a second class citizen due to just being a woman. The story explores the world of single women and the daughters born into that world, where they are looked down upon for not fitting tradition. The daughter imagines throughout the story, her missing father figures, what they are like and the meaning of hers and their existence. It's another touching story on familial relationships and the missing fragments of our lives.
There is a lot of speculation in this collection, a lot of brow raising subjects like taboo relationships and the supernatural. There aren't any sci-fi or unicorns, but fantasy does tend to slip in throughout the collection, as the dysfunction and isolation in a character's life seems to break the barrier of logic, reason, and stability.
The writing style is all in third person view and Krys Lee manages to be one of the few writers who can pull it off wonderfully, without characters becoming too cardboard. They actually have physical and emotional movement, they are not merely a name mentioned throughout the story. Her prose is much like free verse poetry, seasoned with simile that just bring up the right imagery. It just works somehow.
Overall, Drifting House is pretty solid. Best short story collection I've read since the summer.
February 14, 2012
The Drifting House – the debut collection of Krys Lee – contains many good stories and some truly exceptional ones. And like all short story compilations, readers are bound to gravitate to their own favorites.
For me, a few of them really sang. In the first, A Temporary Marriage, Mrs. Shin has been forced to endure an abusive relationship and enters a sham marriage with another Korean named Mr. Rhee. As a result of her divorce, she loses custody of her daughter, whom she is determined to see again. But has she courted her own abuse? Phrases such as “her wounded body continued its ancient song” sum up, in a few sparse words, what the theme of the story is really about.
Then there’s The Goose Father – the traditional name for a father who faithfully sends money to his family overseas. The father – a one-time poet – takes in a young boarder who carries an actual goose with a wounded wing. In powerful prose, the father – Gilho – must come to terms with his true inclinations and his lifetime loneliness and alienation.
The Salaryman is stunning in its understated, naturalistic prose. In this story – told in second person – we watch a solid Korean businessman lose his job, his family, his confidence, and ultimately, his very humanity. It’s like watching a train wreck; it’s hard to look away.
There are many other good ones as well – the eponymous Drifting House, the most surreal of the lot, where two brothers and their very young sister try to escape North Korea’s countryside famine by fleeing to China. Yet they cannot escape their ghosts. And in The Believer, a mentally deranged Korean American woman commits a heinous crime; her daughter tries to comfort her father by performing an unspeakable act.
Ms. Lee is a young writer who is willing to take risks as she focuses her talent on those who are damaged, lonely, yearning. It’s not uplifting – marriages fail, men lose their sense of masculinity, women lose their sense of value, and most everyone feels displaced. Yet it offers amazing insights into the hopelessness and frustration that define a Korea that’s been through war, financial draught, and instabilities.
For me, a few of them really sang. In the first, A Temporary Marriage, Mrs. Shin has been forced to endure an abusive relationship and enters a sham marriage with another Korean named Mr. Rhee. As a result of her divorce, she loses custody of her daughter, whom she is determined to see again. But has she courted her own abuse? Phrases such as “her wounded body continued its ancient song” sum up, in a few sparse words, what the theme of the story is really about.
Then there’s The Goose Father – the traditional name for a father who faithfully sends money to his family overseas. The father – a one-time poet – takes in a young boarder who carries an actual goose with a wounded wing. In powerful prose, the father – Gilho – must come to terms with his true inclinations and his lifetime loneliness and alienation.
The Salaryman is stunning in its understated, naturalistic prose. In this story – told in second person – we watch a solid Korean businessman lose his job, his family, his confidence, and ultimately, his very humanity. It’s like watching a train wreck; it’s hard to look away.
There are many other good ones as well – the eponymous Drifting House, the most surreal of the lot, where two brothers and their very young sister try to escape North Korea’s countryside famine by fleeing to China. Yet they cannot escape their ghosts. And in The Believer, a mentally deranged Korean American woman commits a heinous crime; her daughter tries to comfort her father by performing an unspeakable act.
Ms. Lee is a young writer who is willing to take risks as she focuses her talent on those who are damaged, lonely, yearning. It’s not uplifting – marriages fail, men lose their sense of masculinity, women lose their sense of value, and most everyone feels displaced. Yet it offers amazing insights into the hopelessness and frustration that define a Korea that’s been through war, financial draught, and instabilities.
January 5, 2012
Drifting house was a difficult book for me to read.I gave it 4 stars because the writer has done an excellent job putting the reader in the same room as her tortured souls.
As I said before it is terrible what these familes have suffered through. Yes, I know this book is fictional, but I also know what happens to families & esp. the little ones.
As I think of the little girl who turns away from her mother after her mother has given her all to fine her child. The husbamd who takes his child to visit her mother in an aslyum.The daughter who willingly climbs in to her fathers bed. These are all horrible stories but we daily close our eyes to them.
One of the most touching was the little boy on the ice encouraging his little brother to keep running. the boy that killed his sick little sister. So sad.
Drifting House is a book of fiction but Krys Lee has done an excellent job of bringing her stars to life. I recommend this book.
Susie Spizzirro
As I said before it is terrible what these familes have suffered through. Yes, I know this book is fictional, but I also know what happens to families & esp. the little ones.
As I think of the little girl who turns away from her mother after her mother has given her all to fine her child. The husbamd who takes his child to visit her mother in an aslyum.The daughter who willingly climbs in to her fathers bed. These are all horrible stories but we daily close our eyes to them.
One of the most touching was the little boy on the ice encouraging his little brother to keep running. the boy that killed his sick little sister. So sad.
Drifting House is a book of fiction but Krys Lee has done an excellent job of bringing her stars to life. I recommend this book.
Susie Spizzirro
December 29, 2011
Krys Lee's portrayal of North Korean women and their children is an important read, especially in light of recent events surrounding Kim Jong-il's passing. Following several stories that alternate between different children's and parents' views of life in Korea versus the U.S., an "American" reader is invited to come to terms wiht the immigrant experience of war refugees and the longing for a place to belong.
Lee has published some of these short stories separately, but this collection proves insightful because what is familiar anywhere in the U.S. suddenly appears out of place--whether in Seoul, or in Koreatown, CA.--because it imposes on another way of life. Kudos to the author for developing a range of voices to tell stories that need to be heard.
Lee has published some of these short stories separately, but this collection proves insightful because what is familiar anywhere in the U.S. suddenly appears out of place--whether in Seoul, or in Koreatown, CA.--because it imposes on another way of life. Kudos to the author for developing a range of voices to tell stories that need to be heard.
February 1, 2018
I can't decide if this is a 3 or 4 star book for me...there were stories I loved - Beautiful Women, Drifting House, The Pastor's Son, A Small Sorrow - that captured the Korean, Korean immigrant and Korean American experience in a way that was raw, gritty, dark, complex, and then there were others that felt a little too forced toward an ambiguous end. I will say Lee's writing is lovely and I know there are stories I will revisit; stories that were haunting and heartfelt and tragic. Be warned, however: very little about this collection of short stories is light - there is beauty but the subject matter can be challenging and the characters deeply flawed.
February 2, 2012
We Are All Drifting Houses
Drifting House by Krys Lee (Viking Adult; 224 pages; $25.95.)
I typically do not read short story collections. Novels are my book of choice for a variety of reasons. I enjoy rich, memorable characters, ones who stay with me long after I finish a book. I love a great setting, one in which I am transported to a different time and place so unlike my own and one in which I can lose myself. Plot is also important to me, but it has to be plausible and interesting. I detest badly written novels; thus, a book must have good prose to capture and sustain my attention.
Most short stories tend to lack that certain something I'm seeking in a book. Short story collections should have the above elements I have previously described, but many simply do not. In the hands of a mediocre writer, character development, plot, and setting can suffer due to the length of a short story. Since most are about the length of a chapter, it can be difficult to produce a great short story, especially when page numbers are an issue.
It takes a skilled writer to come up with a great short story. I am happy to say I found a short story collection that is nothing short of magical. I found Krys Lee's Drifting House.
The release of Drifting House is timely considering the December death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Lee's stories matter and she cares deeply about her subjects. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Lee was raised in California and Washington. She was awarded special mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology 2012, was a finalist for Best New American Voices in 2006, and has published in The Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, California Quarterly, and Asia Weekly.
Lee's Drifting House is a powerful, intimate, and affecting debut collection. She writes with elegance and grace as she takes us from Korea to the United States. What struck me most in the stories were the Korean immigrants struggling to assimilate into American culture. At times, Drifting House is difficult to read, not because the book is poorly written but because she brings the reader into the action and into the struggles of the characters. The reader becomes a participant in the story and has an intense reaction to what goes on. Never have I experienced such torment and such anguish as a reader. This is deliberate. Lee wants us to feel this way as she takes on themes such as family, love, abandonment, and loss.
In a story entitled "A Temporary Marriage," a mother leaves Korea after being abandoned by her husband. Not only did he leave her but he also kidnapped their daughter. The mother immigrates to the United States and marries a man only so she can be close to her child. The marriage is a sham but it serves her purpose. My favorite story is the title story, "Drifting House," in which a young boy must make a life or death decision as he leads his siblings to freedom. The choice he makes haunts him and made me cry.
I had the opportunity to interview Lee and am very happy with the results. I hope you will, too. Lee and Drifting House deserve your attention.
Interview with Krys Lee,
Author of Drifting House
Jaime Boler: Thank you, Krys, for doing this interview. I am very excited about Drifting House! Drifting House is a short story collection. What made you want to write short stories?
Krys Lee: I started writing poetry long ago but found that the stories that were beginning to well up in me and wanted to be told no longer fit in a poem. That’s when I began considering another form. Stories appealed to me at the time because the shapes of what I was trying to write seemed appropriate for the length of a story.
JB: Did you always want to be an author?
KL: Yes. I’ve had my nose buried in a book since I can remember. All my books were smudged with toothpaste and stained with beef jerky because I read in nearly every waking moment. Books were an escape and respite from a fairly grim reality, and, like many who love to read, this desire traveled to writing itself. But I wrote primarily poetry until I began this collection.
JB: My favorite stories in your collection are the title story, "Drifting House," and "The Goose Father." Do you have a favorite?
KL: My favorite story is probably “A Temporary Marriage.” I felt so much sadness for Mrs. Shin and Mr. Rhee while writing it, and the story’s evolution surprised and shocked me. It was one of those moments when you realize how powerful the subconscious can be.
JB: What gave you the ideas for your stories?
KL: Each story was inspired by something personal, though they’re generally not autobiographical. I love South Korea, and I’m personally invested in its problems, which is evident in stories such as “The Salaryman” that arose after seeing a man I dated devoured by the Hyundai conglomerate. The story “Drifting House” also arose from my friendships with the activist and North Korean defector community in Seoul; the more you know, the more outraged you become at the tyranny of North Korea.
JB: What was the most difficult part about writing Drifting House? And what would you say was the most rewarding?
KL: The most difficult part was facing my own lack of faith, but still returning to the writing. I told myself constantly that I wouldn’t be able to sell Drifting House but quitting was like carrying a baby in the womb but not undergoing labor. It was my baby, and I was going to give birth to it. The most rewarding and difficult aspect of writing is seeing more of yourself in the work than you’d ever wished to expose—all my obsessions, fears, and wounds arose in the stories, though I’d persisted in avoiding directly autobiographical stories. But to create from the personal something larger than the self was a process I value, and I’m grateful for the experience.
JB: When did you begin working on Drifting House?
KL: My first story began over five years before Drifting House was bought at auction, but that doesn’t mean I was writing for those entire five years. I took several months off at the time from the book, both for personal reasons as well as out of a fear of commitment. I was afraid of failure, a fear that many writers experience when starting out.
JB: What is your favorite book? Which authors do you consider your favorites?
KL: The list is exhaustive, but a few constants are The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; Beloved by Toni Morrison; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie; When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka; Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the poems of Elizabeth Bishop, W.S.Merwin, and John Ashberry; The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekov; the plays of Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, Martin McDonagh, and Martin Crimp, and the short stories of Charles D’Ambrosio and Lorrie Moore.
JB: Please tell me a little about your writing style. Do you write in long-hand first or do you simply go to your computer or laptop and begin writing? Do you go somewhere in particular to write? Do you listen to music or do you prefer silence?
KL: I write anywhere it happens for me, from a campground, a subway, to a library. I’m a restless person, so as long as I’m writing most days of the week, I accept my irregular patterns rather than fight them. Depending on the scene I’m working on, music or silence will accompany my writing.
JB: If you were not writing, what would you most likely be doing?
KL: I’d be a human rights activist or a park ranger. Activists inspire me for acting on what they believe is right, and for their courage and sacrifice. A park ranger is attractive to me because I like the unpretentious nature and daily beauty and drudgery of their lives. There’s a restlessness for meaning that keeps my mind moving, and both professions, in different ways, is a search for meaning.
JB: Time plays a significant role throughout your stories. Can you tell us about that?
KL: I’m obsessed with time. My parents died young, so time has haunted me since I was in my early twenties. I questioned what it meant to live on this earth, and what actually mattered to me in my finite amount of time here. Historical time and geographical time also interest me tremendously, as I’m but a moment on this planet.
JB: Things that really stood out for me while reading your stories were identity, home, and the immigrant experience. What do you want readers to take with them after reading Drifting House?
KL: My characters happen to be of Korean ethnicity because I understand that culture best, but their stories are universal. I think of all of us as a kind of drifting house, especially readers and writers. The force of society and our personal circumstances acts on all of us in different ways, and people are never quite at ease with their surroundings as they seem. Like my characters in “The Goose Father” or “A Small Sorrow”, in the end, we all seek a place of belonging.
JB: One thing that captured my attention in your stories was the acts of violence in almost every one. What made you use this in your storytelling?
KL: Violence shaped the person I am, and it has clearly affected my sensibility. I thought this was in my past, but the past becomes a part of you and I carried that violence into my fiction, to my surprise. But as Harriett Gilbert from BBC’s The Strand noted, my aesthetic is informed by humor, fantasy, and violence. Darkness is balanced by light, just as in life.
JB: When will your book be released? Will there be a book tour? If so, which cities will you visit?
KL: Drifting House will be released on Feb 2, 2012. The book tour will take me to New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and literary festivals in Tempe, Arizona, and Dallas. There will also be an additional event in Honolulu, which will be fun.
JB: What was it like when you saw the cover of your book for the first time?
KL: I realized how lucky I was to have a publishing team that worked so hard on my behalf. My experience with Viking/Penguin has been collaborative, from the editing to the selection of the front cover, thanks to a group of editors, publicists, and designers who love reading as much as I do. The excitement and the faith of this enormous publishing house for a story collection—reportedly an uncommon phenomenon these days—culminated in the moment I received a finished copy of Drifting House.
JB: What's next for Krys Lee? Is there a novel in your future?
KL: I actually finished a novel draft last year and am in the middle of revisions. The novel as a form gives you a lot of room to explore, which I’ve enjoyed. Hopefully, you’ll be seeing it soon!
JB: Thank you, Krys, for doing this interview. I am very excited about Drifting House, and I know readers will be, too.
Drifting House by Krys Lee (Viking Adult; 224 pages; $25.95.)
I typically do not read short story collections. Novels are my book of choice for a variety of reasons. I enjoy rich, memorable characters, ones who stay with me long after I finish a book. I love a great setting, one in which I am transported to a different time and place so unlike my own and one in which I can lose myself. Plot is also important to me, but it has to be plausible and interesting. I detest badly written novels; thus, a book must have good prose to capture and sustain my attention.
Most short stories tend to lack that certain something I'm seeking in a book. Short story collections should have the above elements I have previously described, but many simply do not. In the hands of a mediocre writer, character development, plot, and setting can suffer due to the length of a short story. Since most are about the length of a chapter, it can be difficult to produce a great short story, especially when page numbers are an issue.
It takes a skilled writer to come up with a great short story. I am happy to say I found a short story collection that is nothing short of magical. I found Krys Lee's Drifting House.
The release of Drifting House is timely considering the December death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Lee's stories matter and she cares deeply about her subjects. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Lee was raised in California and Washington. She was awarded special mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology 2012, was a finalist for Best New American Voices in 2006, and has published in The Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, California Quarterly, and Asia Weekly.
Lee's Drifting House is a powerful, intimate, and affecting debut collection. She writes with elegance and grace as she takes us from Korea to the United States. What struck me most in the stories were the Korean immigrants struggling to assimilate into American culture. At times, Drifting House is difficult to read, not because the book is poorly written but because she brings the reader into the action and into the struggles of the characters. The reader becomes a participant in the story and has an intense reaction to what goes on. Never have I experienced such torment and such anguish as a reader. This is deliberate. Lee wants us to feel this way as she takes on themes such as family, love, abandonment, and loss.
In a story entitled "A Temporary Marriage," a mother leaves Korea after being abandoned by her husband. Not only did he leave her but he also kidnapped their daughter. The mother immigrates to the United States and marries a man only so she can be close to her child. The marriage is a sham but it serves her purpose. My favorite story is the title story, "Drifting House," in which a young boy must make a life or death decision as he leads his siblings to freedom. The choice he makes haunts him and made me cry.
I had the opportunity to interview Lee and am very happy with the results. I hope you will, too. Lee and Drifting House deserve your attention.
Interview with Krys Lee,
Author of Drifting House
Jaime Boler: Thank you, Krys, for doing this interview. I am very excited about Drifting House! Drifting House is a short story collection. What made you want to write short stories?
Krys Lee: I started writing poetry long ago but found that the stories that were beginning to well up in me and wanted to be told no longer fit in a poem. That’s when I began considering another form. Stories appealed to me at the time because the shapes of what I was trying to write seemed appropriate for the length of a story.
JB: Did you always want to be an author?
KL: Yes. I’ve had my nose buried in a book since I can remember. All my books were smudged with toothpaste and stained with beef jerky because I read in nearly every waking moment. Books were an escape and respite from a fairly grim reality, and, like many who love to read, this desire traveled to writing itself. But I wrote primarily poetry until I began this collection.
JB: My favorite stories in your collection are the title story, "Drifting House," and "The Goose Father." Do you have a favorite?
KL: My favorite story is probably “A Temporary Marriage.” I felt so much sadness for Mrs. Shin and Mr. Rhee while writing it, and the story’s evolution surprised and shocked me. It was one of those moments when you realize how powerful the subconscious can be.
JB: What gave you the ideas for your stories?
KL: Each story was inspired by something personal, though they’re generally not autobiographical. I love South Korea, and I’m personally invested in its problems, which is evident in stories such as “The Salaryman” that arose after seeing a man I dated devoured by the Hyundai conglomerate. The story “Drifting House” also arose from my friendships with the activist and North Korean defector community in Seoul; the more you know, the more outraged you become at the tyranny of North Korea.
JB: What was the most difficult part about writing Drifting House? And what would you say was the most rewarding?
KL: The most difficult part was facing my own lack of faith, but still returning to the writing. I told myself constantly that I wouldn’t be able to sell Drifting House but quitting was like carrying a baby in the womb but not undergoing labor. It was my baby, and I was going to give birth to it. The most rewarding and difficult aspect of writing is seeing more of yourself in the work than you’d ever wished to expose—all my obsessions, fears, and wounds arose in the stories, though I’d persisted in avoiding directly autobiographical stories. But to create from the personal something larger than the self was a process I value, and I’m grateful for the experience.
JB: When did you begin working on Drifting House?
KL: My first story began over five years before Drifting House was bought at auction, but that doesn’t mean I was writing for those entire five years. I took several months off at the time from the book, both for personal reasons as well as out of a fear of commitment. I was afraid of failure, a fear that many writers experience when starting out.
JB: What is your favorite book? Which authors do you consider your favorites?
KL: The list is exhaustive, but a few constants are The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; Beloved by Toni Morrison; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie; When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka; Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the poems of Elizabeth Bishop, W.S.Merwin, and John Ashberry; The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekov; the plays of Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, Martin McDonagh, and Martin Crimp, and the short stories of Charles D’Ambrosio and Lorrie Moore.
JB: Please tell me a little about your writing style. Do you write in long-hand first or do you simply go to your computer or laptop and begin writing? Do you go somewhere in particular to write? Do you listen to music or do you prefer silence?
KL: I write anywhere it happens for me, from a campground, a subway, to a library. I’m a restless person, so as long as I’m writing most days of the week, I accept my irregular patterns rather than fight them. Depending on the scene I’m working on, music or silence will accompany my writing.
JB: If you were not writing, what would you most likely be doing?
KL: I’d be a human rights activist or a park ranger. Activists inspire me for acting on what they believe is right, and for their courage and sacrifice. A park ranger is attractive to me because I like the unpretentious nature and daily beauty and drudgery of their lives. There’s a restlessness for meaning that keeps my mind moving, and both professions, in different ways, is a search for meaning.
JB: Time plays a significant role throughout your stories. Can you tell us about that?
KL: I’m obsessed with time. My parents died young, so time has haunted me since I was in my early twenties. I questioned what it meant to live on this earth, and what actually mattered to me in my finite amount of time here. Historical time and geographical time also interest me tremendously, as I’m but a moment on this planet.
JB: Things that really stood out for me while reading your stories were identity, home, and the immigrant experience. What do you want readers to take with them after reading Drifting House?
KL: My characters happen to be of Korean ethnicity because I understand that culture best, but their stories are universal. I think of all of us as a kind of drifting house, especially readers and writers. The force of society and our personal circumstances acts on all of us in different ways, and people are never quite at ease with their surroundings as they seem. Like my characters in “The Goose Father” or “A Small Sorrow”, in the end, we all seek a place of belonging.
JB: One thing that captured my attention in your stories was the acts of violence in almost every one. What made you use this in your storytelling?
KL: Violence shaped the person I am, and it has clearly affected my sensibility. I thought this was in my past, but the past becomes a part of you and I carried that violence into my fiction, to my surprise. But as Harriett Gilbert from BBC’s The Strand noted, my aesthetic is informed by humor, fantasy, and violence. Darkness is balanced by light, just as in life.
JB: When will your book be released? Will there be a book tour? If so, which cities will you visit?
KL: Drifting House will be released on Feb 2, 2012. The book tour will take me to New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and literary festivals in Tempe, Arizona, and Dallas. There will also be an additional event in Honolulu, which will be fun.
JB: What was it like when you saw the cover of your book for the first time?
KL: I realized how lucky I was to have a publishing team that worked so hard on my behalf. My experience with Viking/Penguin has been collaborative, from the editing to the selection of the front cover, thanks to a group of editors, publicists, and designers who love reading as much as I do. The excitement and the faith of this enormous publishing house for a story collection—reportedly an uncommon phenomenon these days—culminated in the moment I received a finished copy of Drifting House.
JB: What's next for Krys Lee? Is there a novel in your future?
KL: I actually finished a novel draft last year and am in the middle of revisions. The novel as a form gives you a lot of room to explore, which I’ve enjoyed. Hopefully, you’ll be seeing it soon!
JB: Thank you, Krys, for doing this interview. I am very excited about Drifting House, and I know readers will be, too.
December 9, 2013
Krys Lee's audacious debut is a wonder to behold - molded into a brilliant sheen with powerful, heart-aching prose and memorable, vivid worlds.
From each page, the sense of care she has devoted to each story is clearly evident, and almost palpably ever-present. In as much as her stories are occupied with emotionally wrought characters dealing with their lives point-blank, there is an unmistakable gentleness with which each story unfolds. I have never felt so safe in the hands of any writer before, funny then, that this is a book well-able to bring tears to my eyes by incessantly prodding me to investigate my loneliness, my smallness, in this large and almost impossible to fathom world, that seemingly, in my moments of megalomania, evolves around me.
The tried and true question; our smallness and all the while living our lives with fulfillment, with the full knowledge that our dreams and indeed, our lives could be crushed any day, indiscriminately. At least, if Lee is there to write our eulogies, our souls will float past the gates of heaven draped with prose than even Shakespeare would envy.
From each page, the sense of care she has devoted to each story is clearly evident, and almost palpably ever-present. In as much as her stories are occupied with emotionally wrought characters dealing with their lives point-blank, there is an unmistakable gentleness with which each story unfolds. I have never felt so safe in the hands of any writer before, funny then, that this is a book well-able to bring tears to my eyes by incessantly prodding me to investigate my loneliness, my smallness, in this large and almost impossible to fathom world, that seemingly, in my moments of megalomania, evolves around me.
The tried and true question; our smallness and all the while living our lives with fulfillment, with the full knowledge that our dreams and indeed, our lives could be crushed any day, indiscriminately. At least, if Lee is there to write our eulogies, our souls will float past the gates of heaven draped with prose than even Shakespeare would envy.
August 23, 2018
A harrowing & important anthology of Korean short stories set in either Korea or America, revolving around recent changes in history, from postwar to modern times. Lee's talent in storytelling is undeniable. That said, I don't think there's even one happy story in this collection and its grimness sits heavy on the stomach. These stories on Korean identity are insightful, interesting and sometimes even darkly mystical ("The Goose Father"). In terms of tone, I feel like Lee could afford to be less melodramatic just because her stories are powerful enough to stand on their own, minus all the excessive frillings. The characters in the stories are rich, varied and extremely flawed human beings but this is also what makes it so hard to look away or stop reading. Human frailty is a central theme in each piece and its endings offer little solace so I wouldn’t recommend this anthology for readers who aren’t in a very good mental headspace. One story, in particular, turned me off because it chose to veer into incest, a decision which I didn't feel was necessary. It turned me off so much, I almost wanted to stop reading and for this, I took away one star from this review.
December 28, 2018
“How ludicrous were all attempts at defining the self.”
I am not a lover of short stories. They tend to end abruptly, and leave me wondering “what just happened?” I am typically left unsatisfied. Drifting House showed me the beauty in a good collection of short stories that allow the reader to quickly plunge into a story, sink into the characters’ lives, and then complete the story all in one relatively short sitting.
In every single story there is a sense of loneliness, loss, and trying to find one’s way. This connects the vastly different stories. The differences between the stories is what strikes me as impressive; the author was able to take characters and develop their different stories to give a taste of cultural nuances along with showing the various ways of struggle, and the different truths that people live. Each story weaves complexities to illustrate how lives vary yet are the same; each life is unique, as is their story, yet all struggle and, at times, experience tenderness, forgiveness, and grace.
Drifting House gave me a sense of accomplishment, finality, and satisfaction with each story read.
I am not a lover of short stories. They tend to end abruptly, and leave me wondering “what just happened?” I am typically left unsatisfied. Drifting House showed me the beauty in a good collection of short stories that allow the reader to quickly plunge into a story, sink into the characters’ lives, and then complete the story all in one relatively short sitting.
In every single story there is a sense of loneliness, loss, and trying to find one’s way. This connects the vastly different stories. The differences between the stories is what strikes me as impressive; the author was able to take characters and develop their different stories to give a taste of cultural nuances along with showing the various ways of struggle, and the different truths that people live. Each story weaves complexities to illustrate how lives vary yet are the same; each life is unique, as is their story, yet all struggle and, at times, experience tenderness, forgiveness, and grace.
Drifting House gave me a sense of accomplishment, finality, and satisfaction with each story read.
August 25, 2012
OK, I've got to apologize to Stephanie Reents. I read her debut The Kissing List and told her to lighten up...and then I read this, which has horrible things happening in every single story. Is there some college that tells writers make their first book sad, depressing, hopeless short stories? First, I think Lee could have easily made some of these short stories into full length novels (with some lightness interludes) and explain at the same time Korean items (food especially) to those of us who don't have a clue about different rice cakes. Really, boiled silkworms? That can't be right. But if they are, crunchy? or soft? Good writing and characterizations, but I sure wouldn't read this in the cold depths of January.
December 10, 2011
This collection of stories is about the struggle that Koreans/ American Koreans have faced. Each story is sadder then the previous. Some stories are a bit confusing but that may just be a culture difference on my part. This was a very interesting read, but again I say, it was quite sad. The stories were written well but I feel some of the stories were a bit rushed to complete. Some of these stories could have been a novel on their own. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn the difficulties of a different culture.
December 26, 2018
Couldn’t even finish the book
November 9, 2019
Nio koreanska noveller. Delade upp dem på nio kvällar. En socialrealistisk guide till Seoul och sydkoreansk kultur. Välbekanta temata från de koreanska filmer jag sett på sistone: förändring, finanskris, familjehierarkier, könsroller, akademisk perfektionism, post-totalitär frihet, salarymen och självmord.
Krys Lee kommer med något unikt, vilket manifesterar sig i väldigt vackra meningar, men vid flera tillfällen tänkte jag 'men, existerar det inte en enda lycklig koreansk person?' om än deras öden omges av formuleringar som "The mirror in Mrs. Lim's room faithfully reflects misery and magnificence" eller "a trail of turquoise butterflies fluttering after them".
Krys Lee kommer med något unikt, vilket manifesterar sig i väldigt vackra meningar, men vid flera tillfällen tänkte jag 'men, existerar det inte en enda lycklig koreansk person?' om än deras öden omges av formuleringar som "The mirror in Mrs. Lim's room faithfully reflects misery and magnificence" eller "a trail of turquoise butterflies fluttering after them".
June 10, 2022
This is a collection of stories about Korean characters in different places. It gives an interesting insight into another culture from their country of origin to America. Some are very dark, and others have moments of beauty and lightness.
All are well written and draw the reader into the story being told. It is not a light read and will take an emotional toll on the reader.
All are well written and draw the reader into the story being told. It is not a light read and will take an emotional toll on the reader.
April 6, 2018
* 75% of marriages to your dead wife's best friend end up in suicide. Fact. Wow, I'm going to hell for this joke.
* Come on, don't have sex with your father..
* Is anyone from Korea happy?
Not sure how I feel about these short stories. They were good but at the same time, didn't leave me moved as evident by my lack of notes. Certainly the stories were troubling and at times disturbing but still.
* Come on, don't have sex with your father..
* Is anyone from Korea happy?
Not sure how I feel about these short stories. They were good but at the same time, didn't leave me moved as evident by my lack of notes. Certainly the stories were troubling and at times disturbing but still.
July 7, 2021
The stories are a mixed bag for me; some almost moved me to tears, while others were underwhelming. But the ones that were good were really good, so this is a 3.5 read for me.
February 9, 2012
On the face of it, South Korean fiction has the raw materials to make it big: partition, war, dictatorships and economic boom-and-bust, all played out against the backdrop of a deeply traditional, rigidly honour-bound society.
But while the likes of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto have succeeded in ushering modern Japanese writing into global favour, their South Korean equivalents have struggled to make such an impressive breakthrough beyond their homeland.
Until now: this has been a stellar season for South Korean fiction, starting with Kyung-sook Shin's Please Look After Mother, which as well as selling over one million copies at home, was released in 19 other countries, and is the first South Korean novel to be shortlisted for the prestigious MAN Asian Literary Prize.
Now comes Krys Lee's 'Drifting House', a debut collection of nine tight short stories which jab at the heart of her modern nation's struggle to survive the myriad travails of its recent past.
Where Shin's work was predominantly concerned with exploring the rural, matriachal perspective of modern Korean life, Lee's book is very much urban and masculine: most central characters are husbands struggling to hold their families together under such an enormous, accepted weight of responsibility.
Lee's world is one that stretches far beyond the confines of her own nation's borders, to the countless Koreatowns dotting America's west coast, yet her message remains the same. Delicately, devastatingly, she strips away the veneer of post-Olympics, post-dictatorship economic respectability, bringing into focus the almost pathological obsession with work and education that came with it: an obsession ill-suited to such rigidly structured family models.
Lee's characters are people whose biggest fear, beyond family break-ups, beyond even death, is becoming a burden. They will gladly send spouses and siblings across the Pacific to escape it, consigning them all to a life of soullessness in the process, yet anything is better than the alternative.
The desperate period after the 1997 IMF crash which exploded the South Korean economic miracle is most starkly described in 'The Salaryman', in which an unexpected redundancy leads its comfortable, salaried central character into an alarmingly quick spiral of despair, culminating in his abandoning his wife and family and adopting a grotesque existence on the streets, simply unable to face the humiliation of going home no longer with a means to provide for them.
While the first handful of stories in Lee's collection provide the layers of insight
required to begin to understand South Korea's unique society, the second half of the book is stronger. The stand-out, for sure, is the book's title story, a gut-wrenchingly memorable story of abandoned siblings seeking to escape the hell of Kim Jong-il's famine-ravaged north: a tale all too familiar to anyone who read the survivors' testimonies in Barbara Demick's seminal Nothing To Envy.
'The day the siblings left to find their mother, snow devoured the northern mining town. Houses loomed like ghosts. The government's face was everywhere: on the sides of a marooned cart, above the lintel of the gray post office, on placards throughout the surrounding mountains praising the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il.And in the grain sack strapped to the oldest brother Woncheol's back, their crippled sister, the weight of a few books.'
'Drifting House' provides a superb, overdue insight in a fascinatingly complex culture which, in the context of global literary fiction, has been neglected for too long. Lee, whose forthcoming first novel has also been acquired by Faber, is talented enough to remain at the forefront of this shift-change. If 'Drifting House' is anything to go by, we have not heard the last of Krys Lee's South Korea; not by a long shot.
But while the likes of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto have succeeded in ushering modern Japanese writing into global favour, their South Korean equivalents have struggled to make such an impressive breakthrough beyond their homeland.
Until now: this has been a stellar season for South Korean fiction, starting with Kyung-sook Shin's Please Look After Mother, which as well as selling over one million copies at home, was released in 19 other countries, and is the first South Korean novel to be shortlisted for the prestigious MAN Asian Literary Prize.
Now comes Krys Lee's 'Drifting House', a debut collection of nine tight short stories which jab at the heart of her modern nation's struggle to survive the myriad travails of its recent past.
Where Shin's work was predominantly concerned with exploring the rural, matriachal perspective of modern Korean life, Lee's book is very much urban and masculine: most central characters are husbands struggling to hold their families together under such an enormous, accepted weight of responsibility.
Lee's world is one that stretches far beyond the confines of her own nation's borders, to the countless Koreatowns dotting America's west coast, yet her message remains the same. Delicately, devastatingly, she strips away the veneer of post-Olympics, post-dictatorship economic respectability, bringing into focus the almost pathological obsession with work and education that came with it: an obsession ill-suited to such rigidly structured family models.
Lee's characters are people whose biggest fear, beyond family break-ups, beyond even death, is becoming a burden. They will gladly send spouses and siblings across the Pacific to escape it, consigning them all to a life of soullessness in the process, yet anything is better than the alternative.
The desperate period after the 1997 IMF crash which exploded the South Korean economic miracle is most starkly described in 'The Salaryman', in which an unexpected redundancy leads its comfortable, salaried central character into an alarmingly quick spiral of despair, culminating in his abandoning his wife and family and adopting a grotesque existence on the streets, simply unable to face the humiliation of going home no longer with a means to provide for them.
While the first handful of stories in Lee's collection provide the layers of insight
required to begin to understand South Korea's unique society, the second half of the book is stronger. The stand-out, for sure, is the book's title story, a gut-wrenchingly memorable story of abandoned siblings seeking to escape the hell of Kim Jong-il's famine-ravaged north: a tale all too familiar to anyone who read the survivors' testimonies in Barbara Demick's seminal Nothing To Envy.
'The day the siblings left to find their mother, snow devoured the northern mining town. Houses loomed like ghosts. The government's face was everywhere: on the sides of a marooned cart, above the lintel of the gray post office, on placards throughout the surrounding mountains praising the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il.And in the grain sack strapped to the oldest brother Woncheol's back, their crippled sister, the weight of a few books.'
'Drifting House' provides a superb, overdue insight in a fascinatingly complex culture which, in the context of global literary fiction, has been neglected for too long. Lee, whose forthcoming first novel has also been acquired by Faber, is talented enough to remain at the forefront of this shift-change. If 'Drifting House' is anything to go by, we have not heard the last of Krys Lee's South Korea; not by a long shot.
December 11, 2011
This book is broken into different stories related to Koreans and the U.S. rather than presenting information through a single plot. Each story seems very different from the other eight. The common factor is the heartache as characters struggle with marriage, financial loss, loneliness, and acceptance from their families. Mentioned simultaneously with these struggles is war, which devastates the country as these characters move forward.
The author has a very appealing writing style jumping from one moment in the characters’ lives to another. It is effective, for it only shows us specific instances that make up the characters and why they behave the way they do. I also really liked the author’s choice of every day happenings to describe the setting.
The stories are brilliant yet I feel that to truly appreciate the book you have to focus on the relationships and the endings in each story. Almost all the stories focus on a specific relationship and how that relationship is precious to the main character. While you read anxiously to the end to find out how it ends, you realize that there isn’t really a conclusion. There is once again more of a glimpse into a single moment in the characters’ lives that is connected to a relationship. And the story does become very powerful and moving in this way. A Temporary Marriage, At the Edge of the World, and Beautiful Women are the stories that I think were the best in connecting these two factors.
However, I had hoped to learn a little more about the Korean culture. There is abundant description of customs and every day way of life but I feel there was too much focus on the negative in life. And towards the end I did have trouble finishing the book; it became slightly tiresome to read some of the pages.
Overall, the author did a great job in putting together the stories but I read the last half with some reluctance.
Received free through Goodreads First Reads. Thank you!
The author has a very appealing writing style jumping from one moment in the characters’ lives to another. It is effective, for it only shows us specific instances that make up the characters and why they behave the way they do. I also really liked the author’s choice of every day happenings to describe the setting.
The stories are brilliant yet I feel that to truly appreciate the book you have to focus on the relationships and the endings in each story. Almost all the stories focus on a specific relationship and how that relationship is precious to the main character. While you read anxiously to the end to find out how it ends, you realize that there isn’t really a conclusion. There is once again more of a glimpse into a single moment in the characters’ lives that is connected to a relationship. And the story does become very powerful and moving in this way. A Temporary Marriage, At the Edge of the World, and Beautiful Women are the stories that I think were the best in connecting these two factors.
However, I had hoped to learn a little more about the Korean culture. There is abundant description of customs and every day way of life but I feel there was too much focus on the negative in life. And towards the end I did have trouble finishing the book; it became slightly tiresome to read some of the pages.
Overall, the author did a great job in putting together the stories but I read the last half with some reluctance.
Received free through Goodreads First Reads. Thank you!
March 30, 2020
Have you ever felt so lost at life? Like being in a place but feeling like you belong somewhere else? Or leaving a place but memories about that place linger, hard to ignore?
This book is all that. All the memories that linger, and selves that are lost.
This book is perilous, this book is dark, this book is blunt.
Far before South Korea flourishes into the sumptuous country that we know today, it has been through a lot of economic struggles and difficulties. North Korea, being the underprivileged country that it is, causing the people feeling desirous to escape. This book tells the stories of South Korean and North Korean people (or some, immigrants) that are away from home, from where they truly belong. I am personally attracted in stories about North Korean defectors and the relationship between the two Koreas, that is why I was so eager in reading this book.
Compilation of short stories, is what this book is. I find short stories charming because it is admirable how an author is able to fit so many details and words into such little capacity of space. Every short story in this book is interesting and deep, and like I have said, blunt. What I mean blunt here is that each of the stories are interpreted explicitly, without trying to hide or reduce any painful, grouchy, or grim parts of the story. The stories are deep and engrossing. The stories captivate feelings and pushing the reader to sympathize with the characters.
However, the author adds a few (actually, quite a lot) Korean words in the book without bothering to explain the meaning. For some people who understand basic Korean, the words might be understandable, but for others it could ruin the message flow of the stories.
Overall, this book is a good book, especially if you are aware and interested in the situation of the two countries and the lives of Korean immigrants in America.
This book is all that. All the memories that linger, and selves that are lost.
This book is perilous, this book is dark, this book is blunt.
Far before South Korea flourishes into the sumptuous country that we know today, it has been through a lot of economic struggles and difficulties. North Korea, being the underprivileged country that it is, causing the people feeling desirous to escape. This book tells the stories of South Korean and North Korean people (or some, immigrants) that are away from home, from where they truly belong. I am personally attracted in stories about North Korean defectors and the relationship between the two Koreas, that is why I was so eager in reading this book.
Compilation of short stories, is what this book is. I find short stories charming because it is admirable how an author is able to fit so many details and words into such little capacity of space. Every short story in this book is interesting and deep, and like I have said, blunt. What I mean blunt here is that each of the stories are interpreted explicitly, without trying to hide or reduce any painful, grouchy, or grim parts of the story. The stories are deep and engrossing. The stories captivate feelings and pushing the reader to sympathize with the characters.
However, the author adds a few (actually, quite a lot) Korean words in the book without bothering to explain the meaning. For some people who understand basic Korean, the words might be understandable, but for others it could ruin the message flow of the stories.
Overall, this book is a good book, especially if you are aware and interested in the situation of the two countries and the lives of Korean immigrants in America.
August 8, 2018
Drifting House is a collection of short stories about Koreans and their hardships, loves, and facing their haunting truths set in the postwar era to modern times.
It's truly an amazing book, you get so invested in these charters lives even if we only know them for a short period of time. I would definitely describe this book as haunting yet powerful. We read about the hard lives of our charters and what they are going through from becoming a mail order bride to escaping from North Korea.
To me personally, Krys Lee's writing in this book just flowed so well and was almost like reading poetry. The way that Lee is so detailed in her writing amazed me. I've never read a book that has really taken my breath away because of its writing.
One of my favorite aspects in this book is the thinking, once you're done with a story it sticks with you, sometimes in these stories, there is no crystal clear ending and it leaves you really processing and using your imagination to interpret your meaning of the ending. I really loved that I feel like my interruption to a story may be different from anyone else's truly making these stories immortal.
I highly recommend this book, it's a haunting read that leaves you thinking and craving more from the author.
I gave this book a 5 out of 5 it was the first book I've read outside the young adult genre and now my standers for writing and stories have been risen because of this book.
Just some warnings about the book it is not suitable for children and it contains sensitive martial.
It's truly an amazing book, you get so invested in these charters lives even if we only know them for a short period of time. I would definitely describe this book as haunting yet powerful. We read about the hard lives of our charters and what they are going through from becoming a mail order bride to escaping from North Korea.
To me personally, Krys Lee's writing in this book just flowed so well and was almost like reading poetry. The way that Lee is so detailed in her writing amazed me. I've never read a book that has really taken my breath away because of its writing.
One of my favorite aspects in this book is the thinking, once you're done with a story it sticks with you, sometimes in these stories, there is no crystal clear ending and it leaves you really processing and using your imagination to interpret your meaning of the ending. I really loved that I feel like my interruption to a story may be different from anyone else's truly making these stories immortal.
I highly recommend this book, it's a haunting read that leaves you thinking and craving more from the author.
I gave this book a 5 out of 5 it was the first book I've read outside the young adult genre and now my standers for writing and stories have been risen because of this book.
Just some warnings about the book it is not suitable for children and it contains sensitive martial.
November 11, 2019
Krys Lee ranks among the must-read Korean authors. Together with Han Kang and Shin Kyung-sook, Lee writes about contemporary Korea. If you want to believe the narrative offered in Korean museums and monuments, this should be an heroic tale. Last century’s struggle against Japanese colonialism, the fight for democracy in the 1980s, and the ongoing yearning to be reunited with the North. In Drifting House, Lee banishes these epic battles into the background. Her concern is with those left behind.
To read the full review, please visit my website for No Heroes .
To read the full review, please visit my website for No Heroes .
January 29, 2013
With both pinpoint focus and a large communal scope, the stories in this collection flash upon all aspects of the contemporary Korean experience--emigrating, being left behind, prosperity and poverty, crossings and the clash of the contemporary against the traditional. The stories can be subtle, like "At the Edge of the World" in which a North Korean father tries to adjust to a new life and a new family in LA. Or there can be a tour-de-force feel, as is found in "Beautiful Women," which is sweeping in its portraits of the fates of vulnerable women in Korea. But this isn't a book about "Korean-ness." Behind all these stories is the vision of a serious literary artist, dealing with universal notions of alienation, dislocation and abandonment. But there's connection and self-fulfillment, too, as is found by the narrator of "Goose Father." This is the opposite of escapist reading--it takes you to a new place, challenges you and then rewards your efforts.
March 2, 2020
I only like books that are fucked up and this book is more fucked up than most. It’s a nearly perfect collection of stories. Junot Diaz meets J. G. Ballard. Toni Morrison meets Todd Solondz. Denis Johnson meets Michael Heneke.
The stories “A Temporary Marriage” and “The Believer” are so full of wonder and strange, harrowing beauty that they almost outshine the entire rest of the collection. The other short stories are sturdy, inquisitive, sad, and lithe.
The final story, a short novella called “Beautiful Women” is a stuttering and fractured novel length story of a young girl longing for love, friendship and parenthood in South Koren in the 1970s told in 40 pages. It is a deftly told tale full of poetry and difficult truths that recalls Jesus’ Son in its combination of bewildered naïveté and precious toughness. The narrator will break your heart. The story does more in 40 pages than most novels do in 400.
The stories “A Temporary Marriage” and “The Believer” are so full of wonder and strange, harrowing beauty that they almost outshine the entire rest of the collection. The other short stories are sturdy, inquisitive, sad, and lithe.
The final story, a short novella called “Beautiful Women” is a stuttering and fractured novel length story of a young girl longing for love, friendship and parenthood in South Koren in the 1970s told in 40 pages. It is a deftly told tale full of poetry and difficult truths that recalls Jesus’ Son in its combination of bewildered naïveté and precious toughness. The narrator will break your heart. The story does more in 40 pages than most novels do in 400.
June 21, 2012
In this collection of nine stories (shout-out to J.D. Salinger???) Krys Lee explores the lives of North and South Koreans unmoored from their lives, both in their native countries and abroad. South Korea, shown from the early 1970s under the rule of dictator Park Chung-Hee, through the 1997 financial crisis and to the present day, seems to emerge as a character in its own right. Interestingly, many of the people in these stories are Christian, but religion seems to fail them repeatedly. I highly recommend this collection!
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