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Folklorn
A genre-defying, continents-spanning saga of Korean myth, scientific discovery, and the abiding love that binds even the most broken of families.
Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last.
Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate: the mental illness and generational trauma that run in her immigrant family, a sickness no less ravenous than the ancestral curse hunting her.
When her mother breaks her decade-long silence and tragedy strikes, Elsa must return to her childhood home in California. There, among family wrestling with their own demons, she unravels the secrets hidden in the handwritten pages of her mother’s dark stories: of women’s desire and fury; of magic suppressed, stolen, or punished; of the hunger for vengeance.
From Sparks Fellow, Tin House alumna, and Harvard graduate Angela Mi Young Hur, Folklorn is a wondrous and necessary exploration of the myths we inherit and those we fashion for ourselves.
Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last.
Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate: the mental illness and generational trauma that run in her immigrant family, a sickness no less ravenous than the ancestral curse hunting her.
When her mother breaks her decade-long silence and tragedy strikes, Elsa must return to her childhood home in California. There, among family wrestling with their own demons, she unravels the secrets hidden in the handwritten pages of her mother’s dark stories: of women’s desire and fury; of magic suppressed, stolen, or punished; of the hunger for vengeance.
From Sparks Fellow, Tin House alumna, and Harvard graduate Angela Mi Young Hur, Folklorn is a wondrous and necessary exploration of the myths we inherit and those we fashion for ourselves.
1 pages, Audio CD
First published April 27, 2021
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About the author
Angela Mi Young Hur
3 books91 followersI was born in Los Angeles to Korean immigrant parents. Graduated from Andover, Harvard (BA), Notre Dame (MFA). Despite what it seems, FOLKLORN is my true literary / spiritual debut. Forthcoming April 2021, from Erewhon.
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January 26, 2021Ghost story, family saga, parable, feminist reimagined myth: Angela Hur’s hugely ambitious FOLKLORN is a blend of all these and more. This spellbinding shape-shifter of a novel tackles questions of race, culture, and history head-on, exploring the blurry boundaries between past and present, fact and fantasy, and personal and cultural—or cosmic.
January 3, 2022
5 painful, grief filled, magically important stars
Read my full review HERE. :)
Okay, Folklorn was just way more personal to me than I anticipated it to be. It was.... incredibly surprising how close to home it felt. Elsa grew up near me, and I grew up where her Swedish home's people often emigrate to. I even almost ran to physics as well. Incredibly precise, and almost impossible for me to not rate this so highly. Angela Mi Young Hur was speaking directly to me!
Folklorn follows a Korean-American physicist, running away from the culture and folktales of her family and grounding herself in the solid concrete nature of science. Only to find out that you can’t escape your history, and science reflects our lives more than we think. Keep reading...
**I received this ARC for free and am leaving this review voluntarily**
Bookish Brews | Twitter | Pinterest | Tumblr | Facebook
Read my full review HERE. :)
Okay, Folklorn was just way more personal to me than I anticipated it to be. It was.... incredibly surprising how close to home it felt. Elsa grew up near me, and I grew up where her Swedish home's people often emigrate to. I even almost ran to physics as well. Incredibly precise, and almost impossible for me to not rate this so highly. Angela Mi Young Hur was speaking directly to me!
Folklorn follows a Korean-American physicist, running away from the culture and folktales of her family and grounding herself in the solid concrete nature of science. Only to find out that you can’t escape your history, and science reflects our lives more than we think. Keep reading...
**I received this ARC for free and am leaving this review voluntarily**
Bookish Brews | Twitter | Pinterest | Tumblr | Facebook
April 24, 2021
Folklorn is a quite beautiful story that spans quite different topics from physics to folklore, with childhood trauma, mental illness, domestic violence, racism, war , stillbirths, death, myth, religion, tradition and cross culture adoption. The main character is Elsa Park, a Korean American physics student. She is working in Antarctica and Sweden and returns to California when her mother dies. The story isn’t really told in a linear fashion. There’s flashbacks to childhood, and family history. Her relationship with her mother is a strange one, and the book is really about Elsa understanding her mother. Her mother has always told her folktales and these tales are through the book. There’s a bit of physics, Elsa studies sterile neutrinos, “the ghost particles ghost” almost mythical itself! The flow between all these different ideas is smooth and I very much enjoyed the magical realism.
November 6, 2021
This is one of those books that I could see appealing strongly to people who personally connect to the situations portrayed, but suspect will leave most others a little cold. Essentially, a Korean-American postgraduate physicist wanders about hoping to learn more about her dead mother through folktales, and meanwhile gets together with a hot Korean-Swedish professor. The novel visits many settings—a research base at the South Pole; a university town in Sweden; the beaches and body shops of Los Angeles—but without developing any strong plot.
There’s no particular urgency to Elsa’s story: her family has had more than its share of difficulties over the years, including abuse and mental illness, but in the present day her father and brother are making it and both clearly love her. Academia is apparently the world’s cushiest profession, or Elsa just has the world’s most gracious advisor, because she manages to vanish for months upon months to work out her personal issues without any particular concerns or consequences. The new boyfriend is totally willing to wait for her despite Elsa’s consistently eccentric and selfish behavior. Even Elsa’s inner turmoil seems portrayed at some remove, more malaise than crisis.
Elsa, like many protagonists, has trouble with other people and often treats them poorly, but to my mind the author hasn’t really endowed her with endearing traits to get readers on Elsa’s team either. She doesn’t seem to have much passion for anything; she vaguely wants to understand her mom (though she didn’t care while the mom was alive), and that’s about it. The book does something I particularly dislike with characters’ professions and interests (but basically a given with novelists writing about anything STEM), in which Elsa doesn’t come across as having an independent interest in physics, so much as seeing it as a safety blanket and escape from her family problems. It’s more about the metaphor neutrinos stand for vis-à-vis her personal demons than the science itself, and both Elsa and the book seem to take her job for granted.* Meanwhile there aren’t a lot of stakes with anything else either, even the magic realism element. Elsa seems to be haunted, but the ghost was her decidedly non-spooky childhood imaginary friend, and so she just assumes it to be a figment of her imagination and moves on without giving it much thought.
I could definitely see this becoming a cult classic for those who share the author’s particular concerns. There’s a lot of long, in-depth dialogue in which characters exposit about Korean folktales, neutrinos, various permutations of identity, and other academic topics, including two long conversations about Planet of the Apes, which for someone who hasn’t seen any of those movies, didn’t do anything for me. The book is very focused on both race- and gender-based street harassment, and includes a bunch of scenes of this with little connection to anything else. The author also clearly has a bone to pick with international adoption, especially in the early years when no one was thinking about keeping the kids connected to their birth culture. But there’s not a lot of emotional power behind all this for those who don’t have a strong connection to these issues already.
That said, the book isn’t poorly written, the characters come across fairly vividly, and while some of the dialogue is stilted, I think that’s usually on purpose; academic types can be stilted in real life too. For me it didn’t wind up amounting to much, and seemed about 100 pages too long without coming to a particularly strong conclusion. And the folk tales ultimately seem like quite a minor element. But for those interested in a globetrotting novel about an Asian-American woman with an identity crisis, it’s readable and original and I imagine it could work well. Those interested in an Asian-American woman dealing with family dynamics and cultural beliefs come to life, but for whom a strong, fun plot is important, might consider reading Black Water Sister instead.
* It isn’t that a character necessarily needs to feel passion for their job: work to live, don’t live to work, and all that. But it seems here that Elsa’s job is supposed to be important to her and not just a vehicle for paying the bills, in which case reducing its appeal to “the certainties of science are a panacea for the chaos of my childhood” seems simplistic and reductive, especially for a job that requires a lot of skill and creativity—it’s not like she’s doing data entry or something. Also, novelists always write about STEM jobs this way and I am tired of it.
There’s no particular urgency to Elsa’s story: her family has had more than its share of difficulties over the years, including abuse and mental illness, but in the present day her father and brother are making it and both clearly love her. Academia is apparently the world’s cushiest profession, or Elsa just has the world’s most gracious advisor, because she manages to vanish for months upon months to work out her personal issues without any particular concerns or consequences. The new boyfriend is totally willing to wait for her despite Elsa’s consistently eccentric and selfish behavior. Even Elsa’s inner turmoil seems portrayed at some remove, more malaise than crisis.
Elsa, like many protagonists, has trouble with other people and often treats them poorly, but to my mind the author hasn’t really endowed her with endearing traits to get readers on Elsa’s team either. She doesn’t seem to have much passion for anything; she vaguely wants to understand her mom (though she didn’t care while the mom was alive), and that’s about it. The book does something I particularly dislike with characters’ professions and interests (but basically a given with novelists writing about anything STEM), in which Elsa doesn’t come across as having an independent interest in physics, so much as seeing it as a safety blanket and escape from her family problems. It’s more about the metaphor neutrinos stand for vis-à-vis her personal demons than the science itself, and both Elsa and the book seem to take her job for granted.* Meanwhile there aren’t a lot of stakes with anything else either, even the magic realism element. Elsa seems to be haunted, but the ghost was her decidedly non-spooky childhood imaginary friend, and so she just assumes it to be a figment of her imagination and moves on without giving it much thought.
I could definitely see this becoming a cult classic for those who share the author’s particular concerns. There’s a lot of long, in-depth dialogue in which characters exposit about Korean folktales, neutrinos, various permutations of identity, and other academic topics, including two long conversations about Planet of the Apes, which for someone who hasn’t seen any of those movies, didn’t do anything for me. The book is very focused on both race- and gender-based street harassment, and includes a bunch of scenes of this with little connection to anything else. The author also clearly has a bone to pick with international adoption, especially in the early years when no one was thinking about keeping the kids connected to their birth culture. But there’s not a lot of emotional power behind all this for those who don’t have a strong connection to these issues already.
That said, the book isn’t poorly written, the characters come across fairly vividly, and while some of the dialogue is stilted, I think that’s usually on purpose; academic types can be stilted in real life too. For me it didn’t wind up amounting to much, and seemed about 100 pages too long without coming to a particularly strong conclusion. And the folk tales ultimately seem like quite a minor element. But for those interested in a globetrotting novel about an Asian-American woman with an identity crisis, it’s readable and original and I imagine it could work well. Those interested in an Asian-American woman dealing with family dynamics and cultural beliefs come to life, but for whom a strong, fun plot is important, might consider reading Black Water Sister instead.
* It isn’t that a character necessarily needs to feel passion for their job: work to live, don’t live to work, and all that. But it seems here that Elsa’s job is supposed to be important to her and not just a vehicle for paying the bills, in which case reducing its appeal to “the certainties of science are a panacea for the chaos of my childhood” seems simplistic and reductive, especially for a job that requires a lot of skill and creativity—it’s not like she’s doing data entry or something. Also, novelists always write about STEM jobs this way and I am tired of it.
June 23, 2024
There was SO much about Folklorn that I loved. There are so many themes explored. The story begins with Dr. Elsa Park, a particle physicist, conducting research (pursuing the ghost of the ghost particle) in Antarctica. I found this fascinating as I greatly enjoy stories (fiction and nonfiction) set on the seventh continent. You do not need to know anything about neutrinos or physics. Everything is explained in simple terms as to not distract from the overall story about being folklorn (a more narrowly defined culture-bound-syndrome or family bond).
I read translated literature and read/teach folktales to my students. I find folk lore and stories interesting. While in Antarctica, Elsa hears a bell and her "imaginary friend" reappears after many years. Thus begins Elsa quest to better understand herself and her mother. They are bound together by the notion that their family are descendent from the original people four folk tales were written about. I found this fascinating.
Elsa leaves Antarctica and returns to Sweden. Here she meets a Korean born, but adopted into a Swedish family, author, translator, and college professor. I learned so much about Korea, interracial adoptions and the struggle of looking Korean but being Swedish, and of course the nature and evolution of folk tales. I found it interesting and engaging. I couldn't get enough. Racism is addressed in the novel. The golf club scene was extremely powerful and well written.
Themes explored are: nature vs. nurture, family curses/genes passed down through generations, fortune (making your own or reversing it), family and sibling relationships, interracial adoption, and head trauma (physical and psychological). Folklorn is absolutely brilliant. It blurs the lines of reality and folk tales. It is part quest, part coming of age/self discovery, and part reconciling with past and family. I listened to the audible version and loved it. I think of it often and miss this story. I will definitely listen to it again in the future.
I read translated literature and read/teach folktales to my students. I find folk lore and stories interesting. While in Antarctica, Elsa hears a bell and her "imaginary friend" reappears after many years. Thus begins Elsa quest to better understand herself and her mother. They are bound together by the notion that their family are descendent from the original people four folk tales were written about. I found this fascinating.
Elsa leaves Antarctica and returns to Sweden. Here she meets a Korean born, but adopted into a Swedish family, author, translator, and college professor. I learned so much about Korea, interracial adoptions and the struggle of looking Korean but being Swedish, and of course the nature and evolution of folk tales. I found it interesting and engaging. I couldn't get enough. Racism is addressed in the novel. The golf club scene was extremely powerful and well written.
Themes explored are: nature vs. nurture, family curses/genes passed down through generations, fortune (making your own or reversing it), family and sibling relationships, interracial adoption, and head trauma (physical and psychological). Folklorn is absolutely brilliant. It blurs the lines of reality and folk tales. It is part quest, part coming of age/self discovery, and part reconciling with past and family. I listened to the audible version and loved it. I think of it often and miss this story. I will definitely listen to it again in the future.
August 29, 2021
4.5⭐️
Beautiful
Beautiful
January 7, 2021
**Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this e-ARC. Here's my honest review:**
This book felt like slowly drowning in ice water. As a reader, I was so numb to everything that was happening.
The main character isn't all that easy to connect with. She's constantly judging people based on their ethnicity* (more on this later) and earlier on in the book her dialogue mostly consists of in-depth physics knowledge about sterile neutrinos, which was impossible to follow (and that ultimately went nowhere).
But if you can push through those bits, there is an entertaining bit of magical realism to be found here. The generational mystery and magic (or curse) of the folktales that permeate the main character's life and reality are what kept me interested in this book.
It took a while to get used to this author's writing style (and, truth be told, I don't know that I ever did quite get used to it), but it was poetic in its own way.
Also, it's likely that the disconnected feeling I had towards this story and main character were a direct result of the writing style. I don't know that the tone of this book really worked for me, but it did make this a unique read.
*With regards to the main character judging people on their ethnicity:
I understand that this is the story of a second generation immigrant; her life has been shaped by her parents' immigration and war experiences (I grew up in a family like that, too - albeit third generation, but I have a bit of an understanding of the residual pain, anger and resentment felt in those households). That being said: this book takes a very blunt approach to demonstrating the "us versus them" mentality of many first and even second generation immigrants. Because of this, there are aspects of this story that feel blatantly racially insensitive. The main character is Korean, and the way she talks about Japanese people, American people, Chinese people, Swedish people, pretty much any ethnicity that isn't her own often crosses into derogatory. I get that it's a defensive manoeuvre and retaliation that she feels justified in. I'm not going to say whether it's justified or not, just that it is presented in a jarringly blunt way.
The ending of this story didn't really leave me fulfilled. I get that the character finds peace, but I, unfortunately, didn't feel the same sense of closure.
This book felt like slowly drowning in ice water. As a reader, I was so numb to everything that was happening.
The main character isn't all that easy to connect with. She's constantly judging people based on their ethnicity* (more on this later) and earlier on in the book her dialogue mostly consists of in-depth physics knowledge about sterile neutrinos, which was impossible to follow (and that ultimately went nowhere).
But if you can push through those bits, there is an entertaining bit of magical realism to be found here. The generational mystery and magic (or curse) of the folktales that permeate the main character's life and reality are what kept me interested in this book.
It took a while to get used to this author's writing style (and, truth be told, I don't know that I ever did quite get used to it), but it was poetic in its own way.
Also, it's likely that the disconnected feeling I had towards this story and main character were a direct result of the writing style. I don't know that the tone of this book really worked for me, but it did make this a unique read.
*With regards to the main character judging people on their ethnicity:
I understand that this is the story of a second generation immigrant; her life has been shaped by her parents' immigration and war experiences (I grew up in a family like that, too - albeit third generation, but I have a bit of an understanding of the residual pain, anger and resentment felt in those households). That being said: this book takes a very blunt approach to demonstrating the "us versus them" mentality of many first and even second generation immigrants. Because of this, there are aspects of this story that feel blatantly racially insensitive. The main character is Korean, and the way she talks about Japanese people, American people, Chinese people, Swedish people, pretty much any ethnicity that isn't her own often crosses into derogatory. I get that it's a defensive manoeuvre and retaliation that she feels justified in. I'm not going to say whether it's justified or not, just that it is presented in a jarringly blunt way.
The ending of this story didn't really leave me fulfilled. I get that the character finds peace, but I, unfortunately, didn't feel the same sense of closure.
February 13, 2021
4.5 maddening stars
Dr. Elsa Park, an experimental particle physicist, is at the South Pole, working on collecting data, like you do, when she sees her childhood friend, or should I say, her childhood imaginary friend, and decides to follow her into the rabbit hole, that is learning to live through the grief of her mother's death.. and the aftermath of her life.
We are introduced to four major characters here aside from Elsa- Chris, her brother; Oskar, her future-lover and permanent myth google; her father; and her imaginary friend, and her mother by extension.
As children of two Korean immigrants who are war survivors, both Elsa and Chris at once mirror and play foil to each other. At first glance, we can see them as the two sides of a coin, where one is a particle physicist at the peak of her career, and the other a middle-aged, schizophrenic bum. But when you look closer, you realize which one is living, albeit painfully, in reality, and which one tends to escape into their heads; I'm sure you can read between the fine lines here. But despite all that, they are faces of the same coins, and that is shown in their shared trauma and grief, and incapability to form healthy human relations. It becomes evident in their views on family.
This whole book is a giant commentary on how debilitating repressed grief is, and, I won't lie, also a guide on how to irrevocably fuck up your kids. Like seriously, Mommy and Daddy Park do a fantastic job of it- till the very end: their father, through his abuse- first physical and later emotional, and their mother, through her stories that take a life of it's own, leeching off of theirs in turn.
There was no one perfect in this story- not Elsa, and not her ghosts. And I think that is the point, to not love them for being perfect, but to empathize. And this, Hur does through the myths, that are told from so many different perspectives: her mother's that shows the tragedy of the tales, and how women across all ages were sacrificed for one reason or another, be it love or greed, how being a woman is living a tragedy; Elsa's, that showed the strength of the women sacrificed, giving them not a delicate shape, but one of a survivor- cruel and ugly and real; and Oskar's, who showed the myths as we might interpret them at first glance, as that of a myth. And seen through these many lenses, the myths gain a life and body of their own, they become as dimensional as any character in the story.
Hur delved into a lot of different themes throughout the book- generational trauma, mental disorders, that feeling of being disconnected from one's culture, and not least of all the mythologies that shape those cultures, importance of family, and importance of human connection. And the lot of these were done quite impressively, if you take a moment to stop and think about the book.
Folklorn is a deeply cogitative tale, that through it's telling, compels you to not only think of the characters and the place they hold in their worlds, but also you, and the place you hold in yours. It seamlessly weaves the magic of ghosts into the trauma of of being haunted by one- both living and dead, and forces you to recognize, alongside the characters, what the most important aspects of living are.
Also, I really want to take a moment here to commend the writing, which was so fucking good that I couldn't discern if it was a story I was reading, or an epic poem. You will know what I'm talking about when you read it. Trust me.
So do I recommend reading this? Hell fucking yeah!
You can also read my review on my blog right here if you are for a little more rambling and ranting XD
I'm not treating myself medically. I'm curing myself with symbol and ritual, the only way to fight mystery and magic.
Dr. Elsa Park, an experimental particle physicist, is at the South Pole, working on collecting data, like you do, when she sees her childhood friend, or should I say, her childhood imaginary friend, and decides to follow her into the rabbit hole, that is learning to live through the grief of her mother's death.. and the aftermath of her life.
We are introduced to four major characters here aside from Elsa- Chris, her brother; Oskar, her future-lover and permanent myth google; her father; and her imaginary friend, and her mother by extension.
As children of two Korean immigrants who are war survivors, both Elsa and Chris at once mirror and play foil to each other. At first glance, we can see them as the two sides of a coin, where one is a particle physicist at the peak of her career, and the other a middle-aged, schizophrenic bum. But when you look closer, you realize which one is living, albeit painfully, in reality, and which one tends to escape into their heads; I'm sure you can read between the fine lines here. But despite all that, they are faces of the same coins, and that is shown in their shared trauma and grief, and incapability to form healthy human relations. It becomes evident in their views on family.
Maybe once I find the stories, my guilt—this walking, talking, braided manifestation of it—will finally leave me be.
This whole book is a giant commentary on how debilitating repressed grief is, and, I won't lie, also a guide on how to irrevocably fuck up your kids. Like seriously, Mommy and Daddy Park do a fantastic job of it- till the very end: their father, through his abuse- first physical and later emotional, and their mother, through her stories that take a life of it's own, leeching off of theirs in turn.
There was no one perfect in this story- not Elsa, and not her ghosts. And I think that is the point, to not love them for being perfect, but to empathize. And this, Hur does through the myths, that are told from so many different perspectives: her mother's that shows the tragedy of the tales, and how women across all ages were sacrificed for one reason or another, be it love or greed, how being a woman is living a tragedy; Elsa's, that showed the strength of the women sacrificed, giving them not a delicate shape, but one of a survivor- cruel and ugly and real; and Oskar's, who showed the myths as we might interpret them at first glance, as that of a myth. And seen through these many lenses, the myths gain a life and body of their own, they become as dimensional as any character in the story.
Do hallucinations dream of reality when they sleep?
Hur delved into a lot of different themes throughout the book- generational trauma, mental disorders, that feeling of being disconnected from one's culture, and not least of all the mythologies that shape those cultures, importance of family, and importance of human connection. And the lot of these were done quite impressively, if you take a moment to stop and think about the book.
Folklorn is a deeply cogitative tale, that through it's telling, compels you to not only think of the characters and the place they hold in their worlds, but also you, and the place you hold in yours. It seamlessly weaves the magic of ghosts into the trauma of of being haunted by one- both living and dead, and forces you to recognize, alongside the characters, what the most important aspects of living are.
Also, I really want to take a moment here to commend the writing, which was so fucking good that I couldn't discern if it was a story I was reading, or an epic poem. You will know what I'm talking about when you read it. Trust me.
I resurrect Mom's voice, for how can I mourn her if she died a stranger? I dig and exhume for the truth—how to avenge, whom to punish and how.
So do I recommend reading this? Hell fucking yeah!
You can also read my review on my blog right here if you are for a little more rambling and ranting XD
December 14, 2021
So Elsa is a Korean-American physicist who's escaped to the South Pole, which frankly is about as far away as you can get from your immigrant family on the planet. But there, in the waning last days of the Antarctic's endless daytime, she is visited by her childhood imaginary friend.
There's a lot going on here. The stories overlay each other and reveal something larger when combined. Elsa is researching neutrinos, elemental particles born from cataclysmic violence. Elusive and never seen they're called "ghost particles" From particle physics to ancient folklore and the Emmileh Bell which only finds its voice when a monk casts a child into the molten metal, its ring a child's call to her mother. All of it echoes the tragic history that burdens Elsa's own mother.
That puzzle box of a novel would be achievement enough but entangled within are the stories of Elsa's brother, more than a little messed up and rebelling against the cliched immigrant parent expectations. And Elsa's boyfriend, the wonderfully named Oskar Gantelius, the ethnically Korean adoptee of Swedish parents helping her unlock the secrets buried in her mother's folklore stories while figuring out who he is exactly. And don't forget that ghostly unseen friend that may or may not be her own lost sister from when her mother disappeared to Korea.
Technical difficulty is off the charts and the book rewards some close, considered reading.
There's a lot going on here. The stories overlay each other and reveal something larger when combined. Elsa is researching neutrinos, elemental particles born from cataclysmic violence. Elusive and never seen they're called "ghost particles" From particle physics to ancient folklore and the Emmileh Bell which only finds its voice when a monk casts a child into the molten metal, its ring a child's call to her mother. All of it echoes the tragic history that burdens Elsa's own mother.
That puzzle box of a novel would be achievement enough but entangled within are the stories of Elsa's brother, more than a little messed up and rebelling against the cliched immigrant parent expectations. And Elsa's boyfriend, the wonderfully named Oskar Gantelius, the ethnically Korean adoptee of Swedish parents helping her unlock the secrets buried in her mother's folklore stories while figuring out who he is exactly. And don't forget that ghostly unseen friend that may or may not be her own lost sister from when her mother disappeared to Korea.
Technical difficulty is off the charts and the book rewards some close, considered reading.
April 22, 2021
🎀🎀🎀🎀🎀 (five stars as rated in red ribbons trailing along behind your friend each time she visits)
Stationed at a research center on Antarctica, Elsa Park is confident that she’s finally put as much distance as she can between her and the generational trauma of her Korean-American family. When a “ghost” from her past reappears unexpectedly, Elsa must come to terms with her history – both myth and fact – whether she’s ready to or not.
“Please,” she said from her corner, “do not blame us for how our lives have turned out. Perhaps it’s not just the women in our family anyhow—our entire people have been telling the wrong stories, making a wretched mess of our history. As if anybody wants to be told that their ability to endure is their greatest virtue. No wonder we get invasions and occupations, war and asshole husbands. What kind of stories, I wonder, do the white countries tell of themselves?”
Folklorn is an exploration of diaspora, identity and self love at it’s most revolutionary. The experiences – both real and imagined – of the protagonist, Elsa, as well as her brother, Chris, her parents and particularly that of her friend, Oskar are all written, even at their worst with so much compassion. And while the pain was visceral at moments, it does ultimately lead to a place of healing that is deeply deserved by the characters and was profoundly satisfying for me as the reader. For me, of course, the best part of this book was getting to share it with my friends (for whom similar stories and experiences of the Asian diaspora are starkly underrepresented in publishing) relate and empathize with Folklorn so deeply. There really is no “reviewing” an experience like that.
Oskar was easily my favorite character (though the more I look back on the book I find myself really empathizing with Chris as well). Described by my friend Moon as the “hottest Korean in fiction as of now,” I was enamored with the acceptance and empathy that Oskar held for Elsa even when she could not find the will to feel it for herself. From a mental health standpoint, I hold deep appreciation for Oskar’s because of his insistence on Elsa’s value and attractiveness to him even when she was clearly not healthy. Love is not something to be withdrawn when we are at our worst. And we are not only worthy of it once we’ve found the strength – more often resources – to “fix ourselves.” The Park family exemplifies how much of a privilege the idea of “mental health” can truly be as well as the weight of generational trauma. This aspect of Elsa and Oskar’s arc together, in particular, really affected me personally.
✨ Rep in this book: East Asian cast of characters
✨ Content warnings for this book: drowning, death of a parent, racism, domestic abuse, violence
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didnt-finish
May 2, 2023Made it to 5% and noped out because the main character is awful to everyone around her. If there’s a reason she’s this rude and acting stupid, I don’t care enough to keep reading to find out why.
February 27, 2021
*I received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Folklorn is an incredible story. It is beautifully written and engaging from beginning to end. The author leaves you no choice but to feel this story on a personal level.
The character of Elsa is fantastic. The novel considers race, nationality, and identity through her eyes, as a Korean-American, and how that lived experience colors her perception of herself and the world around her. The way her perspective is transposed onto everything feels completely realistic. The examination of generational trauma and how it affects Elsa, explored through Korean folklore, is masterfully done. Despite the magical realism in the tale, her emotions feel so raw and her actions just feel so real. I don’t know how someone could read this without feeling connected to the character and her journey.
Folklorn was fascinating to the point that I found myself thinking about it between reads. Although I wanted to know how everything ended, I stretched it out to savor it. At no point during reading did my mind wander, as it is written in such an arresting fashion. The story overall was quite emotional… in a way that broke my shriveled, brittle heart open (just a bit!).
A truly impressive novel with a wholly unique premise; this is one I feel I could recommend to any of my friends. YOU! You there, pick up this book and read it.
Folklorn is an incredible story. It is beautifully written and engaging from beginning to end. The author leaves you no choice but to feel this story on a personal level.
The character of Elsa is fantastic. The novel considers race, nationality, and identity through her eyes, as a Korean-American, and how that lived experience colors her perception of herself and the world around her. The way her perspective is transposed onto everything feels completely realistic. The examination of generational trauma and how it affects Elsa, explored through Korean folklore, is masterfully done. Despite the magical realism in the tale, her emotions feel so raw and her actions just feel so real. I don’t know how someone could read this without feeling connected to the character and her journey.
Folklorn was fascinating to the point that I found myself thinking about it between reads. Although I wanted to know how everything ended, I stretched it out to savor it. At no point during reading did my mind wander, as it is written in such an arresting fashion. The story overall was quite emotional… in a way that broke my shriveled, brittle heart open (just a bit!).
A truly impressive novel with a wholly unique premise; this is one I feel I could recommend to any of my friends. YOU! You there, pick up this book and read it.
November 22, 2021
Finished finally! Lots of new interesting themes and fresh views but the book is way too lengthy and sometimes too dense for my poor brain. Took me months to finish this and several back and forths. Still recommend it though, go check it out.
April 16, 2021
DNF - Thank you to Edelweiss and Erewhon Publishing for allowing me to read and review this book. Publishes April 27, 2021
This book started out well. I expected magical realism, fantasy and folklore throughout the book. However at about the 17% mark things seems to take a turn for the worst. I read up unto the 36% mark and could not read any further. I had lost the whole purpose of the book and was totally lost.
This was a first read for me by this author. From reading what I did of this book I feel she has the potential to put out a good novel - but this one seemed, for my taste, to get a bit off course. I regret having to give the book just one star, but I really did not care for this book. A third of the way in I was totally lost and confused and the characters that I did like either no longer made sense, or were no longer prevalent.
I would attempt to read another book by this author, knowing from the beginning of this book, that she can write cohesively and peak an interest in a story.
This book started out well. I expected magical realism, fantasy and folklore throughout the book. However at about the 17% mark things seems to take a turn for the worst. I read up unto the 36% mark and could not read any further. I had lost the whole purpose of the book and was totally lost.
This was a first read for me by this author. From reading what I did of this book I feel she has the potential to put out a good novel - but this one seemed, for my taste, to get a bit off course. I regret having to give the book just one star, but I really did not care for this book. A third of the way in I was totally lost and confused and the characters that I did like either no longer made sense, or were no longer prevalent.
I would attempt to read another book by this author, knowing from the beginning of this book, that she can write cohesively and peak an interest in a story.
April 27, 2021
"You and I-we are descended from women whose lives have been degraded into common folktales."
Angela Mi Young Hur has crafted a unique story. She has gracely woven a modern folktale using complex threads such as immigration, racism, misogyny, violence against women, mental problems, forgiveness, siblinghood, and more.
There’s so much meaning in this story. I feel like a can’t write a proper review, one that could make it justice without revealing too much information.
I don’t want to give you spoilers, so I’ll just tell you that the main character of this story, Elsa Park, must find and understand her mother’s stories in order to finally live her own life. She never understood why her mother used to tell her all these folktales when she was a child, therefore she didn’t understand their true meaning. The only way to understand her mother and herself is by seeing beyond the words of these tales.
Thanks to Erewhon Books, NetGalley and the author for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.
Angela Mi Young Hur has crafted a unique story. She has gracely woven a modern folktale using complex threads such as immigration, racism, misogyny, violence against women, mental problems, forgiveness, siblinghood, and more.
There’s so much meaning in this story. I feel like a can’t write a proper review, one that could make it justice without revealing too much information.
I don’t want to give you spoilers, so I’ll just tell you that the main character of this story, Elsa Park, must find and understand her mother’s stories in order to finally live her own life. She never understood why her mother used to tell her all these folktales when she was a child, therefore she didn’t understand their true meaning. The only way to understand her mother and herself is by seeing beyond the words of these tales.
Thanks to Erewhon Books, NetGalley and the author for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.
April 30, 2021
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
DNF'd @ 20%
Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur sounded like the kind of magical realism story I would enjoy, but unfortunately it ended up not being for me. I liked the use of fairy tales and folklore in what I read, but overall I couldn't connect to the realistic side of the story. I had a difficult time connecting to the almost clinical voice. It has a lot of potential as a whole, but in the end it just wasn't working out for me.
DNF'd @ 20%
Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur sounded like the kind of magical realism story I would enjoy, but unfortunately it ended up not being for me. I liked the use of fairy tales and folklore in what I read, but overall I couldn't connect to the realistic side of the story. I had a difficult time connecting to the almost clinical voice. It has a lot of potential as a whole, but in the end it just wasn't working out for me.
May 31, 2021
This book was just too disjointed for me. So much test that just didn’t seem to fit together. The main character was unlikeable and just...constantly making stupid decisions. Overall the story just didn’t work. It reads like one long whiny rant.
I kept reading in the hopes that the ending would reveal something profoundly but it just fizzled out.
I kept reading in the hopes that the ending would reveal something profoundly but it just fizzled out.
November 12, 2022
A well written meditation on family, race, and generational trauma. I enjoyed the Korean folk stories and the strong sense of place Hur was able to evoke. The pacing was slow and I enjoyed the front and back of the novel significantly more than the middle, which dragged quite a bit for me. I also never fully attached to any of the characters - while they were exceptionally well drawn I found them unlikeable, and not in an endearing way. This was one of those books that I neither got excited to pick up nor got disinterested enough to set down. I just sort of floated through it. This is a great book club read with lots to discuss. What it's not is sci-fi/fantasy, despite appearing on numerous lists - it's literary fiction through and through and if that's your jam you'll likely enjoy this one.
Book club: 11/22
Book club: 11/22
October 16, 2023
This is the third book I’ve read in six months in which a Korean American daughter is writing about her grief over her mother’s death. In each of these cases the mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Really, this wasn’t my plan. The first two – Grace Cho’s
Tastes Like War
and Michelle Zauner’s
Crying in H Mart
– are memoirs; Folklorn is a novel, where three of the characters flirt with psychosis (her mother catatonic for 15 years). All three were published since 2021.
The two memoirs both focus more on trauma related to the Korean War and immigration to the US as explanations for the schizophrenia. Their symptoms, while called schizophrenia, might be better called major depressive disorder with psychotic features or posttraumatic stress disorder (or both). Or maybe it’s neither of these.
But if a bunch of foreigners barged into your world, dragged your men away on dangerous expeditions, studied you like you were some alien, and demanded you explain every word you had for snow—wouldn’t you also run naked and dive into the frozen sea? (p. 129)
Folklorn nods toward war trauma but focuses more on domestic violence and the loss of a child. Maybe that trauma is incorporated into the culture.
So how could my parents accept the war was finally over when their immigrant village kept the specter of it alive in their drunken reminiscences, business dealings, and paranoia over hidden enemies—from both within and without—those foreign, and those resembling kin? (p. 10)
Folklorn is the most challenging read of the three, as it threaded together multiple themes – experimental physics, culture (Sweden, K-town), cross-racial adoption, Korean folktales and retellings, grief, and family loyalty – often in a somewhat nonlinear, often hallucinatory and grieving manner. If you like clear, straight journeys, choose either memoir. If you can tolerate somewhat messier ones, Folklorn might be your choice.
The two memoirs both focus more on trauma related to the Korean War and immigration to the US as explanations for the schizophrenia. Their symptoms, while called schizophrenia, might be better called major depressive disorder with psychotic features or posttraumatic stress disorder (or both). Or maybe it’s neither of these.
But if a bunch of foreigners barged into your world, dragged your men away on dangerous expeditions, studied you like you were some alien, and demanded you explain every word you had for snow—wouldn’t you also run naked and dive into the frozen sea? (p. 129)
Folklorn nods toward war trauma but focuses more on domestic violence and the loss of a child. Maybe that trauma is incorporated into the culture.
So how could my parents accept the war was finally over when their immigrant village kept the specter of it alive in their drunken reminiscences, business dealings, and paranoia over hidden enemies—from both within and without—those foreign, and those resembling kin? (p. 10)
Folklorn is the most challenging read of the three, as it threaded together multiple themes – experimental physics, culture (Sweden, K-town), cross-racial adoption, Korean folktales and retellings, grief, and family loyalty – often in a somewhat nonlinear, often hallucinatory and grieving manner. If you like clear, straight journeys, choose either memoir. If you can tolerate somewhat messier ones, Folklorn might be your choice.
March 25, 2021
It’s been two weeks since I read Folklorn. I cried, I closed it, I sighed, and then started ruminating how to speak about it. It has accompanied me to the grief of recent events, it has been in the back of my mind when I watched the Spanish trailer of Minari without a trace of a Korean word in it. This novel has opened a lot of bottled emotions that I didn’t know where to put them. That has been Folklorn to me.
As a child of Korean immigrants in Spain, I’ve always have had trouble with the concept of home. An insane obsession, like the portal fantasy trope of voracious reader that finds refuge in fiction, to shield themselves from reality. Now this novel, this hit home. Not the idealistic version in which I would like to be, but the real, gritty and flawed home that my own identity inhabits. Sometimes I see my kid singing to “Let it go”, or “Into the Unknown” to the top of her lungs and feeling it, but to me, the Elsa that adventured on the hidden places of my own self is Elsa Park, main character of Folklorn.
We meet Korean American Elsa Park reminiscing her mother and her Korean folktales, giving us her own description and image of a key part of her own self. After that quick glance, we move with Elsa to her present—she’s an experimental physicist looking for neutrinos (ghost particles) in the South Pole station. Loudmouthed, navigating racism with her own prejudices and bias, overt and upfront against sexism, she’s a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure. But the stitches of the wound healed by her excellency are plain to see: “you are like one of us”, they tell her, displacing her from the here and there, forcing her to inhabit those liminal spaces in-between (one of the major themes of the novel, and the big reason it hits home). Sleep deprived and exhausted, Elsa starts hearing a bell. After discarding it as tinnitus, she decides to skip a party to get the rest she needs, but it in that moment, she’s reunited to a childhood imaginary friend that embodies her mother’s Korean folktales. She will then embark in a journey of self-discovery within the darkness of the big shadow cast by those before her.
Folklorn is a beast. Korean folklore is seamlessly interwoven in the story, playing and enhancing the great amount of layers that the story offers. Angela Mi Young Hur uses Elsa’s little microcosmos to unravel, unpack and showcase some of the nuances and experiences of what Korean diaspora means. Her parents generation, with their hustles, the trauma they directly or indirectly caused in search of a better life; her brother Chris, who has some of the scenes that will live freely and forever in my brain, who has to make sense of who he is after being told the lie that A+B will get you to C, but that, after all, he’s incredibly devoted so that her sister can shine; Swedish Korean adoptee Oskar Gantelius (hottest Korean in fiction as of now), who provides the excellent contraposition between the differences in racism between the American experience and the colorblind European experience, while also giving way to describing the particularities of what it means to be othered, to belong, to be oneself in the adoptee experience.
It was really hard to find a metaphor to describe Folklorn, but now I feel that the answer has been in front of me all the time: Taeguk. As Wikipedia says, not to be confused with the Pepsi Globe, a representation of the Taeguk is in the center of the South Korean flag. Red and blue forces interlocking and forming a new entity—and Folklorn is that, a tapestry of dualisms that showcase the Korean diaspora experience. The differences between the good daughter and the good son, the hyonyeo and hyoja, offered both in the form of traditional folktales (like Shim Cheong), and with the translated or derived forms embodied by Chris and Elsa. Mythomania against a harsh reality ridden with trauma, with all the characters trying to make peace with their grief and all the pieces that are part of their own selves… And like the swirl of the Taeguk, Hur is capable of loading the present-story with a lot of symbolism that is from the ‘source material’: the bells, the tinnitus, Shim Cheong’s father and Elsa’s… There are lots of details here and there that move your guts while also fill your brain with awe. It is that good.
Folklorn doesn’t shy away of the violence. Like traditional folktales (and not the exaggeratedly sweetened versions we are force-fed in mainstream media), there’s a history of emotional abuse, inadvertent or overt. All characters are not saint-like heroes or plain victims—they made their choices, they made their mistakes, and sometimes they own them and try their best. There’s hustle, fighting, survival, but not in a preachy-tone. It is just what it is. And like the dualism pointed before, Hur also offers a lot of poignant humor, punching fists to everything in her way, even daring to break the fourth wall just to make a point (and give you the laugh). Yes, she’s in control, and WHAT. A. RIDE.
It’s March but I know that this novel is going to be my favorite of this year. This review is my feeble attempt to give it the sixth star that it deserves.
Thanks to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for providing me an eARC of this book
As a child of Korean immigrants in Spain, I’ve always have had trouble with the concept of home. An insane obsession, like the portal fantasy trope of voracious reader that finds refuge in fiction, to shield themselves from reality. Now this novel, this hit home. Not the idealistic version in which I would like to be, but the real, gritty and flawed home that my own identity inhabits. Sometimes I see my kid singing to “Let it go”, or “Into the Unknown” to the top of her lungs and feeling it, but to me, the Elsa that adventured on the hidden places of my own self is Elsa Park, main character of Folklorn.
We meet Korean American Elsa Park reminiscing her mother and her Korean folktales, giving us her own description and image of a key part of her own self. After that quick glance, we move with Elsa to her present—she’s an experimental physicist looking for neutrinos (ghost particles) in the South Pole station. Loudmouthed, navigating racism with her own prejudices and bias, overt and upfront against sexism, she’s a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure. But the stitches of the wound healed by her excellency are plain to see: “you are like one of us”, they tell her, displacing her from the here and there, forcing her to inhabit those liminal spaces in-between (one of the major themes of the novel, and the big reason it hits home). Sleep deprived and exhausted, Elsa starts hearing a bell. After discarding it as tinnitus, she decides to skip a party to get the rest she needs, but it in that moment, she’s reunited to a childhood imaginary friend that embodies her mother’s Korean folktales. She will then embark in a journey of self-discovery within the darkness of the big shadow cast by those before her.
Folklorn is a beast. Korean folklore is seamlessly interwoven in the story, playing and enhancing the great amount of layers that the story offers. Angela Mi Young Hur uses Elsa’s little microcosmos to unravel, unpack and showcase some of the nuances and experiences of what Korean diaspora means. Her parents generation, with their hustles, the trauma they directly or indirectly caused in search of a better life; her brother Chris, who has some of the scenes that will live freely and forever in my brain, who has to make sense of who he is after being told the lie that A+B will get you to C, but that, after all, he’s incredibly devoted so that her sister can shine; Swedish Korean adoptee Oskar Gantelius (hottest Korean in fiction as of now), who provides the excellent contraposition between the differences in racism between the American experience and the colorblind European experience, while also giving way to describing the particularities of what it means to be othered, to belong, to be oneself in the adoptee experience.
It was really hard to find a metaphor to describe Folklorn, but now I feel that the answer has been in front of me all the time: Taeguk. As Wikipedia says, not to be confused with the Pepsi Globe, a representation of the Taeguk is in the center of the South Korean flag. Red and blue forces interlocking and forming a new entity—and Folklorn is that, a tapestry of dualisms that showcase the Korean diaspora experience. The differences between the good daughter and the good son, the hyonyeo and hyoja, offered both in the form of traditional folktales (like Shim Cheong), and with the translated or derived forms embodied by Chris and Elsa. Mythomania against a harsh reality ridden with trauma, with all the characters trying to make peace with their grief and all the pieces that are part of their own selves… And like the swirl of the Taeguk, Hur is capable of loading the present-story with a lot of symbolism that is from the ‘source material’: the bells, the tinnitus, Shim Cheong’s father and Elsa’s… There are lots of details here and there that move your guts while also fill your brain with awe. It is that good.
Folklorn doesn’t shy away of the violence. Like traditional folktales (and not the exaggeratedly sweetened versions we are force-fed in mainstream media), there’s a history of emotional abuse, inadvertent or overt. All characters are not saint-like heroes or plain victims—they made their choices, they made their mistakes, and sometimes they own them and try their best. There’s hustle, fighting, survival, but not in a preachy-tone. It is just what it is. And like the dualism pointed before, Hur also offers a lot of poignant humor, punching fists to everything in her way, even daring to break the fourth wall just to make a point (and give you the laugh). Yes, she’s in control, and WHAT. A. RIDE.
It’s March but I know that this novel is going to be my favorite of this year. This review is my feeble attempt to give it the sixth star that it deserves.
Thanks to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for providing me an eARC of this book
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2022
I liked this story without ever feeling engaged. Weird, right?
Folklorn tackles a lot of things starting with attitudes toward women, especially in male-dominated spaces as well as in cultures that have a history of devaluing girls, a theme that is underlined in each of the folktales left behind by Elsa's mother, tales that tell the listener that the only good girl is a dead girl.
It examines the similarities and differences between Korean and Swedish culture and how neither of those groups of people leave much room for interlopers but how said interlopers will try to make their own spaces as they see fit.
There are jacked up family dynamics within the greater circle of California’s Korean population with a spotlight on generational trauma (also highlighted in the folktales) and mental illness. There are also jacked up family dynamics in the form of loving adoptive parents who don’t see race and inadvertently deny their child a whole chunk of the child’s cultural heritage.
There’s a lot of water, both frozen and liquid. Water flows and can be transformative but not when it’s ice, then everything is cold and stuck. Water also drowns, though; a lot of things cause feelings of drowning, actually.
There are many other themes, as well, but you can discover them yourself upon reading this.
I felt like an interesting story played out before me but I can’t say that I connected or even really understood any of it. I know what happened, I just don’t know what it meant. That didn’t keep me from liking the book, though.
Folklorn tackles a lot of things starting with attitudes toward women, especially in male-dominated spaces as well as in cultures that have a history of devaluing girls, a theme that is underlined in each of the folktales left behind by Elsa's mother, tales that tell the listener that the only good girl is a dead girl.
It examines the similarities and differences between Korean and Swedish culture and how neither of those groups of people leave much room for interlopers but how said interlopers will try to make their own spaces as they see fit.
There are jacked up family dynamics within the greater circle of California’s Korean population with a spotlight on generational trauma (also highlighted in the folktales) and mental illness. There are also jacked up family dynamics in the form of loving adoptive parents who don’t see race and inadvertently deny their child a whole chunk of the child’s cultural heritage.
There’s a lot of water, both frozen and liquid. Water flows and can be transformative but not when it’s ice, then everything is cold and stuck. Water also drowns, though; a lot of things cause feelings of drowning, actually.
There are many other themes, as well, but you can discover them yourself upon reading this.
I felt like an interesting story played out before me but I can’t say that I connected or even really understood any of it. I know what happened, I just don’t know what it meant. That didn’t keep me from liking the book, though.
December 28, 2020
Folklorn was a thoughtful and lyrical tale. It took me a little longer than usual to get through it, but that was partly due to the time of year, with so much else going on, and the fact that it was a book I found myself pondering as I read, which slowed my reading speed. This story considers the idea of belonging and heritage, and whether that is genetic or a result of experience. Elsa's journey is woven through retellings of Korean folktales her mother used to read to her as a child, and we can see how she maps out her own history against those tales, sometimes blurring the lines between fact and fiction, so we question if what she is seeing and remembering is real or only in her head. It was a fascinating and captivating piece that was part family drama and part voyage of self-discovery, with a side serve of magical realism and folklore. Overall, this was a delightful and thought-provoking book, and I would be keen to read more from Angela Mi Young Hur in the future.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
March 1, 2021
3.5*
Folklorn is a story about the physics, folklore, inherited trauma, and rediscovering love and the self through grief. It follows Elsa Park, a Korean-American scientist doing a PhD in Antarctica and Sweden who re-connects with a (literal) ghost of her past when she is called back home after her mother's death. Magic rooted in folklore blends in modern present day as her mother's story-telling allow her to learn about love, culture, and understanding family.
This is a weird one to review because I struggled through the first 60% of the book (a whooping 60%, yes). It's a slow book with a lot of pieces that slowly come together, which I found to be enjoyable and interesting (most of the times), yet I found the main character to be very unlikable and frustrating. It's weird considering we read the story from her perspective and you would expect I'd dislike his preposterous brother, but it was quite the contrary. My favorite bits were everything involving family dynamics and the introspection and references about the immigrant/expat life.
*ARC provided by NetGalley :)
Folklorn is a story about the physics, folklore, inherited trauma, and rediscovering love and the self through grief. It follows Elsa Park, a Korean-American scientist doing a PhD in Antarctica and Sweden who re-connects with a (literal) ghost of her past when she is called back home after her mother's death. Magic rooted in folklore blends in modern present day as her mother's story-telling allow her to learn about love, culture, and understanding family.
This is a weird one to review because I struggled through the first 60% of the book (a whooping 60%, yes). It's a slow book with a lot of pieces that slowly come together, which I found to be enjoyable and interesting (most of the times), yet I found the main character to be very unlikable and frustrating. It's weird considering we read the story from her perspective and you would expect I'd dislike his preposterous brother, but it was quite the contrary. My favorite bits were everything involving family dynamics and the introspection and references about the immigrant/expat life.
*ARC provided by NetGalley :)
April 12, 2021
Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur uses magical realism to explore Korean mythology, cultural identity, mental health, and the enduring bonds of family. The novel opens with Elsa Park, a Korean-American experimental physicist conducting doctoral research on neutrinos (also known as ghost particles). She is confident in her studies, has no filter, and a prickly disposition, making her decidedly unlikable to those around her—yet an interesting character for readers to follow. Upon learning of her mother’s sudden passing, Elsa is forced to return home, where she begins a journey of self-discovery as she explores the Korean folktales her mother has left behind.
As far back as she can remember, Elsa’s mother has warned her that the women in their bloodline are doomed to live out the traumatic events outlined in a series of Korean folktales. Elsa constantly questions the abiding narratives that define cultural hegemony, so it’s in her nature to doubt her mother’s warnings; however, when she begins to see the supposedly imaginary friend she had as a child, Elsa interprets it as a portent of things to come and realizes there must be more to her mother’s stories. It’s either that, or she’s inherited her mother’s mental health issues, and the former is somehow easier to stomach than the latter, so she commits herself to researching the origins of her mother’s stories.
Folklorn is an especially nuanced examination of identity and race as they pertain to immigrants and diasporic communities. Elsa’s parents moved to America to make a better life for themselves, although they could not outrun the problems resulting from their own personal flaws. In addition to generational traumas, Elsa and her brother Chris struggle with the “model minority” myth, as well as “the freedom not to be grateful, indebted and beholden” like their immigrant parents. And Oskar, whom Elsa meets while learning about her mother’s folktales, is a Korean orphan adopted by Swedish parents and raised to ignore his race completely. Together, these seemingly disparate narratives provide a robust, decolonized illustration of the immigrant experience seldom seen in other novels.
The narrative structure in this book is difficult to follow as it jumps across time and space and struggles to straddle the line between academic book project and contemporary novel. The first of three parts, which consumes a little over 40% of the novel, was most challenging to read. Dense language and physics concepts attempt to teach readers about Elsa’s doctoral work while juxtaposing her passion for ghost particles with the Korean folktales that continue to haunt her. However, it’s simply too tedious for non-experts to digest while also attempting to establish other expository details at the beginning of the book. Elsa’s work is easiest to understand during a brief conversation she has with a cab driver, where she uses a metaphor about ice cream flavors to explain her research to an ordinary person. I would argue that’s all we need to know about it. Simply because Elsa is always thinking about her work does not mean we need to read about her thinking about her work, particularly because the more interesting aspects of Folklorn are about her family’s heritage and the mystery surrounding her mother’s stories.
Similarly, much of the dialogue about Korean myth, provenance, and book history in the third part of the novel is so heavily academic that it feels like a chore to read unless I’m getting a CV line for my efforts. I like a well-researched novel just as much as anyone else, but many parts of Folklorn read more like a scholarly publication (or conversations and correspondence about one). I repeatedly became impatient with the plot and pacing while Elsa and Oskar waxed poetic about their research.
Execution of the magical realism in this novel is disorienting, but I’m beginning to think that’s by design. The Korean folktales are real insofar as they’re stories with histories that span across centuries, but Elsa’s spiraling mental state paired with ill-advised efforts to self-medicate left me confused as to how we ought to perceive her visions. Sometimes I’d be halfway into one of her hallucinations before I realized what was happening. In retrospect, I wonder if the point was to illustrate just how unsettling and frustrating the experience is for Elsa. It is this ambiguity that makes the novel’s conclusion strangely wistful yet satisfying.
As an Asian-American academic with immigrant parents in a diaspora community, I related strongly to much of the experiences Elsa describes, and I particularly enjoyed learning about her family in the portions of the novel that highlight her past and her time with her brother. I also appreciate that Folklorn tackles the ambitious task of unpacking the many aftereffects of colonialism that continue to impact Asian diaspora communities. However, I wish the novel focused less on Elsa’s academic personality so that this important story could be a little more accessible for readers.
Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Review of Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur originally posted on Vellichor Vibes.
As far back as she can remember, Elsa’s mother has warned her that the women in their bloodline are doomed to live out the traumatic events outlined in a series of Korean folktales. Elsa constantly questions the abiding narratives that define cultural hegemony, so it’s in her nature to doubt her mother’s warnings; however, when she begins to see the supposedly imaginary friend she had as a child, Elsa interprets it as a portent of things to come and realizes there must be more to her mother’s stories. It’s either that, or she’s inherited her mother’s mental health issues, and the former is somehow easier to stomach than the latter, so she commits herself to researching the origins of her mother’s stories.
Folklorn is an especially nuanced examination of identity and race as they pertain to immigrants and diasporic communities. Elsa’s parents moved to America to make a better life for themselves, although they could not outrun the problems resulting from their own personal flaws. In addition to generational traumas, Elsa and her brother Chris struggle with the “model minority” myth, as well as “the freedom not to be grateful, indebted and beholden” like their immigrant parents. And Oskar, whom Elsa meets while learning about her mother’s folktales, is a Korean orphan adopted by Swedish parents and raised to ignore his race completely. Together, these seemingly disparate narratives provide a robust, decolonized illustration of the immigrant experience seldom seen in other novels.
The narrative structure in this book is difficult to follow as it jumps across time and space and struggles to straddle the line between academic book project and contemporary novel. The first of three parts, which consumes a little over 40% of the novel, was most challenging to read. Dense language and physics concepts attempt to teach readers about Elsa’s doctoral work while juxtaposing her passion for ghost particles with the Korean folktales that continue to haunt her. However, it’s simply too tedious for non-experts to digest while also attempting to establish other expository details at the beginning of the book. Elsa’s work is easiest to understand during a brief conversation she has with a cab driver, where she uses a metaphor about ice cream flavors to explain her research to an ordinary person. I would argue that’s all we need to know about it. Simply because Elsa is always thinking about her work does not mean we need to read about her thinking about her work, particularly because the more interesting aspects of Folklorn are about her family’s heritage and the mystery surrounding her mother’s stories.
Similarly, much of the dialogue about Korean myth, provenance, and book history in the third part of the novel is so heavily academic that it feels like a chore to read unless I’m getting a CV line for my efforts. I like a well-researched novel just as much as anyone else, but many parts of Folklorn read more like a scholarly publication (or conversations and correspondence about one). I repeatedly became impatient with the plot and pacing while Elsa and Oskar waxed poetic about their research.
Execution of the magical realism in this novel is disorienting, but I’m beginning to think that’s by design. The Korean folktales are real insofar as they’re stories with histories that span across centuries, but Elsa’s spiraling mental state paired with ill-advised efforts to self-medicate left me confused as to how we ought to perceive her visions. Sometimes I’d be halfway into one of her hallucinations before I realized what was happening. In retrospect, I wonder if the point was to illustrate just how unsettling and frustrating the experience is for Elsa. It is this ambiguity that makes the novel’s conclusion strangely wistful yet satisfying.
As an Asian-American academic with immigrant parents in a diaspora community, I related strongly to much of the experiences Elsa describes, and I particularly enjoyed learning about her family in the portions of the novel that highlight her past and her time with her brother. I also appreciate that Folklorn tackles the ambitious task of unpacking the many aftereffects of colonialism that continue to impact Asian diaspora communities. However, I wish the novel focused less on Elsa’s academic personality so that this important story could be a little more accessible for readers.
Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for sharing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Review of Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur originally posted on Vellichor Vibes.
August 24, 2021
This was so, so, so good. Prose like poetry, personal growth and discovery, the ambiguous liminal space between mental illness and myth, trauma, immigrant experiences, families... ugh, it's just so good. I swear I highlighted entire chapters. I'm glad I took my time with this, and this is one I need a physical copy of. Gracious.
November 13, 2022
I don't think this book's promotional materials did it any favors. I approached it as a genre (speculative fiction) book but really it's more of a literary fiction book that uses a ghost as a way into the main character's psyche. It started off feeling like the book might be horror but it is very much not.
The book also goes against a lot of the "immigrant lit" tropes that I've read a lot of lately. Instead of a naive young girl who is thrust into a dangerous and cold world, only to find new community, Elsa is a bit of a shark herself. She's an experimental physicist but pushes back hard against the "model minority" stereotype that Asian Americans face. She's a mess emotionally, her immigrant family is abusive instead of the "noble immigrant" stereotype, and her parents have broken under the strain of their dysfunction and their marriage. There's no overcoming here. Elsa's brother is also, as he admits himself, looking for excuses to be a failure.
I actually appreciated all of this a lot. I don't think it does immigrants any favors to be reduced to the "hardworking noble immigrant" stereotype and I thought the character felt real, if messy. Elsa is a mess romantically too, and the least realistic part of the book for me was her love interest. Oskar is frankly a paragon and probably an author insert whose function is to give Elsa information about the likely cultural origins of Korean myths (very interesting!) and to be her touchstone (which wasn't as interesting and I couldn't see why Oskar, a very fastidious person, put up with the utter trainwreck that is Elsa).
There was a lot this book did right. But it felt like a slog. I think it could have used some editing down in length. It felt a bit like disparate pieces of the author's past work being patched together and that didn't always work for me. It was the middle California Gothic part that got me bogged down- maybe I should have skipped through that and concentrated on the Swedish and Antarctic parts of the book. I did think that the author has a gift for settings, whichever one she chooses.
The end of the book felt quite gentle and folktale-ish compared to what came before, which felt odd. I think I'd try another by this author with the understanding that I shouldn't expect a genre book from her. I think she's one of the better literary writers I've read recently due to the freshness of her voice and her willingness to look at the darker side of myths about family.
The book also goes against a lot of the "immigrant lit" tropes that I've read a lot of lately. Instead of a naive young girl who is thrust into a dangerous and cold world, only to find new community, Elsa is a bit of a shark herself. She's an experimental physicist but pushes back hard against the "model minority" stereotype that Asian Americans face. She's a mess emotionally, her immigrant family is abusive instead of the "noble immigrant" stereotype, and her parents have broken under the strain of their dysfunction and their marriage. There's no overcoming here. Elsa's brother is also, as he admits himself, looking for excuses to be a failure.
I actually appreciated all of this a lot. I don't think it does immigrants any favors to be reduced to the "hardworking noble immigrant" stereotype and I thought the character felt real, if messy. Elsa is a mess romantically too, and the least realistic part of the book for me was her love interest. Oskar is frankly a paragon and probably an author insert whose function is to give Elsa information about the likely cultural origins of Korean myths (very interesting!) and to be her touchstone (which wasn't as interesting and I couldn't see why Oskar, a very fastidious person, put up with the utter trainwreck that is Elsa).
There was a lot this book did right. But it felt like a slog. I think it could have used some editing down in length. It felt a bit like disparate pieces of the author's past work being patched together and that didn't always work for me. It was the middle California Gothic part that got me bogged down- maybe I should have skipped through that and concentrated on the Swedish and Antarctic parts of the book. I did think that the author has a gift for settings, whichever one she chooses.
The end of the book felt quite gentle and folktale-ish compared to what came before, which felt odd. I think I'd try another by this author with the understanding that I shouldn't expect a genre book from her. I think she's one of the better literary writers I've read recently due to the freshness of her voice and her willingness to look at the darker side of myths about family.
April 5, 2022
This book is fire. The science and culture and language and foreign lands, the mystery, the angst of not ever truly fitting in, missing a parent even though they hurt you, the mental illness, not ever knowing what was real and what wasn’t. I love everything about this story. I guess I felt connected to it even more so than I would have otherwise because I recently found out I’m at least a small part Svenska. This story provided me a means of fantasizing about feeling lost and cold and lonely there too, but like in a happy, melancholic way. I won’t spoil the ending, but the main character’s spiritual transformation was really cool to see.
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May 11, 2022Please note: I stopped giving stars because they're bullcrap.
Folklorn is unlike any other book I've read, which is, I believe, saying something. This novel doesn't merely defy genre categorization; it rubs at the borders between genres, gliding between ghost story, Korean folklore retelling, immigrant story, unhinged woman narrative, family history, and love story. This is no easy feat, but Folklorn succeeds, primarily because it's centered on the immigrant experience and with storytelling, which are themselves hard to pin down. By definition, neither an immigrant nor a story stays in one place. Folklorn revels in these instabilities.
Folklorn's main character, Elsa Park, is a Korean-American experimental physicist, and as the novel begins, she's spending her final night at a research center in Antarctica. In a semi-drunken state, Elsa sees the red-ribboned "imaginary friend" of her childhood. This figure acts like a kind of ghost guide, but whether she's leading Elsa to fracture or resolution is unclear.
Four ancient Korean myths shape the lives of the women in Elsa's family, and Elsa revisits these four myths with a kind of narrative circularity. Stories are told, retold, revised, and reconfigured, all in the service of bringing Elsa closer to her own family history. Nothing about this is easy on Elsa, and her mental state becomes increasingly imperiled as she gets closer to her own familial truths.
This is a haunting, sometimes harrowing, occasionally very funny, and always luminously beautiful novel about mothers and daughters, about the importance of storytelling, about finding yourself in the oddest of places, and about being an immigrant (and a first-generation American). It's not easy, but, damn, it is worth it.
Folklorn is unlike any other book I've read, which is, I believe, saying something. This novel doesn't merely defy genre categorization; it rubs at the borders between genres, gliding between ghost story, Korean folklore retelling, immigrant story, unhinged woman narrative, family history, and love story. This is no easy feat, but Folklorn succeeds, primarily because it's centered on the immigrant experience and with storytelling, which are themselves hard to pin down. By definition, neither an immigrant nor a story stays in one place. Folklorn revels in these instabilities.
Folklorn's main character, Elsa Park, is a Korean-American experimental physicist, and as the novel begins, she's spending her final night at a research center in Antarctica. In a semi-drunken state, Elsa sees the red-ribboned "imaginary friend" of her childhood. This figure acts like a kind of ghost guide, but whether she's leading Elsa to fracture or resolution is unclear.
Four ancient Korean myths shape the lives of the women in Elsa's family, and Elsa revisits these four myths with a kind of narrative circularity. Stories are told, retold, revised, and reconfigured, all in the service of bringing Elsa closer to her own family history. Nothing about this is easy on Elsa, and her mental state becomes increasingly imperiled as she gets closer to her own familial truths.
This is a haunting, sometimes harrowing, occasionally very funny, and always luminously beautiful novel about mothers and daughters, about the importance of storytelling, about finding yourself in the oddest of places, and about being an immigrant (and a first-generation American). It's not easy, but, damn, it is worth it.
May 29, 2021
4.5 stars.
I honestly don’t know how to properly capture on paper my thoughts on this book and untangle the rollercoaster of emotions it puts me through throughout the course of the book — how it recontextualizes, challenges, and reorients what I thought rang true to me on the question of displacement and inherited trauma, of the stories we tell ourselves and the ghosts we chase in an endeavor to stop ourselves from feeling unmoored.
Don’t get me wrong, This was a frustrating reading experience in that there is part of me resists the circular narrative that forced me to confront my own discomfort over the main character’s cycle of self destruction — resist being forced to confront my own internalized self-hate and the complicated relationship I myself have to the concept of heritage and cultural folklore, especially when that mythos never had a place for people like me. It was also illuminating and poignant, an hard-hitting poetic gut punch that shattered my preconceived notion of a world I thought have been well-travelled, one that I cannot stop thinking about. It’s like having a universe emotions too big to hold in your finite body washed over you: you don’t know what to make of it.
Yeah I’m gonna have to mull over this some more before I can come back and give a proper detailed review. I haven’t had a book unmoored me like this since Real Life by Brandon Taylor
I honestly don’t know how to properly capture on paper my thoughts on this book and untangle the rollercoaster of emotions it puts me through throughout the course of the book — how it recontextualizes, challenges, and reorients what I thought rang true to me on the question of displacement and inherited trauma, of the stories we tell ourselves and the ghosts we chase in an endeavor to stop ourselves from feeling unmoored.
Don’t get me wrong, This was a frustrating reading experience in that there is part of me resists the circular narrative that forced me to confront my own discomfort over the main character’s cycle of self destruction — resist being forced to confront my own internalized self-hate and the complicated relationship I myself have to the concept of heritage and cultural folklore, especially when that mythos never had a place for people like me. It was also illuminating and poignant, an hard-hitting poetic gut punch that shattered my preconceived notion of a world I thought have been well-travelled, one that I cannot stop thinking about. It’s like having a universe emotions too big to hold in your finite body washed over you: you don’t know what to make of it.
Yeah I’m gonna have to mull over this some more before I can come back and give a proper detailed review. I haven’t had a book unmoored me like this since Real Life by Brandon Taylor
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