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The Loved Ones
In this masterful novel of inheritance and loss, Sonya Chung (Long for This World) proves herself a worthy heir to Marguerite Duras, Hwang Sun-won, and James Salter. Spanning generations and divergent cultures, The Loved Ones maps the intimate politics of unlikely attractions, illicit love, and costly reconciliations.
Charles Lee, the young African American patriarch of a biracial family, seeks to remedy his fatherless childhood in Washington, DC, by making an honorable choice when his chance arrives. Years later in the mid-1980s, uneasy and stymied in his marriage to Alice, he finds a connection with Hannah Lee, the teenage Korean American caregiver whose parents' transgressive flight from tradition and war has left them shrouded in a cloud of secrets and muted passion.
A shocking and senseless death will test every familial bond and force all who are touched by the tragedy to reexamine who their loved ones truly are—the very meaning of the words.
Haunting, elliptical, and powerful, The Loved Ones deconstructs the world we think we know and shows us the one we inhabit.
Charles Lee, the young African American patriarch of a biracial family, seeks to remedy his fatherless childhood in Washington, DC, by making an honorable choice when his chance arrives. Years later in the mid-1980s, uneasy and stymied in his marriage to Alice, he finds a connection with Hannah Lee, the teenage Korean American caregiver whose parents' transgressive flight from tradition and war has left them shrouded in a cloud of secrets and muted passion.
A shocking and senseless death will test every familial bond and force all who are touched by the tragedy to reexamine who their loved ones truly are—the very meaning of the words.
Haunting, elliptical, and powerful, The Loved Ones deconstructs the world we think we know and shows us the one we inhabit.
280 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 18, 2016
16 people are currently reading
1004 people want to read
About the author
Sonya Chung
5 books62 followersSonya Chung is the author of the novels THE LOVED ONES (Relegation Books, 2016) and LONG FOR THIS WORLD (Scribner, 2010). She is a staff writer for the The Millions and founding editor of Bloom, and is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination, the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Bronx Council on the Arts Writers’ Fellowship & Residency, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. Sonya’s stories, reviews, & essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Crab Orchard Review, Tin House, The Huffington Post, Sonora Review, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, Short: An International Anthology, and BOMB Magazine, among others. Sonya has taught fiction writing at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, NYU, the College of Mount St. Vincent, and Columbia University. Currently she lives in New York City and teaches at Skidmore College.
Photo credit: Robin Holland
Photo credit: Robin Holland
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
November 11, 2016
In these truly dark and despairing post-election days, thank god for books, for both the distraction and for the power of story to illuminate our humanity. The Loved Ones is just such a book. Quiet, filled with ache and the subtle calibrations of emotion in a single moment, heartbreaking, with points of connection to sew the heart back up. It's the story of thirteen-year-old Korean-American Hannah Lee who babysits for the two children of Charles and Alice Lee, a biracial couple in Washington D.C. in the 1980s. A tragedy will bind the families to each other forever, even as it tears each family apart. One of the things I love about this book is how unexpected it is. The characters are so specific, and they are not who you think they are going to be.
Chung is a beautiful, deliberate writer. She is not flashy with her prose, but elegant and understated. Melancholy runs through the book, but it's never maudlin. The story of Hannah's Korean parents had such a distilled sense of grace and disgrace.
The Loved Ones is from a small, literary press, and has not gotten the hype of louder books, but it has been named one of Kirkus's Best Books of the Year. I will remember the character of Hannah Lee for a long time.
Chung is a beautiful, deliberate writer. She is not flashy with her prose, but elegant and understated. Melancholy runs through the book, but it's never maudlin. The story of Hannah's Korean parents had such a distilled sense of grace and disgrace.
The Loved Ones is from a small, literary press, and has not gotten the hype of louder books, but it has been named one of Kirkus's Best Books of the Year. I will remember the character of Hannah Lee for a long time.
July 1, 2017
One confusing element of this book is that the two main characters have the same last name but are not related. Charles Lee is a father in a family with two children who hires Hannah Lee, a teen swimming star, to babysit the children. Other than that there is little that is confusing, but quite a few surprising elements that make the novel a treat to read.
A tragedy occurs and the story goes from there. Except it doesn't! This is when the novel shifts and goes somewhere else that I wasn't expecting. By the time it came back to where I thought it was going, a lot had changed, and so even what I thought would happen didn't happen in the way I assumed it would. I really cared about the characters by the end, and they kept doing unexpected things, the way real people would. As a reader I was thrown all over the place, even back in time in Korea! But I enjoyed the journey of the book, a feeling I haven't really had since reading Black Wave.
A tragedy occurs and the story goes from there. Except it doesn't! This is when the novel shifts and goes somewhere else that I wasn't expecting. By the time it came back to where I thought it was going, a lot had changed, and so even what I thought would happen didn't happen in the way I assumed it would. I really cared about the characters by the end, and they kept doing unexpected things, the way real people would. As a reader I was thrown all over the place, even back in time in Korea! But I enjoyed the journey of the book, a feeling I haven't really had since reading Black Wave.
March 23, 2018
This novel centers on Hannah, a teenaged Korean-American girl who babysits the children of an African-American man and his white wife. In understated yet powerful prose, with richly drawn characters, Chung charts the atomizing effect of tragedy on these people, their fumbling paths to unexpected love.
I have much more to say in my BookTube review: https://youtu.be/PcCyOVesv4A
I have much more to say in my BookTube review: https://youtu.be/PcCyOVesv4A
January 8, 2017
Just so we're clear, this is a grown man and a minor child who develop some kind of spiritual connection, right? He takes care of her when she starts her period away from home, keeping some elements of this interaction secret from other adults involved in her care? And then this grown man sits outside the minor child's house and watches for her? And then writes her letters that go unanswered into her young adulthood, after using false pretenses to track down her whereabouts?
File under: lovely writing style; criminal plot line.
File under: lovely writing style; criminal plot line.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 14, 2019
This amazing novel surprised me. It was the next book on my stack of unread Nervous Breakdown Book Club selections, from October, 2016. The title made me expect some kind of "women's fiction." Well, it is family fiction but not the bestseller kind I tend to avoid.
Generations, divergent cultures (Korean, Black American), loss, finding the ones you love outside the box of "loved ones," and so much heart.
It is not perfectly written per popular fiction or even literary fiction directives. It goes back and forth through time though in the best possible way. The characters are not likeable. They are real like the rest of us.
Actually the writing is fearless, taking the reader to places and emotions that continue to astonish. The way Sonya Chung demonstrates the interactions between politics, society, belief systems, all these weighty topics, through stories that happen to everyday people is what I expect from great fiction.
Generations, divergent cultures (Korean, Black American), loss, finding the ones you love outside the box of "loved ones," and so much heart.
It is not perfectly written per popular fiction or even literary fiction directives. It goes back and forth through time though in the best possible way. The characters are not likeable. They are real like the rest of us.
Actually the writing is fearless, taking the reader to places and emotions that continue to astonish. The way Sonya Chung demonstrates the interactions between politics, society, belief systems, all these weighty topics, through stories that happen to everyday people is what I expect from great fiction.
February 14, 2017
I'm not sure I'm the most objective judge of this book since Sonya's a friend and colleague and I was an early reader. But I was really moved by how my feelings for the characters deepened and ripened through the course of the novel—which was of course one of its major points, but that progression was done so skillfully, in a way that brought the reader in to a certain kind of complicity without being manipulative. The book has a wonderfully quirky rhythm that, once you fall into it, pulls you along through this often thorny story with a skittery third person POV, and after a certain point I just could not put it down for long. And at the end I teared up even though it wasn't sad or sentimental, I think just leaving the characters—none of whom were so overwhelmingly lovable on their surfaces—behind. Well done.
July 28, 2016
I had the great luck of reading an advanced copy of this beautiful new novel by Sonya Chung. It is haunting and honest and successfully ambitious both thematically and structurally. The writing itself is gorgeous, there were too many sentences and paragraphs I reread simply to savor. Since finishing, the characters have crept into my dreams and it is a book I will return to again. Pulled in from the first page and sad to reach the last...
January 20, 2018
I didn’t really care for this book. I finished it because I felt compelled to, but it wasn’t for me. Her writing is beautiful and while I loved the story of Hannah’s parents, I really didn’t care for the main storyline. It was romanticizing something that I didn’t find romantic or compelling. I also felt at times the writer, although writing about an African American family was a bit too confident in her knowledge of black life. “ “Ain’t y’all freezing?” Charles asked. It was always natural for him to talk like a thug when he was around Dennis; even more so with Dennis and the reverend.” Talk like a thug? That’s not thug talk, that’s just colloquial language. Other people love it and I can somewhat see why, but this one wasn’t for me.
December 21, 2016
Originally posted on my blog: bongbongbooks.wordpress.com
How far will you go for your loved ones? How far will you go to protect them, to show that you care for them and to save them? These questions became the focal points of Sonya Chung’s The Loved Ones.
The Loved Ones is a multi-generational saga that follows the story of two families. There’s Charles Lee, an African-American soldier who was once stationed in Korea where he met his now wife, Alice. Alice was previously a Peace Corps Volunteer before moving to Korea to teach. The two fell in love and had two children; Veda who is 9 years old and Benny who is six. With Alice finally deciding to return to work, Charles and Alice agreed to take in a baby-sitter as Alice believes that their children are still too young to tend for themselves. They hired Hannah Lee, a 13-year old daughter of Korean immigrants. Hannah’s parent, Soon-mi and Chong-ho, are conservative and traditional. They resent Hannah working with the Lees and they still struggle with adapting in America. The book then follows the characters as they try to move in their own worlds, watching each day unfold and trying to be civil to one another. An unusual bond was formed between Hannah and Charles. I myself, doesn’t know exactly how to best describe the bond that was formed between the two. It’s like an understanding between the two that was not formed not by words but by actions. It’s intimate but there’s no sexual tension. They were like these two people always keeping a watchful eye with each other. Then a tragedy hit Charles Lee’s family while they’re on vacation that caused a domino effect of reactions to the two families. A tragedy that allowed the the two families to reexamine themselves and their relationships with each other. The tragedy that takes its shape in the form of guilt that follows them like a shadow. Destiny worked its way for the two families life to intertwine and be bonded in unexpected ways that became too far difficult for the each to untangle. The story takes its readers from the two families’ life in 1980s Washington D.C., to the two families’ past in Korea in 1950s and to the places that each member of the two families have been after the tragedy up to the early 2000s. The succeeding chapters then followed each character as they struggle to move forward and start living their lives.
This book reminds me of Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. Both books tackles issues of loss and grief and being biracial in America. What makes The Loved Ones different though is it has two families coping up with the aftermath of a loss and it dug more deeper to the history of each of the families which allowed me to fully understand and empathize with each of the characters. The narration is also more melancholic in my opinion which really worked well with the building up of the intensity of the story.
What I like the most about this book is how it developed its characters. The author made each character unique which allowed them to stand out. The story moves between difference places, taking the readers as deep as Charles and Alice’s family history and to Hannah’s parent’s past. That may sound tad and boring but no, by doing that the story even became more complex. Complex in a good way as it allowed the characters to be even more fleshed out. I like how the secrets to each history was revealed and how I was like always looking for clues to tie the story. Traditions and beliefs became players that helped shape the characters and eventually the flow of the story.
For a book that is less than 300 pages long, some people may consider it short to be considered as a saga but for me, this book is a saga in itself. It was able to successfully cover a wide span of time in just a couple of pages. The number of pages that this book have is already enough to engage myself in. The book became very immersing in the parts wherein the author was putting in detail the history of the characters’ lineage. The transition from the past to the present and how the two families’ story interweave is also flawlessly done. To be honest, I had issues with the transition a couple of time when I started this book and I was a bit lost at some point but as soon as I was able to fully acquaint myself to how the author structured the story, I was so drawn in the story. The book gave me this haunting feeling but there’s that feeling of being satisfied at the same time. I don’t know if I’m making sense now but this book is really strange but it really is compelling. Adding to that, the book is also simply written which made me even more appreciate the story.
The book became a study of love and loss and its after effects. It also became partly an inquiry on culture and traditions and its complexities that affected the belief of the characters. I questioned a couple of decisions made by the characters and I was upset at some of their choices which haunted me for a couple of days. (I blame it to the book’s very powerful narrative.) After finishing this book, I felt conflicted with what was I suppose to feel towards it. But then I eventually understood, the answers to my questions and what-ifs always leads me back to what this book is all about; the loved ones. How far will you go for your loved ones? How far will you go protect them, to show that you care for them and to save them?
Read this book. 4 stars out of 5.
Note: My gratitude to Relegation Books for providing me a review copy in exchange for a honest and unbiased review. In no way was my opinion about the book influenced.
How far will you go for your loved ones? How far will you go to protect them, to show that you care for them and to save them? These questions became the focal points of Sonya Chung’s The Loved Ones.
The Loved Ones is a multi-generational saga that follows the story of two families. There’s Charles Lee, an African-American soldier who was once stationed in Korea where he met his now wife, Alice. Alice was previously a Peace Corps Volunteer before moving to Korea to teach. The two fell in love and had two children; Veda who is 9 years old and Benny who is six. With Alice finally deciding to return to work, Charles and Alice agreed to take in a baby-sitter as Alice believes that their children are still too young to tend for themselves. They hired Hannah Lee, a 13-year old daughter of Korean immigrants. Hannah’s parent, Soon-mi and Chong-ho, are conservative and traditional. They resent Hannah working with the Lees and they still struggle with adapting in America. The book then follows the characters as they try to move in their own worlds, watching each day unfold and trying to be civil to one another. An unusual bond was formed between Hannah and Charles. I myself, doesn’t know exactly how to best describe the bond that was formed between the two. It’s like an understanding between the two that was not formed not by words but by actions. It’s intimate but there’s no sexual tension. They were like these two people always keeping a watchful eye with each other. Then a tragedy hit Charles Lee’s family while they’re on vacation that caused a domino effect of reactions to the two families. A tragedy that allowed the the two families to reexamine themselves and their relationships with each other. The tragedy that takes its shape in the form of guilt that follows them like a shadow. Destiny worked its way for the two families life to intertwine and be bonded in unexpected ways that became too far difficult for the each to untangle. The story takes its readers from the two families’ life in 1980s Washington D.C., to the two families’ past in Korea in 1950s and to the places that each member of the two families have been after the tragedy up to the early 2000s. The succeeding chapters then followed each character as they struggle to move forward and start living their lives.
This book reminds me of Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. Both books tackles issues of loss and grief and being biracial in America. What makes The Loved Ones different though is it has two families coping up with the aftermath of a loss and it dug more deeper to the history of each of the families which allowed me to fully understand and empathize with each of the characters. The narration is also more melancholic in my opinion which really worked well with the building up of the intensity of the story.
What I like the most about this book is how it developed its characters. The author made each character unique which allowed them to stand out. The story moves between difference places, taking the readers as deep as Charles and Alice’s family history and to Hannah’s parent’s past. That may sound tad and boring but no, by doing that the story even became more complex. Complex in a good way as it allowed the characters to be even more fleshed out. I like how the secrets to each history was revealed and how I was like always looking for clues to tie the story. Traditions and beliefs became players that helped shape the characters and eventually the flow of the story.
For a book that is less than 300 pages long, some people may consider it short to be considered as a saga but for me, this book is a saga in itself. It was able to successfully cover a wide span of time in just a couple of pages. The number of pages that this book have is already enough to engage myself in. The book became very immersing in the parts wherein the author was putting in detail the history of the characters’ lineage. The transition from the past to the present and how the two families’ story interweave is also flawlessly done. To be honest, I had issues with the transition a couple of time when I started this book and I was a bit lost at some point but as soon as I was able to fully acquaint myself to how the author structured the story, I was so drawn in the story. The book gave me this haunting feeling but there’s that feeling of being satisfied at the same time. I don’t know if I’m making sense now but this book is really strange but it really is compelling. Adding to that, the book is also simply written which made me even more appreciate the story.
The book became a study of love and loss and its after effects. It also became partly an inquiry on culture and traditions and its complexities that affected the belief of the characters. I questioned a couple of decisions made by the characters and I was upset at some of their choices which haunted me for a couple of days. (I blame it to the book’s very powerful narrative.) After finishing this book, I felt conflicted with what was I suppose to feel towards it. But then I eventually understood, the answers to my questions and what-ifs always leads me back to what this book is all about; the loved ones. How far will you go for your loved ones? How far will you go protect them, to show that you care for them and to save them?
Read this book. 4 stars out of 5.
Note: My gratitude to Relegation Books for providing me a review copy in exchange for a honest and unbiased review. In no way was my opinion about the book influenced.
August 27, 2018
I found this an interesting book to read. In some ways I found it compelling. All happy people are the same and unhappy people are unhappy differently. Two families of very unhappy people. Ethnicity is inclusive of Korean, Korean-American, African American, White Anglo-Saxon-Protestant and bi racial. Whew! These people all come together and then apart after a young boy dies in an accident. Was the baby sitter responsible? I am not quite sure. It is very readable but I did not feel close to any other the characters because non of them were really likable and some acted in ways that I did not find realistic. It was interesting but I did not love it.
December 9, 2019
Good riddance. Ugh
December 4, 2016
I hate to give a low rating compared to all the other glowing reviews, but I just didn't like it that much. I don't really have a valid reason why, either--it just didn't work for me. Like going on a first date with someone who seems to look good on paper and there's nothing really wrong with them, but you just ain't feelin' it. It was very well-written and I had no issues with the writing style, except the lack of question marks after questions drove me crazy. But I just didn't care about the characters or the plot very much. Even though I've enjoyed my fair share of Sad and Gloomy Books with Sad and Gloomy Characters, I just.. didn't care and didn't get anything out of it. Also, the relationship with Hannah and Charles was just gross and made me feel uncomfortable, and this is coming from someone who liked Lolita.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 4, 2017
Finishing this book became a chore. I enjoyed the flashbacks of the disgraced Korean family returning to their home country, as well as the story of the interracial American couple first coming together in Korea. Some of the writing is really fantastic as well.
But I felt no connection to the bland character of Hannah; I hated the treatment of a disgusting relationship between a grown man and a 13-year-old girl (and this is coming from someone whose favorite book is Lolita!), and most of all, I couldn't wrap my head around the behavior of ANYONE after Benny's death. Yes, everyone grieves in different ways, but the book should have just been titled, Shit Parenting by Shit People.
But I felt no connection to the bland character of Hannah; I hated the treatment of a disgusting relationship between a grown man and a 13-year-old girl (and this is coming from someone whose favorite book is Lolita!), and most of all, I couldn't wrap my head around the behavior of ANYONE after Benny's death. Yes, everyone grieves in different ways, but the book should have just been titled, Shit Parenting by Shit People.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 30, 2016
This is a beautifully written story of a teenage Korean girl and her journey into womanhood. She gets a job as a babysitter for 2 children with mixed race parents and she becomes fixated on the husband. Tragedy strikes and her strict parents sent away to school. Years pass before she takes her future into her own hands and finally lives the life she wants. Strange but haunting story. I recommend it.
February 14, 2022
I feel bad about this, but ultimately I was disappointed in this book. I don’t think I can rate it higher than three stars.
The book follows two families with the last name of Lee. One family is mixed race African American and white. The other family is Korean American. They cross paths in 1984 in Washington, DC. Alice Lee has returned to the workforce, and is looking for a babysitter. Her colleague offers up her twelve-year-old daughter, Hannah Lee. Hannah and Alice’s husband, Charles, make quite the impression on each other. They both realize that neither of them is where they want to be.
This comes in particularly handy when a tragedy strikes, affecting these three and the children. Chung asks the provocative, and perhaps controversial question of whether or not the tragedy is quite so tragic. Maybe it ends up pushing Alice, Charles and Hannah into better situations for themselves.
From here, we slip back into the past, some ten years prior. We see how Alice and Charles meet (and marry, after Alice falls pregnant.) We see Hannah’s parents, Chong-Ho and Soon-Mi, discover how their own star-crossed love affair, and the decisions therein, hurt innocent people and got them banished from their families. Performing some sort of penance, Chong-Ho and Soon-Mi choose to live an emotionally distant life, which certainly isn’t healthy for Hannah as she grows up.
After the tragedy, which can be blamed on Hannah in the harshest terms, anyway, her parents also send her away to boarding school. Hannah sees this as a punishment to be borne, and afterwards she leaves everyone behind and chooses a path with a French teacher with whom she felt the most affinity. The marriage between Charles and Alice falls apart, and each of them choose life journeys that they might have gone on a decade earlier had pregnancy not forced them to stay together. (“Force” is a strong word for it, but they made the choice they did to marry and settle down together more out of obligation than out of personal desire.)
I’m probably too picky with the writing; I feel like the first section is too heavy on exposition (and one foreshadowing incident on a carnival ride that is way too blunt for my tastes.) And then, in the last sections, it turns too descriptive without any weight to hold it down. Honestly, if I was more connected to the characters, I’d probably forgive and be less petty in this regard.
There’s a lot of characters and backstory, and to a certain extent I appreciate how Chung fleshes everything out. Everyone feels like they have a three-dimensional backing. But her choices in the post-tragedy storyline feel flighty. We hover around characters for a little while and never fully get ingrained in their storylines, especially for Alice (and then Charles.) I guess I’d argue that I felt fully immersed in Hannah’s storyline, and that she’s arguably the main character. Other readers might disagree with me about Alice and Charles, too, and say that I want too much hand-holding. This wouldn’t be the only area where we disagree.
The big area is with the sexual relationship between Charles, a 30-something, and recently turned-13 Hannah. To be judgmental, I’m kinda shocked the reviews I read didn’t even mention this. Chung wrote the one scene where they had sex in vague, descriptive and emotional terms, as though she knew if she was forthright with the action, we’d understand this to be abuse. (Years later, Hannah confirms that her high school boyfriend isn’t “her first time.”) She’s 13! I don’t care if they feel a connection; it can be a celibate one! I don’t care if Chung, or Hannah, wants to deem me a prude because of something something the French author Collette wrote in the Claudine books. I could have gotten behind this relationship, maybe, if Charles looked out for Hannah in a paternal sort of way, and even understood that Hannah was wise beyond her years in how she saw the truth about people. (Maybe Hannah should have become a psychologist? Then again, to be vain, writers understand people, too. :P) Instead, the decades of unread letters, culminating in read letters, just stuck me as creepy.
This is, to me, a case of something that is supposed to be provocative in a compelling way, but instead it misses the mark. I’m not sure if I’d say the same about the inter-cultural aspects, but one GoodReads reviewer quibbled with a specific issue regarding the African American content. It was kinda fun (and kinda freaky and sad) to read a story set in places where I’ve lived, worked and frequently vacationed—Silver Spring, MD, Washington, DC and Rehoboth Beach, DE, respectively. Hopefully the next book I read in these locations will hit me in better feels.
The book follows two families with the last name of Lee. One family is mixed race African American and white. The other family is Korean American. They cross paths in 1984 in Washington, DC. Alice Lee has returned to the workforce, and is looking for a babysitter. Her colleague offers up her twelve-year-old daughter, Hannah Lee. Hannah and Alice’s husband, Charles, make quite the impression on each other. They both realize that neither of them is where they want to be.
This comes in particularly handy when a tragedy strikes, affecting these three and the children. Chung asks the provocative, and perhaps controversial question of whether or not the tragedy is quite so tragic. Maybe it ends up pushing Alice, Charles and Hannah into better situations for themselves.
From here, we slip back into the past, some ten years prior. We see how Alice and Charles meet (and marry, after Alice falls pregnant.) We see Hannah’s parents, Chong-Ho and Soon-Mi, discover how their own star-crossed love affair, and the decisions therein, hurt innocent people and got them banished from their families. Performing some sort of penance, Chong-Ho and Soon-Mi choose to live an emotionally distant life, which certainly isn’t healthy for Hannah as she grows up.
After the tragedy, which can be blamed on Hannah in the harshest terms, anyway, her parents also send her away to boarding school. Hannah sees this as a punishment to be borne, and afterwards she leaves everyone behind and chooses a path with a French teacher with whom she felt the most affinity. The marriage between Charles and Alice falls apart, and each of them choose life journeys that they might have gone on a decade earlier had pregnancy not forced them to stay together. (“Force” is a strong word for it, but they made the choice they did to marry and settle down together more out of obligation than out of personal desire.)
I’m probably too picky with the writing; I feel like the first section is too heavy on exposition (and one foreshadowing incident on a carnival ride that is way too blunt for my tastes.) And then, in the last sections, it turns too descriptive without any weight to hold it down. Honestly, if I was more connected to the characters, I’d probably forgive and be less petty in this regard.
There’s a lot of characters and backstory, and to a certain extent I appreciate how Chung fleshes everything out. Everyone feels like they have a three-dimensional backing. But her choices in the post-tragedy storyline feel flighty. We hover around characters for a little while and never fully get ingrained in their storylines, especially for Alice (and then Charles.) I guess I’d argue that I felt fully immersed in Hannah’s storyline, and that she’s arguably the main character. Other readers might disagree with me about Alice and Charles, too, and say that I want too much hand-holding. This wouldn’t be the only area where we disagree.
The big area is with the sexual relationship between Charles, a 30-something, and recently turned-13 Hannah. To be judgmental, I’m kinda shocked the reviews I read didn’t even mention this. Chung wrote the one scene where they had sex in vague, descriptive and emotional terms, as though she knew if she was forthright with the action, we’d understand this to be abuse. (Years later, Hannah confirms that her high school boyfriend isn’t “her first time.”) She’s 13! I don’t care if they feel a connection; it can be a celibate one! I don’t care if Chung, or Hannah, wants to deem me a prude because of something something the French author Collette wrote in the Claudine books. I could have gotten behind this relationship, maybe, if Charles looked out for Hannah in a paternal sort of way, and even understood that Hannah was wise beyond her years in how she saw the truth about people. (Maybe Hannah should have become a psychologist? Then again, to be vain, writers understand people, too. :P) Instead, the decades of unread letters, culminating in read letters, just stuck me as creepy.
This is, to me, a case of something that is supposed to be provocative in a compelling way, but instead it misses the mark. I’m not sure if I’d say the same about the inter-cultural aspects, but one GoodReads reviewer quibbled with a specific issue regarding the African American content. It was kinda fun (and kinda freaky and sad) to read a story set in places where I’ve lived, worked and frequently vacationed—Silver Spring, MD, Washington, DC and Rehoboth Beach, DE, respectively. Hopefully the next book I read in these locations will hit me in better feels.
September 22, 2019
The Loved Ones by Sonya Chung is about connecting the past with your future, and how you can drown in it if you let it. The book oscillates between members of two different families, both named Lee. Charles Lee is black and his wife Alice is white. They met while both were stationed in Korea in the 1970's, he as a soldier, she as a teacher on the army base. When Alice gets pregnant, with their daughter Veda, Charles marries her and they move to his childhood home in the suburbs of Washington DC. A few years later they have a son, Benny. When Veda is 10 and Benny 6, the Lees hire Hannah Lee as their babysitter. Hannah is 13, Korean-American, and ever watchful, especially of Charles, as he is of her. When tragedy strikes the family, all the characters spin out, trying to maintain hold of something, but that something is sometimes undefinable to them. Chung goes forward and backwards in time, touching on impactful moments for Charles, Alice, Hannah, Veda, Benny, and Hannah's parents. Other than the tragedy, the moments are often personal to the character at hand. Sometimes it's those moments that matter more, that define a person, rather than the larger ones, or how they relate to the larger ones. But unless those moments are infused with the passion they elicit, those moments don't land as much as they could, which is the case here. Even the tragedy doesn't have the larger reverberation it should. We get a lot of wandering, but little personal connection between the characters. Why should they matter? Why do they matter to each other? Your family is not always your loved ones, those that mean the most to you, who ground you. Sometimes they are. Your past is not always your past. Sometimes it is.
March 12, 2022
"The Loved Ones" follows individuals from two families living in Washington DC, both with the last name Lee. The families cross paths in the early 80s, but the story moves back in time to the origins of the couples at the center of each family and forwards in time to the late 90s. One couple is Korean cast off from their families and home. The other family is biracial and very much connected to their families and neighborhood.
The characters are realistically rendered. They do incomprehensible things, even they don't fully understand why they do the things they do. Different individuals react to events in very different ways. Much of the book centers on loss. Loss of opportunity, loss of ch0ice and agency, and death. There's some real uncomfortable material at the heart of the book that it's fully acknowledged for what it is. When you actually fully consider what's happening it is really disturbing.
The characters are realistically rendered. They do incomprehensible things, even they don't fully understand why they do the things they do. Different individuals react to events in very different ways. Much of the book centers on loss. Loss of opportunity, loss of ch0ice and agency, and death. There's some real uncomfortable material at the heart of the book that it's fully acknowledged for what it is. When you actually fully consider what's happening it is really disturbing.
October 13, 2017
I enjoyed reading this book, but it has some problems. First of all the composition of the book can get very confusing. There are two different families named Lee (each having a different connection to Korea), at many different times (forward flashes and back flashes). It i s difficult to keep it all strait.
The second problem was that people change over the year, but what spurred the changes is not immediately clear. Other life choices were a little too far fetched.
The second problem was that people change over the year, but what spurred the changes is not immediately clear. Other life choices were a little too far fetched.
February 8, 2025
The rating is a little low and isn't indicative of the pure beauty of this story. Some fat could have been trimmed to make it a solid four- or five-star book. I didn't fully understand the relationship between Hannah and Charles, and it may have bordered on inappropriate and creepy. With that said, the main character is definitely Hannah, who, throughout the book, is trying to cope with some form of loss and displacement in her life.
July 3, 2025
This was an underwhelming read for me. It was difficult at times to want to pick it up. The storyline had potential but lacked energy and interest. The main character was boring and lacked personality. I didn’t care for the characters or their decisions. The romance was straight up pedoph3lific (if that’s even a word). It had its moments but honestly, I’m just glad I’m done reading and it’s over with. 2.7 stars
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 27, 2016
Sonya Chung has a mesmerizing way with words. This almost felt like interwoven character studies that could each stand alone. I highlighted many sentences that resonated with me. I could not bring myself to rate this book 5 stars simply because the relationship between Charles and Hannah when the story starts was unsettling. But I will check into the author's other novel.
August 10, 2017
precision
Despressing at times with its precision, until finally a sentence, sometimes a paragraph makes you pause, re-read and forget the dryness that preceded it. Elaborate plot, perhaps a little too elaborate, happy ending though if such a thing exists.
Despressing at times with its precision, until finally a sentence, sometimes a paragraph makes you pause, re-read and forget the dryness that preceded it. Elaborate plot, perhaps a little too elaborate, happy ending though if such a thing exists.
July 8, 2017
Complicated but not overwrought.
April 25, 2018
I hated this book. It was incredibly boring.
January 31, 2023
Lots of interesting material, well written. A bit ambiguous in connecting the two parts of the story.
July 25, 2023
Really depressing with this heavy weight on your shoulders feel. Very readable, but sooo soo depressing.
May 26, 2024
Weirdly unsettling, quite good, though it dragged at times and it took me awhile to get into. 3.5 stars.
February 25, 2017
Disappointed. I had high hopes, but 2/3 of the story is the babysitter falling in love with the father. So much else to explore with these interesting characters. Not bad writing, but underwhelming.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 12, 2017
I like this book. It is a complicated story of two families that covers trauma, racism, culture, etc in a complicated story of the intermingling of each character's voices. One gets a better sense of some than others but as a whole, it is moving portrait of how we know and don't know each other.
November 26, 2016
The Loved Ones tells the story of two American families whose paths intertwine by chance and stay connected due to the pivotal and tragic accident of one summer moment. The reverberations of tragedy- responsibility, guilt, and atonement, echo throughout their lives. In currents of prose elegiac and lyrical Chung draws on a kaleidoscope of global locations necessary to illuminate deep traditions and entrenched ways of life. The central characters must wrench themselves free to move forward and survive. More than anything the reader is drawn to Charles and Hannah, survivors who, bound by a profound sense of recognition, take the biggest leaps beyond family expectations to forge their lives.
Book groups who want to dip below the surface of the story will be rewarded with a richly satisfying discussion.
Book groups who want to dip below the surface of the story will be rewarded with a richly satisfying discussion.
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