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Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost
David Hoon Kim’s debut Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost is a transgressive, darkly comic novel of becoming lost and found in translation.
In a strangely distorted Paris, a Japanese adoptee is haunted by the woman he once loved.
When Fumiko emerges after one month locked in her dorm room, she’s already dead, leaving a half-smoked Marlboro Light and a cupboard of petrified food in her wake. For her boyfriend, Henrik Blatand, an aspiring translator, these remnants are like clues, propelling him forward in a search for meaning. Meanwhile, Fumiko, or perhaps her doppelgänger, reappears: in line at the Louvre, on street corners and subway platforms, and on the dissection table of a group of medical students.
Henrik’s inquiry expands beyond Fumiko’s seclusion and death, across the absurd, entropic streets of Paris and the figures that wander them, from a jaded group of Korean expats, to an eccentric French widow, to the indelible woman whom Henrik finds sitting in his place on a train. It drives him into the shadowy corners of his past, where his adoptive Danish parents raised him in a house without mirrors. And it mounts to a charged intimacy shared with his best friend’s precocious daughter, who may be haunted herself.
With each successive, echoic chapter, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost plunges us more deeply beneath the surface of things, to the displacement, exile, grief, and desire that hide in plain sight.
In a strangely distorted Paris, a Japanese adoptee is haunted by the woman he once loved.
When Fumiko emerges after one month locked in her dorm room, she’s already dead, leaving a half-smoked Marlboro Light and a cupboard of petrified food in her wake. For her boyfriend, Henrik Blatand, an aspiring translator, these remnants are like clues, propelling him forward in a search for meaning. Meanwhile, Fumiko, or perhaps her doppelgänger, reappears: in line at the Louvre, on street corners and subway platforms, and on the dissection table of a group of medical students.
Henrik’s inquiry expands beyond Fumiko’s seclusion and death, across the absurd, entropic streets of Paris and the figures that wander them, from a jaded group of Korean expats, to an eccentric French widow, to the indelible woman whom Henrik finds sitting in his place on a train. It drives him into the shadowy corners of his past, where his adoptive Danish parents raised him in a house without mirrors. And it mounts to a charged intimacy shared with his best friend’s precocious daughter, who may be haunted herself.
With each successive, echoic chapter, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost plunges us more deeply beneath the surface of things, to the displacement, exile, grief, and desire that hide in plain sight.
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 3, 2021
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May 27, 2022
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2 ½ stars
While I can recognise that Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost is far from a terrible novel, I don’t have a lot of positive things to say about it. Personally, I don’t think the world needed yet another novel about a modern-day (wannabe) flâneur (who happens to be, you guessed it, an intellectual cis straight man whose personality is akin to a slice of soggy toast) having a metaphysical existential crisis in Paris (where of course he falls for an elusive woman).
This is the kind of novel that cares little about the plot or characters. Instead, the narrative seems very much intent on being incohesive, presenting us with scenes and or reflections that blur the line between reality and dreams. While I usually quite like novels that manage to create and sustain a surrealist mood, here, from the very get-go, I found the narrative, its structure in particular, to be little other than artificial.
This novel seems to be desperately striving for this peculiar absurdist tone but, in the case of this reader at least, it just fell flat. Sacrificing style over substance also results in a cast of barely sketched out characters, figments really, that do not manage to hold one’s attention. The weakest aspect of the novel lies in Henrik, our main narrator and major character. His voice was très insipid, to the point that I would often have to make an effort to follow his train of thoughts. His seemingly interminable inner monologues were dull indeed. He often recounts the exchanges that he has with others so that I felt all the more distanced from the story's events. The guy also behaved in a rather inconsistent way so that I sometimes had the impression that the story was being told by numerous narrators, instead of the one guy.
In the first section, we learn a little about Henrik, a Japanese adoptee to Danish parents. He’s completing some sort of thesis or dissertation on Samuel Beckett while living in Paris. He speaks three languages, Danish, English, and French and is an aspiring translator who wants to do English/French translations (not an easy endeavour given that neither language is technically his ‘mother tongue’, which is danish). He’s dating Fumiko, a Japanese woman who for reasons unknown to him (let alone us) has locked herself in her dorm room. We never meet Fumiko, as after days of confinement she commits suicide.
We then switch to a ‘you’ type of narrative where we are introduced to a group of young medical students who are dissecting (i think?) Fumiko’s body. What purpose did this part have? Go figure.
Then back to Henrik and his seemingly unending monologues. He tells us about the random people he sees on the street, and about trailing Asian women who remind him of Fumiko, of meeting and talking to other people (i cannot recall who they were or how they met, that’s how memorable these encounters/friendships were). I had no idea how much time was passing, days, weeks, years? There was no clear passage of time, so I was unsure how long ago Fumiko had committed suicide or how old our mc was. He gives us very little insight into his relationship with Fumiko and because of this lack of information I had a hard time 1) believing in Fumiko (especially since we never really see her 'alive' in the present and 2) believing in their dalliance.
Occasionally he does come up with interesting observations regarding Paris, the ‘intellectual’ circles Henrik moves in, and on his identity. Attention is paid in particular to the disconnect he feels between who he is (he feels very danish) and his appearance (which is not ‘typically’ danish). But these speculations (on identity & belonging, the divide between one's inner and one's outer self) were drowned out by Henrik’s other thoughts, which often made little sense or struck me as entirely too affected.
Then, all of a sudden, the last section of the narrative goes on about his relationship with his goddaughter. This seemed very out of the blue and has little to do with what had come beforehand. This goddaughter did not sound like a genuine child and her dad was way OTT (at one point he shits in a plastic bag...why? couldn’t he have asked to use his neighbours' toilet if his own toilet was broken or whatnot?). Here there is a bit of pretending to be what you are not, as in this case, Henrik often acts like his goddaughter’s father.
Nothing truly interesting or new is said on the subject. The story then briefly moves from Paris to Rome and here Henrik seems all of a sudden to remember about Fumiko.
The novel tried very hard to impress its intelligence and artistry on us. I don’t mind erudite asides or creative ramblings but only if they either serve some sort of purpose (in relation to characters or plot) or if they serve as springboards for more interesting discussions/conversations. Here, it seemed they were just trying to create a certain atmosphere. The novel as a whole struck me as being very much influenced by the New Wave. And while it was in a way experimental and clearly postmodernist, it lacked bite, flavour. It was all flash, no substance. At least Beckett is amusing! Here the weirdness was studied, worst still, where was the humor?
Maybe a more engaging or intriguing narrator would have made me more inclined to pay attention to what was going on (then again, was anything really going on?) or what the author was writing about...but Henrik was painfully bland. His voice put me to sleep.
I recommend you check out more positive reviews before you decide whether to give this one a shot or not.
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
2 ½ stars
While I can recognise that Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost is far from a terrible novel, I don’t have a lot of positive things to say about it. Personally, I don’t think the world needed yet another novel about a modern-day (wannabe) flâneur (who happens to be, you guessed it, an intellectual cis straight man whose personality is akin to a slice of soggy toast) having a metaphysical existential crisis in Paris (where of course he falls for an elusive woman).
This is the kind of novel that cares little about the plot or characters. Instead, the narrative seems very much intent on being incohesive, presenting us with scenes and or reflections that blur the line between reality and dreams. While I usually quite like novels that manage to create and sustain a surrealist mood, here, from the very get-go, I found the narrative, its structure in particular, to be little other than artificial.
This novel seems to be desperately striving for this peculiar absurdist tone but, in the case of this reader at least, it just fell flat. Sacrificing style over substance also results in a cast of barely sketched out characters, figments really, that do not manage to hold one’s attention. The weakest aspect of the novel lies in Henrik, our main narrator and major character. His voice was très insipid, to the point that I would often have to make an effort to follow his train of thoughts. His seemingly interminable inner monologues were dull indeed. He often recounts the exchanges that he has with others so that I felt all the more distanced from the story's events. The guy also behaved in a rather inconsistent way so that I sometimes had the impression that the story was being told by numerous narrators, instead of the one guy.
In the first section, we learn a little about Henrik, a Japanese adoptee to Danish parents. He’s completing some sort of thesis or dissertation on Samuel Beckett while living in Paris. He speaks three languages, Danish, English, and French and is an aspiring translator who wants to do English/French translations (not an easy endeavour given that neither language is technically his ‘mother tongue’, which is danish). He’s dating Fumiko, a Japanese woman who for reasons unknown to him (let alone us) has locked herself in her dorm room. We never meet Fumiko, as after days of confinement she commits suicide.
We then switch to a ‘you’ type of narrative where we are introduced to a group of young medical students who are dissecting (i think?) Fumiko’s body. What purpose did this part have? Go figure.
Then back to Henrik and his seemingly unending monologues. He tells us about the random people he sees on the street, and about trailing Asian women who remind him of Fumiko, of meeting and talking to other people (i cannot recall who they were or how they met, that’s how memorable these encounters/friendships were). I had no idea how much time was passing, days, weeks, years? There was no clear passage of time, so I was unsure how long ago Fumiko had committed suicide or how old our mc was. He gives us very little insight into his relationship with Fumiko and because of this lack of information I had a hard time 1) believing in Fumiko (especially since we never really see her 'alive' in the present and 2) believing in their dalliance.
Occasionally he does come up with interesting observations regarding Paris, the ‘intellectual’ circles Henrik moves in, and on his identity. Attention is paid in particular to the disconnect he feels between who he is (he feels very danish) and his appearance (which is not ‘typically’ danish). But these speculations (on identity & belonging, the divide between one's inner and one's outer self) were drowned out by Henrik’s other thoughts, which often made little sense or struck me as entirely too affected.
Then, all of a sudden, the last section of the narrative goes on about his relationship with his goddaughter. This seemed very out of the blue and has little to do with what had come beforehand. This goddaughter did not sound like a genuine child and her dad was way OTT (at one point he shits in a plastic bag...why? couldn’t he have asked to use his neighbours' toilet if his own toilet was broken or whatnot?). Here there is a bit of pretending to be what you are not, as in this case, Henrik often acts like his goddaughter’s father.
Nothing truly interesting or new is said on the subject. The story then briefly moves from Paris to Rome and here Henrik seems all of a sudden to remember about Fumiko.
The novel tried very hard to impress its intelligence and artistry on us. I don’t mind erudite asides or creative ramblings but only if they either serve some sort of purpose (in relation to characters or plot) or if they serve as springboards for more interesting discussions/conversations. Here, it seemed they were just trying to create a certain atmosphere. The novel as a whole struck me as being very much influenced by the New Wave. And while it was in a way experimental and clearly postmodernist, it lacked bite, flavour. It was all flash, no substance. At least Beckett is amusing! Here the weirdness was studied, worst still, where was the humor?
Maybe a more engaging or intriguing narrator would have made me more inclined to pay attention to what was going on (then again, was anything really going on?) or what the author was writing about...but Henrik was painfully bland. His voice put me to sleep.
I recommend you check out more positive reviews before you decide whether to give this one a shot or not.
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
September 26, 2021
This novel is divided into three sections; Fumiko, Before Fumiko and After Fumiko so from the start the timeline is displaced. It’s mostly written from the point of view of Henrik, a Danish language student studying in Paris. He was adopted as a baby and is of Japanese heritage. Fumiko was his girlfriend in Paris, she was sent by her family to study after a breakdown in Japan. Displacement and difference, in appearance, language or culture seem to be the major themes but there was much more. The opening section is the most compelling , I was completely fascinated by the story of the blind man that Henrik works for. But the last bits about Henrik and his goddaughter also has great imagery. Much of the novel reads like interconnected short stories and I enjoyed the dreamlike qualities of the writing. A strange and in some ways disturbing book, that I found very readable.
October 15, 2021
I didn't connect well with these stories, surrounding a woman named Fumiko, who is dead for most of them.
May 8, 2021
OK I'm very conflicted here because I think if the three sections of this book were three not-really-connected novellas, I would have liked them a little more. But they're not so...my main thing is that the first section (which I mostly really liked) sets up such a huge, purposefully mysterious event that feels like it's framed as The Central Event. It's not really a spoiler, like after I finished I reread the jacket copy and it reads to me like it's being marketed still as The Central Event, and it's referred to in the naming of all three sections.
But then those second and third sections are really kind of different books that barely refer back to or seem to relate meaningfully to The Central Event; the second one is a meander-y Parisian people-watching kind of situation and the third is this really fraught relationship study. Maybe with different expectations I would have liked it better - because I am not the person who will turndown a meander-y people-watching situation - but the purposeful disjointedness of this was kind of disappointing.
Individually there were things in all three sections I did like, but I was still held back a little by there being all these points of reference that were either too highbrow or just simply too French for me and therefore went way over my head, but maybe in other hands they would have enhanced the writing. I don't know, it gave me a lot to think about, but I didn't have the best time.
But then those second and third sections are really kind of different books that barely refer back to or seem to relate meaningfully to The Central Event; the second one is a meander-y Parisian people-watching kind of situation and the third is this really fraught relationship study. Maybe with different expectations I would have liked it better - because I am not the person who will turndown a meander-y people-watching situation - but the purposeful disjointedness of this was kind of disappointing.
Individually there were things in all three sections I did like, but I was still held back a little by there being all these points of reference that were either too highbrow or just simply too French for me and therefore went way over my head, but maybe in other hands they would have enhanced the writing. I don't know, it gave me a lot to think about, but I didn't have the best time.
January 22, 2024
This wasn't for me. Started off all right, then turned into a rambling mess. Thought it would get better, but it didn't.
June 30, 2021
An Anthology of Displacement
This is a sneakily compelling examination of displacement in its many forms.
Our main character, Henrik, is Japanese born, but adopted and raised to be Danish by native Danes. For most of the period covered by the book he is a student in Paris, training fitfully and half-heartedly to be a translator. He is mildly obsessed with two-spirit people, and virtually every character has a birth identity and a culturally determined identity. He has a fine sense of the differences between Korean/Danish, Korean/French, Japanese/Danish, and the like, and almost all of his relationships turn in one way or another around these sorts of dualities.
Just to drive this all home, our hero is a translator, who translates back and forth between two languages, French and English, that are not his own. As a consequence he is almost always somewhere, either verbally or mentally, that isn't his proper, or comfortable, place. To this we add the fact that most of Henrik's interactions with people tend to revolve around both he and his companions speaking different languages that are not even native to wherever it is they are. It is no accident that many important events occur while Henrik is traveling or generally rambling about haphazardly and without any clear destination. In fact, I don't think Henrik ever got off a subway or a train at the station he originally intended to.
The book is organized as three novellas, and each novella is itself constructed out of distinct episodes. The first novella tells the story of Fumiko. The second and third novellas address "Before Fumiko" and "After Fumiko". Not to be too heavy handed, but the time line of the three is displaced, with the middle making up the beginning, and the episodes in the last two novellas not presented in a strictly linear fashion.
The opening novella, the Fumiko section, is the high point of the book. Fumiko never appears in the flesh. We meet her first through Henrik's memories and descriptions and then, after her death, as a spirit. Wandering and unpredictable, she is the ultimate displaced person, since she doesn't even stay on the earthly plane. This novella is eerie and unsettling and a bit unmoored. It is the section that all the blurbs reference. The final two novellas, Before and After, have their moments, but apart from some fine lines here and there they struck me as indulgent, beside the point, and not especially engaging.
This all sounds rather meta, and perhaps a bit arch, but that is not how it struck me. Memory is not linear, and stories that recount memorable events certainly aren't required to proceed along a strict timeline. Henrik, Fumiko, and all of the main secondary characters have a floating feel to them, are hard to pin down, and drift about, as is true of remembered people and events. For me, the approach worked.
To be fair there are some later bits that left me feeling like I was sitting on a plane next to someone who found telling me his life story was more entertaining than I did. There were more passing girlfriends and late night rambles than strictly necessary. But that's a minor quibble. This is a sneaky book, with an engagingly literary, poetic, and off kilter feel, and I welcomed Henrik's narrative company.
(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
This is a sneakily compelling examination of displacement in its many forms.
Our main character, Henrik, is Japanese born, but adopted and raised to be Danish by native Danes. For most of the period covered by the book he is a student in Paris, training fitfully and half-heartedly to be a translator. He is mildly obsessed with two-spirit people, and virtually every character has a birth identity and a culturally determined identity. He has a fine sense of the differences between Korean/Danish, Korean/French, Japanese/Danish, and the like, and almost all of his relationships turn in one way or another around these sorts of dualities.
Just to drive this all home, our hero is a translator, who translates back and forth between two languages, French and English, that are not his own. As a consequence he is almost always somewhere, either verbally or mentally, that isn't his proper, or comfortable, place. To this we add the fact that most of Henrik's interactions with people tend to revolve around both he and his companions speaking different languages that are not even native to wherever it is they are. It is no accident that many important events occur while Henrik is traveling or generally rambling about haphazardly and without any clear destination. In fact, I don't think Henrik ever got off a subway or a train at the station he originally intended to.
The book is organized as three novellas, and each novella is itself constructed out of distinct episodes. The first novella tells the story of Fumiko. The second and third novellas address "Before Fumiko" and "After Fumiko". Not to be too heavy handed, but the time line of the three is displaced, with the middle making up the beginning, and the episodes in the last two novellas not presented in a strictly linear fashion.
The opening novella, the Fumiko section, is the high point of the book. Fumiko never appears in the flesh. We meet her first through Henrik's memories and descriptions and then, after her death, as a spirit. Wandering and unpredictable, she is the ultimate displaced person, since she doesn't even stay on the earthly plane. This novella is eerie and unsettling and a bit unmoored. It is the section that all the blurbs reference. The final two novellas, Before and After, have their moments, but apart from some fine lines here and there they struck me as indulgent, beside the point, and not especially engaging.
This all sounds rather meta, and perhaps a bit arch, but that is not how it struck me. Memory is not linear, and stories that recount memorable events certainly aren't required to proceed along a strict timeline. Henrik, Fumiko, and all of the main secondary characters have a floating feel to them, are hard to pin down, and drift about, as is true of remembered people and events. For me, the approach worked.
To be fair there are some later bits that left me feeling like I was sitting on a plane next to someone who found telling me his life story was more entertaining than I did. There were more passing girlfriends and late night rambles than strictly necessary. But that's a minor quibble. This is a sneaky book, with an engagingly literary, poetic, and off kilter feel, and I welcomed Henrik's narrative company.
(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
September 14, 2021
probably should have looked this one up before buying it, because i agree with most of the low ratings; the first section had me interested, but by 100 pages in i felt like quitting. it's just not that compelling after the first segment
October 5, 2022
it's like someone strung together a bunch of totally unrelated writing exercises.
May 4, 2025
I spent most of my reading wondering what year exactly this was happening, because I know every single place described in Paris but somehow these descriptions belong to another time, something before Covid 19 and before the Bataclan
June 8, 2021
A tale of three disparate narratives that never quite meshes into one cohesive whole. Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost is the story of aspiring translator Henrik and his mysterious girlfriend Fumiko. Part one concerns the beginning of Henrik's surreal relationship with Fumiko, which culminates in Fumiko locking herself in her apartment for weeks as Henrik struggles to find his identity in Paris. This part of the story is the best and most enthralling, dealing with language, relationships, and the struggles of immigrants in a foreign land.
The issue I had was with the remainder of the narrative. Split into two parts entitled "Before Fumiko" and "After Fumiko", I found that Henrik became a less interesting character in both sections and that the dramatic narrative surrounding Fumiko in the first section was nearly non-existent from the rest of the book. This gives the book the feel of a collection of novellas rather than a full narrative, and prevented me from remaining fully invested after the strong first half.
**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to
Farrar, Straus and Giroux**
The issue I had was with the remainder of the narrative. Split into two parts entitled "Before Fumiko" and "After Fumiko", I found that Henrik became a less interesting character in both sections and that the dramatic narrative surrounding Fumiko in the first section was nearly non-existent from the rest of the book. This gives the book the feel of a collection of novellas rather than a full narrative, and prevented me from remaining fully invested after the strong first half.
**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to
Farrar, Straus and Giroux**
February 22, 2024
Wow. I really enjoyed this one! It's split up into three parts, before, during, and after "Fumiko," the main character Henrik's lover. Surprisingly, though, this story is not about Fumiko at all. Rather, its structure is merely punctuated by her death as if to say, life goes on.
As I said in my midway update, I actually appreciate the episodic nature of the "Before Fumiko." In many ways, this is a coming of age novel that spans across Henrik's 20s, up until "After Fumiko," wherein the story becomes one of a touching father daughter relationship. Kim's prose is thoroughly graceful and intellectual without being snobby. I found myself sympathizing with Henrik throughout.
As I said in my midway update, I actually appreciate the episodic nature of the "Before Fumiko." In many ways, this is a coming of age novel that spans across Henrik's 20s, up until "After Fumiko," wherein the story becomes one of a touching father daughter relationship. Kim's prose is thoroughly graceful and intellectual without being snobby. I found myself sympathizing with Henrik throughout.
January 3, 2022
I had a hard time following this novel. I found it overwritten, lacking in character development, having confusing narration, and trying too hard to be “intellectual”, which resulted in most of it going over my head and me wondering, “who is this character and why are they important, again?”. I also found it confusing that the book was centered around his dead girlfriend, but she wasn’t even mentioned in the last 1/3 of the book. I struggled personally to find the significance of almost everything in this book.
September 3, 2021
I can’t find words to describe the chaotic feeling I had reading this mess describing loneliness and belonging. The tone is so flat and the plot so disjointed that I couldn’t get vested into any of the isolation and despair. The novel or collection of stories is experimental to the purpose of pretension. The author has words for it, though. This line describes the whole book (p 114)
I felt as though I was reading tea leaves, struggling to find a pattern.
“Perhaps my brain, unable to cope with such unrelenting nothingness, had filled the void with symbols and signs—the way one is tempted to see shapes in the clouds or patterns in the ceiling—or so I later reasoned to myself. Something told me not to continue staring at the grids, and, despite not being able to make out anything in front of me, I started running as though for my life.”
I Don’t know the reviewer Luce with another 2-star review but she is spot on, exactly what she wrote. I refer to that thoughtful dissection.
I felt as though I was reading tea leaves, struggling to find a pattern.
“Perhaps my brain, unable to cope with such unrelenting nothingness, had filled the void with symbols and signs—the way one is tempted to see shapes in the clouds or patterns in the ceiling—or so I later reasoned to myself. Something told me not to continue staring at the grids, and, despite not being able to make out anything in front of me, I started running as though for my life.”
I Don’t know the reviewer Luce with another 2-star review but she is spot on, exactly what she wrote. I refer to that thoughtful dissection.
September 16, 2021
I wanted to like this book so much. I had so much to catch my attention:
->being Korean in Europe (or Japanese in this case, or Asian, but the author is obviously Korean so what it says about being one does relate easily to the other, and quite a few of the characters are Korean and he mentioned very niche Korean things, like the 화병 mental illness- his insights into such a condition of koreaness abroad resonated strongly with me. + again Europe -as in not the US, as it is often the case in anything to do about the 교포 and Korean diaspora. although the author himself is K-american)
-> Europe setting (France but also Denmark, Italy, Amsterdam called 'Dam' and even a reference to the Deutsche Bahn)
->adoption and its hardships
->France and the French (but really very much Paris and the Parisians only)
->being a student in Paris
->being multilingual (very interesting that most of a characters were not natives of the place they evolved in and there were a lot of great insights into what this bring to human interactions, this sense of displacement but also this sense of belonging just because we come from the same place, or almost. + the author is also a translator)
-> the figure of the lost wanderer
-> the attention to the prose and the details (I was impressed by the level of research into the medical language and history to fully get into the skin of the medical student for example)
-> themes of suicide, grief, necrophilia from a emotional/artistic POV (main character) and medical/biological POV ('you', the medical student)
Even though some things bugged me, such as the author recurrent wrong use of accents in French (which to me discredited the work), his choice of weird and unheard of French first names, his overly detailed choice of words for settings -like using the actual names of places (not only names of areas or street, but like cité U, Crous, gibert etc) was fine for me because I know all the places mentioned, but I did think that all such references would be terribly lost on most people (keeping in mind that the book is written in English, therefore no intended for a Parisian reader - most can't speak it).
And at the beginning I did love it, potential for a 5 star rating. I felt that I was the perfect reader for it. I was so hyped during the FUMIKO first part. This book was worth the time just for this part alone. Someone said in the comments that it has a Murakami feeling to it; I can see that. Then I kept expecting during the BEFORE FUMIKO but was a bit disappointed by the book kept on wandering aimlessly, but still there was interest. There was hope. But then I felt absolutely let down by the final AFTER FUMIKO part and his weird paternal feeling with his best mate's daughter Gém (although the exploration of the racial divide of their relationship was interesting). I didn't get the point of it all. And thus did not get the whole book.
I would not recommend the book to a friend. I can't see anyone in my circle being able to enjoy it. But I saw a real connection with the author and his themes and would give another of his books a go. There is hope.
------QUOTES
'An unforeseeable side effect of communicating in a language foreign to both of us was that it allowed me to forget, sometimes, that she was Japanese. A foreign language allows one to rename the world and everything in it.'
''You know,' she said, slowly, 'this last time, I nearly did it. I nearly eclipsed myself. Do you know what stopped me?'
'What?' I whispered.
'Your voice. It didn't sound the same. There was a hopeful note in your voice'
'Unlike Biheron [Marie, XVIII century anatomist] and her anatomical wax models, Hortense [de Gaulejac, fellow anatomist] left nothing behind, nothing that could be attributed to her by name. She was a woman, and women were ignored when they were right and ridiculed when they were wrong. Better to remain anonymous'
''Love and death. How death changes love. If the person you love dies. Or you're in love with someone who's dead.' He stares at Fréd until Fréd looks down at his drink. 'Then everything changes. The way you love changes.'
'Up close, the dead look like the dead; from afar they look like themselves. - Marcel Moiré'
'There was a little ritual we had, something she used to say to me in the morning after spending the night in my room. Turning her back to me, she would ask, 'Is it still you?' To which I would always answer-like someone giving a code word-'It's still me.'
[about his Korean-born GF]
'We were the only Asians, two dark sports among the bright blond heads of varying shades, and I wondered if she had also been adopted by Danish parents, as was the case in most Asians in Denmark, brought up to think themselves as Danish. The only thing Asian about us was our birth and, of course, our appearance.
'We were too alike, I remember thinking; it wasn't normal to be this close to someone in such a short time, like skipping to the end of s book one has been reading too fast from the start.'
[meeting Luce in the train]
She told me her name and I told her mine. We talked some more. Any moment I expected Luce to return to her book, but that moment never came.
[Paris] 'It was ... my first time living in such a densely populated place, and yet I had never been so alone in my life.'
'we stood there in silence; then Guang-ho said, 'I know why I tell you all this.'
I waited for him to go on.
'I tell you,' he said, 'because I know that you will listen.''
[about the two Korean girls in his circle of friends, one working at L'Oréal, one an art/language student]
'the two seemed to be best friends, their friendship the kind only possible abroad, where the fact of their being Korean overrode all other considerations.'
[about Gém and the scooting agent]
'With her was the woman I had noticed earlier. Seeing them together I was struck how alike they looked, with their similar blond hair, their similar skin. Like mother and daughter.'
->being Korean in Europe (or Japanese in this case, or Asian, but the author is obviously Korean so what it says about being one does relate easily to the other, and quite a few of the characters are Korean and he mentioned very niche Korean things, like the 화병 mental illness- his insights into such a condition of koreaness abroad resonated strongly with me. + again Europe -as in not the US, as it is often the case in anything to do about the 교포 and Korean diaspora. although the author himself is K-american)
-> Europe setting (France but also Denmark, Italy, Amsterdam called 'Dam' and even a reference to the Deutsche Bahn)
->adoption and its hardships
->France and the French (but really very much Paris and the Parisians only)
->being a student in Paris
->being multilingual (very interesting that most of a characters were not natives of the place they evolved in and there were a lot of great insights into what this bring to human interactions, this sense of displacement but also this sense of belonging just because we come from the same place, or almost. + the author is also a translator)
-> the figure of the lost wanderer
-> the attention to the prose and the details (I was impressed by the level of research into the medical language and history to fully get into the skin of the medical student for example)
-> themes of suicide, grief, necrophilia from a emotional/artistic POV (main character) and medical/biological POV ('you', the medical student)
Even though some things bugged me, such as the author recurrent wrong use of accents in French (which to me discredited the work), his choice of weird and unheard of French first names, his overly detailed choice of words for settings -like using the actual names of places (not only names of areas or street, but like cité U, Crous, gibert etc) was fine for me because I know all the places mentioned, but I did think that all such references would be terribly lost on most people (keeping in mind that the book is written in English, therefore no intended for a Parisian reader - most can't speak it).
And at the beginning I did love it, potential for a 5 star rating. I felt that I was the perfect reader for it. I was so hyped during the FUMIKO first part. This book was worth the time just for this part alone. Someone said in the comments that it has a Murakami feeling to it; I can see that. Then I kept expecting during the BEFORE FUMIKO but was a bit disappointed by the book kept on wandering aimlessly, but still there was interest. There was hope. But then I felt absolutely let down by the final AFTER FUMIKO part and his weird paternal feeling with his best mate's daughter Gém (although the exploration of the racial divide of their relationship was interesting). I didn't get the point of it all. And thus did not get the whole book.
I would not recommend the book to a friend. I can't see anyone in my circle being able to enjoy it. But I saw a real connection with the author and his themes and would give another of his books a go. There is hope.
------QUOTES
'An unforeseeable side effect of communicating in a language foreign to both of us was that it allowed me to forget, sometimes, that she was Japanese. A foreign language allows one to rename the world and everything in it.'
''You know,' she said, slowly, 'this last time, I nearly did it. I nearly eclipsed myself. Do you know what stopped me?'
'What?' I whispered.
'Your voice. It didn't sound the same. There was a hopeful note in your voice'
'Unlike Biheron [Marie, XVIII century anatomist] and her anatomical wax models, Hortense [de Gaulejac, fellow anatomist] left nothing behind, nothing that could be attributed to her by name. She was a woman, and women were ignored when they were right and ridiculed when they were wrong. Better to remain anonymous'
''Love and death. How death changes love. If the person you love dies. Or you're in love with someone who's dead.' He stares at Fréd until Fréd looks down at his drink. 'Then everything changes. The way you love changes.'
'Up close, the dead look like the dead; from afar they look like themselves. - Marcel Moiré'
'There was a little ritual we had, something she used to say to me in the morning after spending the night in my room. Turning her back to me, she would ask, 'Is it still you?' To which I would always answer-like someone giving a code word-'It's still me.'
[about his Korean-born GF]
'We were the only Asians, two dark sports among the bright blond heads of varying shades, and I wondered if she had also been adopted by Danish parents, as was the case in most Asians in Denmark, brought up to think themselves as Danish. The only thing Asian about us was our birth and, of course, our appearance.
'We were too alike, I remember thinking; it wasn't normal to be this close to someone in such a short time, like skipping to the end of s book one has been reading too fast from the start.'
[meeting Luce in the train]
She told me her name and I told her mine. We talked some more. Any moment I expected Luce to return to her book, but that moment never came.
[Paris] 'It was ... my first time living in such a densely populated place, and yet I had never been so alone in my life.'
'we stood there in silence; then Guang-ho said, 'I know why I tell you all this.'
I waited for him to go on.
'I tell you,' he said, 'because I know that you will listen.''
[about the two Korean girls in his circle of friends, one working at L'Oréal, one an art/language student]
'the two seemed to be best friends, their friendship the kind only possible abroad, where the fact of their being Korean overrode all other considerations.'
[about Gém and the scooting agent]
'With her was the woman I had noticed earlier. Seeing them together I was struck how alike they looked, with their similar blond hair, their similar skin. Like mother and daughter.'
May 21, 2025
there were some parts of the book that i really liked: namely, the random section in the middle about the dissection (completely disconnected from the rest of the narrative, in second person for some reason?) i was disappointed when that section was over to learn that we mostly follow henrik for the rest of the book, who i came to despise. the aimless parisian wandering and overwrought literary references got on my nerves after a while.
January 24, 2024
could not tell you much about this book because i read it over so many months but the writing reads like a separate peace (john knowles) and overall it was so so good
September 3, 2024
a strange and compelling novel - i appreciate how it starts somewhere and unravels in unexpected, surprising ways, very unlike the "mfa novels" that the paris review has been roasting lately. and i love any fiction about translators! the lack of embodiment/the overall dreaminess and ghostliness of the writing did make it at times hard to figure out what was really happening (i.e. when his goddaughter becomes a child actor suddenly???) vs. what was part of the dreamscape of the book. but that was also maybe part of the project? idk, i enjoyed myself
September 28, 2025
My humble thoughts: https://zwieblein.bearblog.dev/provin...
October 20, 2021
On my way home, I pictured my employer-to-be presenting me to other colleagues—i.e., hypothetical physicists of theoretical physics—in need of a translator. A beggar making the rounds growled because I didn’t drop anything into his grubby outstretched hand. Closing my eyes, I imagined myself earning two thousand euros a month, sitting in the back seat of a taxi with Fumiko next to me, as we cruised down the avenue de la Grande Armée. The Grande Armée was the B side of the Champs-Élysées, radiating from the opposite edge of the place de l’Étoile. I was, if nothing else, a modest dreamer.
“Read the whole thing first, then underline any words you don’t know. Cross out what you can’t figure out from context. Try to translate the sentence without using those words. They tend to take off fewer points for omissions than for mistranslations.”
Sometimes, residents from our floor would walk in on us arguing, Joakim in his Danified Swedish and me in my Swedified Danish. We had by then moved on to other subjects: Danish vacationers buying up property in Skåne (because it was cheaper), Swedes stocking up on alcohol in Copenhagen to take back to Sweden, Danes going to Stockholm for prostitutes, Swedes going to Christiania for drugs, Danes being unwilling to take in refugees, Swedes taking in refugees for the wrong reasons (i.e., a guilty conscience). One evening, I found a feast for two set out on the table and Joakim waiting with what I thought was a tight Swedish smile of satisfaction. He told me, as I sat down, that it was silly to go on the way we had. He added that he had always been against the Sweden Democrats and people like Jimmie Åkesson. There were cabbage rolls, beef patties à la Lindström, slices of jellied veal, even some surströmming, which he informed me was a Norrland specialty. That night, we talked politics, each of us trying to outdo the other in progressiveness. I went so far as to posit myself as the product of my parents’ “progressive” decision to adopt from outside of Denmark, adding, for good measure, that Carl Th. Dreyer had been adopted. Things might have gone on in that manner, with each of us trying to outdo the other, if a Korean named Guang-ho hadn’t come over to our table during one of the “kitchen parties” that our floor began to be known for as the year progressed, and which could last all weekend as partygoers ran to the nearby Franprix for two-euro bottles of merlot, six-packs of Desperados and other vital provisions. Guang-ho must have been intrigued by the sight of two guys—an Asian and an Aryan—sitting across from each other like chess players at the eleventh hour. I had already noticed him a few times in the kitchen—making instant ramen or smoking a cigarette on the window ledge, the lone Korean among the Europeans. He was slight of build but had the coiled grace of a dancer, or someone on the qui vive, always dressed in the same black jeans and worn leather jacket, his thatchy hair falling past his shoulders. It was difficult to guess his age, though something told me he was a bit older than the rest of us.
They were younger, more savvy and disillusioned: they’d read accounts of Japanese tourists coming home traumatized after discovering that their beloved City of Light—the backdrop of so many mangas and TV series—was in reality a City of Darkness; they’d heard stories of Chinese tourists being mugged in front of their hotels by thugs from the suburbs who came into the city by RER with the express intention of targeting Chinese—or anyone who looked Chinese—because, q.e.d., all Chinese were rich and defenseless, easy targets.
Several weeks into the second semester, I encountered yet another obstacle, this one of an administrative nature: I was asked to provide proof that I had indeed failed to finish my thesis in Copenhagen. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine why they wanted proof, given that I had already been admitted as a student. Why would anyone lie about failing something? I could understand them asking for proof that I had finished my thesis, but that I hadn’t finished it? As if proof of past failure were a necessary condition for studying at the Sorbonne … I was tempted to point out this absurdity to the woman at the secrétariat, but in the end I said nothing. I left the building and walked out to the square, weighed down by a growing sense of futility. At a nearby kébab place, I ordered a grec-frites and sat down at the counter, next to a tiny little sink jutting out of a corner of the wall. As I ate, I thought about my dilemma. The conclusion I arrived at was that proving one’s success was always easier than proving one’s failure. Success, completion, admission all resulted in some document or other: a diploma, a letter of acceptance. How does one prove that one failed an exam? How does one prove that one took it in the first place? One wasn’t given anything in the event of failure: there was nothing to give. That said, was failure any less real than success? Wasn’t the unhappiness associated with something lost always greater, in one’s mind, than the happiness associated with something gained?
Most of the time, we didn’t make small talk, concentrating on the work at hand, though once she asked me if everyone in Denmark spoke the way I did. And what way is that? I replied. My English, according to her, wasn’t like theirs. (She meant the Anglophones.) I seldom used slang and my pronunciation was very clean, very easy to understand. There was something rigid about my grammar, she concluded, and I wasn’t sure from her tone if she meant it as a compliment or not. For many Danes, English was like a second mother tongue, a faithful shadow, a watermark: I read in English more than in Danish, I watched more films in English, but on a daily basis it was Danish I spoke, not English. In the end, I told her that it was because English wasn’t really my language; it’s easier to be rigorous with a language that isn’t one’s own.
When asked—often by those who didn’t know me—if I wanted to find my “real” parents, I would answer that my parents—that is, my Danish parents—had found me first. They were my real parents. What did it matter that I didn’t share their genes? If anything, I considered myself lucky not to have my father’s unreliable metabolism and absurdly bad memory. Or my mother’s hereditary cancer. I took after them in other ways: a certain Danish shyness and pedantism, a fondness for rainy days, Olsen Gang references and the poetry of Halfdan Rasmussen. As if I had, simply by being near them, absorbed their habits and values like so much discarded genetic material floating around their bodies in the form of dead skin cells and other motes of dust.
That was when I told her that it was always sad to lose something, but there were some things that could not be lost. A cat, for example. I told her that no one in all of history had ever lost a cat: such a thing simply wasn’t possible. Because no matter what happened out there—I gestured behind me, at the rain coming down—she didn’t have to stop thinking about Bors, who would stay with her as long as she wanted. And when he did, one day, start to fade away, it would happen so naturally that she wouldn’t think to notice he was gone. It would be like the moon, eclipsing itself in stages, so regular and gradual that she wouldn’t even know to miss anything. I don’t know if she believed me or not.
I found her among the remains of Pompeii, which had been used for a Spanish television series that had won a lot of awards. At the stone archway with its artificially weathered concrete, we stared at each other in silence. She was upset with me—that much was obvious, even if I couldn’t see inside her head. How had she found out I wasn’t going? Had Gaëtane told her? (I had made it clear that I wanted to break the news myself.) The look in my goddaughter’s eyes said that I was abandoning her, letting her down—all because I was afraid of what I might see, the charred and blackened casserole of my inner self reflected, this time, not in the secrecy of a lavatory mirror but in the openness of her ten-year-old’s face. Confronted by her unwavering gaze, I became convinced that she could hear my every thought, and as I struggled to fight down my panic, it occurred to me: the trick was not to empty one’s mind, which in any case was impossible, but instead to fill it with more thoughts, all kinds of thoughts, crisscrossing and converging. Like typing over a word with another word, then with another, again and again, until there is only an indecipherable jumble of letters, I thought to myself, as I gave her a smile that reflected none of the chaos and turmoil and sorrow inside of me.
“Read the whole thing first, then underline any words you don’t know. Cross out what you can’t figure out from context. Try to translate the sentence without using those words. They tend to take off fewer points for omissions than for mistranslations.”
Sometimes, residents from our floor would walk in on us arguing, Joakim in his Danified Swedish and me in my Swedified Danish. We had by then moved on to other subjects: Danish vacationers buying up property in Skåne (because it was cheaper), Swedes stocking up on alcohol in Copenhagen to take back to Sweden, Danes going to Stockholm for prostitutes, Swedes going to Christiania for drugs, Danes being unwilling to take in refugees, Swedes taking in refugees for the wrong reasons (i.e., a guilty conscience). One evening, I found a feast for two set out on the table and Joakim waiting with what I thought was a tight Swedish smile of satisfaction. He told me, as I sat down, that it was silly to go on the way we had. He added that he had always been against the Sweden Democrats and people like Jimmie Åkesson. There were cabbage rolls, beef patties à la Lindström, slices of jellied veal, even some surströmming, which he informed me was a Norrland specialty. That night, we talked politics, each of us trying to outdo the other in progressiveness. I went so far as to posit myself as the product of my parents’ “progressive” decision to adopt from outside of Denmark, adding, for good measure, that Carl Th. Dreyer had been adopted. Things might have gone on in that manner, with each of us trying to outdo the other, if a Korean named Guang-ho hadn’t come over to our table during one of the “kitchen parties” that our floor began to be known for as the year progressed, and which could last all weekend as partygoers ran to the nearby Franprix for two-euro bottles of merlot, six-packs of Desperados and other vital provisions. Guang-ho must have been intrigued by the sight of two guys—an Asian and an Aryan—sitting across from each other like chess players at the eleventh hour. I had already noticed him a few times in the kitchen—making instant ramen or smoking a cigarette on the window ledge, the lone Korean among the Europeans. He was slight of build but had the coiled grace of a dancer, or someone on the qui vive, always dressed in the same black jeans and worn leather jacket, his thatchy hair falling past his shoulders. It was difficult to guess his age, though something told me he was a bit older than the rest of us.
They were younger, more savvy and disillusioned: they’d read accounts of Japanese tourists coming home traumatized after discovering that their beloved City of Light—the backdrop of so many mangas and TV series—was in reality a City of Darkness; they’d heard stories of Chinese tourists being mugged in front of their hotels by thugs from the suburbs who came into the city by RER with the express intention of targeting Chinese—or anyone who looked Chinese—because, q.e.d., all Chinese were rich and defenseless, easy targets.
Several weeks into the second semester, I encountered yet another obstacle, this one of an administrative nature: I was asked to provide proof that I had indeed failed to finish my thesis in Copenhagen. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine why they wanted proof, given that I had already been admitted as a student. Why would anyone lie about failing something? I could understand them asking for proof that I had finished my thesis, but that I hadn’t finished it? As if proof of past failure were a necessary condition for studying at the Sorbonne … I was tempted to point out this absurdity to the woman at the secrétariat, but in the end I said nothing. I left the building and walked out to the square, weighed down by a growing sense of futility. At a nearby kébab place, I ordered a grec-frites and sat down at the counter, next to a tiny little sink jutting out of a corner of the wall. As I ate, I thought about my dilemma. The conclusion I arrived at was that proving one’s success was always easier than proving one’s failure. Success, completion, admission all resulted in some document or other: a diploma, a letter of acceptance. How does one prove that one failed an exam? How does one prove that one took it in the first place? One wasn’t given anything in the event of failure: there was nothing to give. That said, was failure any less real than success? Wasn’t the unhappiness associated with something lost always greater, in one’s mind, than the happiness associated with something gained?
Most of the time, we didn’t make small talk, concentrating on the work at hand, though once she asked me if everyone in Denmark spoke the way I did. And what way is that? I replied. My English, according to her, wasn’t like theirs. (She meant the Anglophones.) I seldom used slang and my pronunciation was very clean, very easy to understand. There was something rigid about my grammar, she concluded, and I wasn’t sure from her tone if she meant it as a compliment or not. For many Danes, English was like a second mother tongue, a faithful shadow, a watermark: I read in English more than in Danish, I watched more films in English, but on a daily basis it was Danish I spoke, not English. In the end, I told her that it was because English wasn’t really my language; it’s easier to be rigorous with a language that isn’t one’s own.
When asked—often by those who didn’t know me—if I wanted to find my “real” parents, I would answer that my parents—that is, my Danish parents—had found me first. They were my real parents. What did it matter that I didn’t share their genes? If anything, I considered myself lucky not to have my father’s unreliable metabolism and absurdly bad memory. Or my mother’s hereditary cancer. I took after them in other ways: a certain Danish shyness and pedantism, a fondness for rainy days, Olsen Gang references and the poetry of Halfdan Rasmussen. As if I had, simply by being near them, absorbed their habits and values like so much discarded genetic material floating around their bodies in the form of dead skin cells and other motes of dust.
That was when I told her that it was always sad to lose something, but there were some things that could not be lost. A cat, for example. I told her that no one in all of history had ever lost a cat: such a thing simply wasn’t possible. Because no matter what happened out there—I gestured behind me, at the rain coming down—she didn’t have to stop thinking about Bors, who would stay with her as long as she wanted. And when he did, one day, start to fade away, it would happen so naturally that she wouldn’t think to notice he was gone. It would be like the moon, eclipsing itself in stages, so regular and gradual that she wouldn’t even know to miss anything. I don’t know if she believed me or not.
I found her among the remains of Pompeii, which had been used for a Spanish television series that had won a lot of awards. At the stone archway with its artificially weathered concrete, we stared at each other in silence. She was upset with me—that much was obvious, even if I couldn’t see inside her head. How had she found out I wasn’t going? Had Gaëtane told her? (I had made it clear that I wanted to break the news myself.) The look in my goddaughter’s eyes said that I was abandoning her, letting her down—all because I was afraid of what I might see, the charred and blackened casserole of my inner self reflected, this time, not in the secrecy of a lavatory mirror but in the openness of her ten-year-old’s face. Confronted by her unwavering gaze, I became convinced that she could hear my every thought, and as I struggled to fight down my panic, it occurred to me: the trick was not to empty one’s mind, which in any case was impossible, but instead to fill it with more thoughts, all kinds of thoughts, crisscrossing and converging. Like typing over a word with another word, then with another, again and again, until there is only an indecipherable jumble of letters, I thought to myself, as I gave her a smile that reflected none of the chaos and turmoil and sorrow inside of me.
March 14, 2022
I picked this book up at the store on a whim because of the title and Parisian setting, feeling a little bit of wanderlust. What I found inside was an interesting meditation on the people that shape our lives, even after they have left it.
Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost is built off of a short story, and maintains some of that structure. Not a short story collection but also not a novel, this debut sits somewhere in the middle. Kim has divided the book into 3 sections: Fumiko, Before Fumiko, and After Fumiko.
The woman in question is the girlfriend of the protagonist Henrik, and dies early on in the book (not a spoiler, it's in the synopsis, I promise). Following her death, Henrik is haunted both by apparitions of her but also the fallout of the event.
The section "Before Fumiko" is also a mediation on loss, but in a different way: the loss of Henrik's identity, as a young Japanese man raised by Danish parents and living in Paris. He aimlessly floats through his life, trying to get his footing, and interacting with other foreigners along the way. Each person shapes his life in some way, setting him on a course to Fumiko. Similarly, in "After Fumiko", Henrik is set adrift again, trying to find what is means to move on after you love someone.
I was surprised to see all the lukewarm reviews of this one on Goodreads, because I really enjoyed it. While there may not be a strong plot line that runs through the books, the recurring themes tied it nicely together. If anything, I think the synopsis sells the book a little short, making it seem like it is going to be a ghost story. But instead, it is a philosophical look at loss, connections, and belonging in a city that is not your own. There are certainly some weird parts (the anatomy lab chapter was a little too visceral). Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book.
Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost is built off of a short story, and maintains some of that structure. Not a short story collection but also not a novel, this debut sits somewhere in the middle. Kim has divided the book into 3 sections: Fumiko, Before Fumiko, and After Fumiko.
The woman in question is the girlfriend of the protagonist Henrik, and dies early on in the book (not a spoiler, it's in the synopsis, I promise). Following her death, Henrik is haunted both by apparitions of her but also the fallout of the event.
The section "Before Fumiko" is also a mediation on loss, but in a different way: the loss of Henrik's identity, as a young Japanese man raised by Danish parents and living in Paris. He aimlessly floats through his life, trying to get his footing, and interacting with other foreigners along the way. Each person shapes his life in some way, setting him on a course to Fumiko. Similarly, in "After Fumiko", Henrik is set adrift again, trying to find what is means to move on after you love someone.
I was surprised to see all the lukewarm reviews of this one on Goodreads, because I really enjoyed it. While there may not be a strong plot line that runs through the books, the recurring themes tied it nicely together. If anything, I think the synopsis sells the book a little short, making it seem like it is going to be a ghost story. But instead, it is a philosophical look at loss, connections, and belonging in a city that is not your own. There are certainly some weird parts (the anatomy lab chapter was a little too visceral). Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book.
August 3, 2021
via my blog:https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
“𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬,” 𝐈 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐲, 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬, “𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭.”
This is a peculiar novel, and it truly is like a dream, where you wake up with feelings, an uncomfortable foreboding that something bad is coming and yet unable to prevent it. It’s all over the place, dizzying, confusing, and yet you’re hooked, bombarded by distorted views, thoughts. There doesn’t seem to be an anchor, except Henrik’s guilt in the aftermath of his girlfriend Fumiko’s death. A student at Paris University, Henrik Blatand is not quite Japanese nor is he Danish like his adopted parents, but something in between. Meeting his girlfriend was no different from other interactions in his life as she immediately assumes he is Japanese, like her. Despite learning he is, in fact, Scandinavian, the two hit it off and before long Henrik has fallen in love with her “strangeness”. Not much time passes before he discovers why she is going to school in Paris- as a cure for a nervous breakdown. When she locks herself in her dorm room, nothing makes her leave it, she won’t budge. He leaves her food, and checks on her in a half-assed way as the days collect , but always remains focused on his obsession- translating Gadbois, a blind physicist’s, work. Between eating and using the bathroom, Henrik is consumed with his future. When he comes home one night, after meeting with Gadbois, he is met with sirens and discovers Fumiko has committed suicide.
Next, the reader is privy to a chapter titled ‘Don’t Carry Me Too Far Away’, all about a dissection room and cadavers. The student is dissecting a body, curious about the inner workings of things since girlhood. The reader feels very much a part of the experience as is the student, hungry for the forbidden, the hidden source of us all. It is Fumiko’s body that is being dissected, and someone who loved her, loves her still haunts the scene.
After her death, Henrik is troubled by guilt that he assisted, in a sense, in her suicide by way of avoidance. He sees her, feels her, thinks there are signs, that maybe she is still communicating. I found this fascinating, these little signs when he ignored Fumiko’s slow suicide so heartily. His mind is deeply troubled. Following Asian women, knowing they are certainly not Fumiko, but helpless to do anything else. Besides feeling haunted by his regrets, he struggles with the limbo of identities. He is neither one thing nor another, multilingual and measured by different standards, he is told the career he has chosen won’t be easy. Too, he often wonders about his blood parents at odd moments and his adoptive ones with joy that even if he doesn’t have their genes he picked up their characteristics and still the reader senses some distance in that thinking too, some comfortable remove. Time passes and his language skills are a great asset.
In later chapters, he becomes a dependable presence for his Goddaughter, Gémanuelle “Gém”, who often pretends Henrik (and not her real dad René) , is her father. He never says no to her, and with her father René, always absorbed in his film scripts or away on business, Henrik is ever present. She becomes as vital to him as a real daughter, filling a void, possibly one left long ago by Fumiko. Is this what lurks at the core of his loyalty and devotion to Gém, the absence of Fumiko? He upsets the balance of his friendship with René in playing daddy to Gém, leading to a temporary banishment from their life made worse by their relocation to Rome. It is there, under an Italian director, that René is pushing his little girl, against Henrik’s advice, to star in a strange film about crows and everything gets even weirder. In the film, she will star with a murder of crows surrounding her, befriending her. Henrik becomes, through the filming, a guardian of sorts. She is a gifted actress, a beautiful, golden child who is always asked to play roles for the men in her life. She doesn’t resemble Fumiko and yet serves as a chance of redemption in his failures. Why is he so desperate to protect her? From what? He is destined, in the end, to disappoint her as he did Fumiko.
It’s a novel that I feel I didn’t fully understand and yet there were moments that moved me. Henrik is a ghost himself, in many ways. Distant with Fumiko and overly present with Gém and yet why? Why as a stand in, rather than having his own life, his own family. This book is as broken as a dream and as strange and yet I kept reading. I don’t know that every reader will connect to it, but I did. No doubt it is a strange story. I’m curious about Kim’s future work.
Publication Date: August 3, 2021
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
“𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬,” 𝐈 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐲, 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬, “𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭.”
This is a peculiar novel, and it truly is like a dream, where you wake up with feelings, an uncomfortable foreboding that something bad is coming and yet unable to prevent it. It’s all over the place, dizzying, confusing, and yet you’re hooked, bombarded by distorted views, thoughts. There doesn’t seem to be an anchor, except Henrik’s guilt in the aftermath of his girlfriend Fumiko’s death. A student at Paris University, Henrik Blatand is not quite Japanese nor is he Danish like his adopted parents, but something in between. Meeting his girlfriend was no different from other interactions in his life as she immediately assumes he is Japanese, like her. Despite learning he is, in fact, Scandinavian, the two hit it off and before long Henrik has fallen in love with her “strangeness”. Not much time passes before he discovers why she is going to school in Paris- as a cure for a nervous breakdown. When she locks herself in her dorm room, nothing makes her leave it, she won’t budge. He leaves her food, and checks on her in a half-assed way as the days collect , but always remains focused on his obsession- translating Gadbois, a blind physicist’s, work. Between eating and using the bathroom, Henrik is consumed with his future. When he comes home one night, after meeting with Gadbois, he is met with sirens and discovers Fumiko has committed suicide.
Next, the reader is privy to a chapter titled ‘Don’t Carry Me Too Far Away’, all about a dissection room and cadavers. The student is dissecting a body, curious about the inner workings of things since girlhood. The reader feels very much a part of the experience as is the student, hungry for the forbidden, the hidden source of us all. It is Fumiko’s body that is being dissected, and someone who loved her, loves her still haunts the scene.
After her death, Henrik is troubled by guilt that he assisted, in a sense, in her suicide by way of avoidance. He sees her, feels her, thinks there are signs, that maybe she is still communicating. I found this fascinating, these little signs when he ignored Fumiko’s slow suicide so heartily. His mind is deeply troubled. Following Asian women, knowing they are certainly not Fumiko, but helpless to do anything else. Besides feeling haunted by his regrets, he struggles with the limbo of identities. He is neither one thing nor another, multilingual and measured by different standards, he is told the career he has chosen won’t be easy. Too, he often wonders about his blood parents at odd moments and his adoptive ones with joy that even if he doesn’t have their genes he picked up their characteristics and still the reader senses some distance in that thinking too, some comfortable remove. Time passes and his language skills are a great asset.
In later chapters, he becomes a dependable presence for his Goddaughter, Gémanuelle “Gém”, who often pretends Henrik (and not her real dad René) , is her father. He never says no to her, and with her father René, always absorbed in his film scripts or away on business, Henrik is ever present. She becomes as vital to him as a real daughter, filling a void, possibly one left long ago by Fumiko. Is this what lurks at the core of his loyalty and devotion to Gém, the absence of Fumiko? He upsets the balance of his friendship with René in playing daddy to Gém, leading to a temporary banishment from their life made worse by their relocation to Rome. It is there, under an Italian director, that René is pushing his little girl, against Henrik’s advice, to star in a strange film about crows and everything gets even weirder. In the film, she will star with a murder of crows surrounding her, befriending her. Henrik becomes, through the filming, a guardian of sorts. She is a gifted actress, a beautiful, golden child who is always asked to play roles for the men in her life. She doesn’t resemble Fumiko and yet serves as a chance of redemption in his failures. Why is he so desperate to protect her? From what? He is destined, in the end, to disappoint her as he did Fumiko.
It’s a novel that I feel I didn’t fully understand and yet there were moments that moved me. Henrik is a ghost himself, in many ways. Distant with Fumiko and overly present with Gém and yet why? Why as a stand in, rather than having his own life, his own family. This book is as broken as a dream and as strange and yet I kept reading. I don’t know that every reader will connect to it, but I did. No doubt it is a strange story. I’m curious about Kim’s future work.
Publication Date: August 3, 2021
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
March 21, 2022
“There are ghosts everywhere, she finally said. The city is filled with them. It’s become a giant cemetery.”
Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost is a literary fiction novella told in three parts. It’s an exploration of the ghosts of our past, and how we search for them long after we should have given them up.
Henrik is a Japanese adoptee raised by Danish parents. In a sea of Scandinavian kids, two things occur. One, his parents remove all mirrors from the house save those too high for a young Henrik to view. He forgets or doesn’t realize he looks different from them until an older age. Second, kids at his school terrorize him until he moves to a new school in Stockholm. He therefore speaks Danish and Swedish when he heads to Paris to finish his thesis. He begins translating French to English and eventually becomes a translator in his third and fourth languages.
“I remember thinking that tracking down a blond-haired Swede in Japan couldn’t be all that difficult, a much simpler task than looking for my biological parents, which would be like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack.”
This novel deals in identity, especially an identity that that creates confusion, either external or internal. The narrator muses, “Or perhaps that is the essence of attraction: a longing to see something of oneself in another,” when remembering his first Asian-Danish girlfriend. It’s with this context that the one short story in the book about Fumiko, the only Japanese girl whom Henrik has dated comes into play. She dies by suicide, without much explanation in the book despite an entire chapter about her dissection by med school students. Her body rots in the classroom leaving two of the students to quit altogether. She casts a shadow over the rest of the book. The readers knows (or think we know) additional facts that raise more questions about Fumiko but suffice to say that Henrik hardly knows her at all. This is part of one recurring theme in the book, the light and the dark of our knowledge.
Henrik is adrift and makes many friends over the course of the book, including a whole group of Koreans who in a sub-anecdote lead a North Korea-tour for Korean tourists. He finally befriends Rene and eventually becomes godfather to Gem, Rene’s daughter. This is the saddest part of the book—he feels like he’s her father but no one could mistake them because he’s biologically Asian. When she moves away, he’s devastated.
Late in the book, a white Danish woman realizes Henrik can understand her and it’s the first time he feels like his inherent Danishness is perceptible to anyone. She is adopted and has just found a biological brother. This rounds out the story of Henrik—his greatest love is for someone he considers family who is not related to him, like his parents. He can never truly be Gem’s parent; even if he adopted her, he would have to constantly prove he was her guardian given their appearance.
There is an echo in the book about the impossibility of proving a negative. How can the reader prove Henrik is not seeing Fumiko randomly around Paris, or Gem looking for her long-gone cat Bors in a different city, or Rene believing he is being stalked by crows in Rome? We can’t, we can’t and we can’t.
Trigger warning: death by suicide
Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost is a literary fiction novella told in three parts. It’s an exploration of the ghosts of our past, and how we search for them long after we should have given them up.
Henrik is a Japanese adoptee raised by Danish parents. In a sea of Scandinavian kids, two things occur. One, his parents remove all mirrors from the house save those too high for a young Henrik to view. He forgets or doesn’t realize he looks different from them until an older age. Second, kids at his school terrorize him until he moves to a new school in Stockholm. He therefore speaks Danish and Swedish when he heads to Paris to finish his thesis. He begins translating French to English and eventually becomes a translator in his third and fourth languages.
“I remember thinking that tracking down a blond-haired Swede in Japan couldn’t be all that difficult, a much simpler task than looking for my biological parents, which would be like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack.”
This novel deals in identity, especially an identity that that creates confusion, either external or internal. The narrator muses, “Or perhaps that is the essence of attraction: a longing to see something of oneself in another,” when remembering his first Asian-Danish girlfriend. It’s with this context that the one short story in the book about Fumiko, the only Japanese girl whom Henrik has dated comes into play. She dies by suicide, without much explanation in the book despite an entire chapter about her dissection by med school students. Her body rots in the classroom leaving two of the students to quit altogether. She casts a shadow over the rest of the book. The readers knows (or think we know) additional facts that raise more questions about Fumiko but suffice to say that Henrik hardly knows her at all. This is part of one recurring theme in the book, the light and the dark of our knowledge.
Henrik is adrift and makes many friends over the course of the book, including a whole group of Koreans who in a sub-anecdote lead a North Korea-tour for Korean tourists. He finally befriends Rene and eventually becomes godfather to Gem, Rene’s daughter. This is the saddest part of the book—he feels like he’s her father but no one could mistake them because he’s biologically Asian. When she moves away, he’s devastated.
Late in the book, a white Danish woman realizes Henrik can understand her and it’s the first time he feels like his inherent Danishness is perceptible to anyone. She is adopted and has just found a biological brother. This rounds out the story of Henrik—his greatest love is for someone he considers family who is not related to him, like his parents. He can never truly be Gem’s parent; even if he adopted her, he would have to constantly prove he was her guardian given their appearance.
There is an echo in the book about the impossibility of proving a negative. How can the reader prove Henrik is not seeing Fumiko randomly around Paris, or Gem looking for her long-gone cat Bors in a different city, or Rene believing he is being stalked by crows in Rome? We can’t, we can’t and we can’t.
Trigger warning: death by suicide
May 19, 2023
Between a book’s cover, title, and dust jacket, a lot can be done to convince a reader to pick it up off the shelf. At some point between first glance and the act of reading, you might convince yourself of the qualities or plot. It’s possible to convince yourself that you already know what the experience of reading the book is going to be, and how you’re going to feel about it.
Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost has a surreal Eiphel tower on the cover, that looks as if it’s more drug-fueled mirage than actual sight. The dust jacket pitch would have me believe that David Hoon Kim’s debut novel is about a translation student whose girlfriend spends a month inside of her dorm room before emerging dead. Herself, or her doppelgängers, are then found all over Paris and through his life. I was imagining a mind-bending ghost story that dealt with personhood and gave equal page time to both male and female protagonists. Maybe it’s my fault that I was expecting the book to be more of a party, or that there would be a literal ghost. What isn’t my fault, were the chapters that felt like they had nothing to do with the original story, or characters that disappeared after they served the purpose of being interesting in front of main character Henrik.
David Hoon Kim wrote sequences that had me twisting through concepts and ideas that could have worked really well. Kim could have written about Henrik’s relationship with the star translation student and his eventual spiral into celebrity madness. Kim could have stuck to writing about the medical student, dissecting in the name of finishing the work of a former doctor she idolized. Even Henrik’s time spent in translation school could have served as a strong story with all the imagery he wrote through the rest of the book. Unfortunately the time jumps and lack of connective tissue between stories led to a confusing read. For much of it, I was unsure who the narrator was, whether the women being described were supposed to be Fumiko’s doppelgängers, or at times what genre book I was supposed to be reading. It’s as if Kim took a series of really good writings and threw them into a blender to somehow communicate a more literary choice than those that the individual stories held.
What Kim does well, he does really well. There’s an entire chapter about Korean tour guides showing Korean tourists around Paris, during which they discover something that should not exist and it begins to unravel the community of Korean Parisians that have found their community. It comes from nowhere and contains characters that haven’t been introduced until that chapter, all of whom I wanted to know much more of. The pacing is great and there are several strong hooks that kept me interested to the end of the section, even though it had nothing to do with any of the book before or after it. I could be wrong about how out of place it actually was, but that’s the sense I had throughout the novel. A general feeling of confusion, that nothing made sense or fit with any of the other information I had up to that point possessed. It’s an accomplishment to write so well that faults a reader might see in a novel can be described as artistic intent. I may not have enjoyed every moment of it, but I have to admit it was good.
Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost has a surreal Eiphel tower on the cover, that looks as if it’s more drug-fueled mirage than actual sight. The dust jacket pitch would have me believe that David Hoon Kim’s debut novel is about a translation student whose girlfriend spends a month inside of her dorm room before emerging dead. Herself, or her doppelgängers, are then found all over Paris and through his life. I was imagining a mind-bending ghost story that dealt with personhood and gave equal page time to both male and female protagonists. Maybe it’s my fault that I was expecting the book to be more of a party, or that there would be a literal ghost. What isn’t my fault, were the chapters that felt like they had nothing to do with the original story, or characters that disappeared after they served the purpose of being interesting in front of main character Henrik.
David Hoon Kim wrote sequences that had me twisting through concepts and ideas that could have worked really well. Kim could have written about Henrik’s relationship with the star translation student and his eventual spiral into celebrity madness. Kim could have stuck to writing about the medical student, dissecting in the name of finishing the work of a former doctor she idolized. Even Henrik’s time spent in translation school could have served as a strong story with all the imagery he wrote through the rest of the book. Unfortunately the time jumps and lack of connective tissue between stories led to a confusing read. For much of it, I was unsure who the narrator was, whether the women being described were supposed to be Fumiko’s doppelgängers, or at times what genre book I was supposed to be reading. It’s as if Kim took a series of really good writings and threw them into a blender to somehow communicate a more literary choice than those that the individual stories held.
What Kim does well, he does really well. There’s an entire chapter about Korean tour guides showing Korean tourists around Paris, during which they discover something that should not exist and it begins to unravel the community of Korean Parisians that have found their community. It comes from nowhere and contains characters that haven’t been introduced until that chapter, all of whom I wanted to know much more of. The pacing is great and there are several strong hooks that kept me interested to the end of the section, even though it had nothing to do with any of the book before or after it. I could be wrong about how out of place it actually was, but that’s the sense I had throughout the novel. A general feeling of confusion, that nothing made sense or fit with any of the other information I had up to that point possessed. It’s an accomplishment to write so well that faults a reader might see in a novel can be described as artistic intent. I may not have enjoyed every moment of it, but I have to admit it was good.
September 18, 2021
Divided into three main parts (Fumiko, Before Fumiko, After Fumiko) Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost (2021) explores themes of identity, loss, the passage of time, and the relationships that formed a man’s life. A good portion of the work revolves around the main character’s (henrik) girlfriend, Fumiko, who locks herself in her dormroom to commit suicide (not a spoiler it’s written on the back of the book, relax) and how she then “haunts” Henrik with the idea that you never really know anyone and all of your relationships are just mirror of yourself. We never actually see Fumiko except for while she’s being dissected by an anatomy class later, but she’s probably the most interesting section of the book--which also deals with beautifully handled concepts of race, language barriers (multiple sections of the book are written in french and Fumiko is clearly not french so the use of miscommunicated bits of language adding an intensely unique layer of technique to the prose where there are multiple meanings based on the proper translation of a word vs a characters mistranslation) loss etc etc--because the following two sections (before Fumiko / After Fumiko) feel so jarringly out of place and shoehorned that it’s hard the believe they’re not totally separate novellas sharing nothing in common with the first section besides being in Paris and having the same listless uninteresting protagonist. Before Fumiko deals with Henrik moving to Paris and “getting to know the city” and being obsessed with a girl he meets on a train; and After Fumiko deals with his adulthood of being a translator, and caring for his god-daughter. While it’s easy to see the three main relationships (fumiko / girl on train / goddaughter) structuring and giving meaning to major portions of his life, the sections just don’t seem to jigsaw together in a way that gives a cohesive narrative. There is also an overarching theme of Paris transforming from a place of wonder and hope and romance (seeing a girl on a train on the way there and hoping to meet her again) to eventually being “haunted” with the memories of all the things that didn’t quite come to be. In a classic Murakami fashion; years pass in a page-turn and Henrik goes from being 22 to 45 to 30 to 22 all over again within a chapter, and it’s clear (at least in my interpretation) that the sections of the book are modeled after other great works (Fumiko is incredibly murakami-ish, Before Fumiko is very much Hemingway’s a Movable Feast, and After Fumiko ((I hate to say it)) is oddly nabokov-lolita-ish) I would strongly recommend reading the first section--Fumiko--and seeing how you get along with it; and luckily, you sort of can because half of it was published in the New Yorker in 2007 under the title “Sweetheart Sorrow.” And I feel that title, best describes the entire work “There was an expression my father sometimes used, back in Denmark, kæreste sorg—sweetheart sorrow—to describe the sadness one feels at the thought of a love affair nearing its end. A sadness one is not yet ready to face.”
August 19, 2021
4 stars
beautiful writing, atmospheric, intriguing
I am grateful to RB Media Recorded Books for sending me a copy of this audiobook for review.
This is such an interesting book. The three stories in here are very different, but the atmosphere was maintained throughout. I think this comes from the writing style. The stories felt mysterious and disjointed, but this is a perfect match for the content. The stories are not plot driven or particularly filled with character work, but rather it is a swirling journey through the mind of a character who seems to be permanently on the edge of an internal crisis.
This is a story about being displaced and searching for connection. Each story is rich with a sense of longing, and a creeping desperation as we experience the perspective of our main character. Henrik is ethnically Japanese but was raised by his Danish adopted parents, and he studies translation. These factors add to the sense of displacement and of him simply existing in an "in-between' state. This also extends to the other characters all feel very hazy and mysterious, and Henrik struggles to define them as he also searches for his identity.
I do find that the beginning story was the strongest of the three, but I enjoyed the book as a whole. I would recommend to readers of literary fiction and also for fans of authors like Murakami.
beautiful writing, atmospheric, intriguing
I am grateful to RB Media Recorded Books for sending me a copy of this audiobook for review.
This is such an interesting book. The three stories in here are very different, but the atmosphere was maintained throughout. I think this comes from the writing style. The stories felt mysterious and disjointed, but this is a perfect match for the content. The stories are not plot driven or particularly filled with character work, but rather it is a swirling journey through the mind of a character who seems to be permanently on the edge of an internal crisis.
This is a story about being displaced and searching for connection. Each story is rich with a sense of longing, and a creeping desperation as we experience the perspective of our main character. Henrik is ethnically Japanese but was raised by his Danish adopted parents, and he studies translation. These factors add to the sense of displacement and of him simply existing in an "in-between' state. This also extends to the other characters all feel very hazy and mysterious, and Henrik struggles to define them as he also searches for his identity.
I do find that the beginning story was the strongest of the three, but I enjoyed the book as a whole. I would recommend to readers of literary fiction and also for fans of authors like Murakami.
December 28, 2021
• a novel about a man, Henrick, born to Japanese parents, adopted and raised in Denmark, who then moves to Paris to write a dissertation about magic in literature
• Henrick loses all motivation, he stops studying and just aimlessly floats around Paris eventually meeting a Korean student, Fumiko
• Fumiko and Henrik start a relationship, and one day, for no reason at all Fumiko locks herself in her room and dies
• the novel follows Fumiko and Henrick - Fumiko's body is donated to a nearby medical school where two students tasked with her dissection fall inexplicably in love with her
• Henrick continues to lives life aimlessly, making friends in strange places and just as easily setting his friends aside as soon as difficulty arises
• the last part of the book tells of Henrick's friendship with his God daughter. A friendship which teeters close to the edge of inappropriateness
I read this because my time in Paris was magic and I felt like a trip down memory lane. In this respect, this book did not disappoint. It is a lovely read, though unconventional and challenging at times in the subject matter it addresses.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 9, 2021
Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the early ebook. Henrik, Japanese born but raised by adoptive Danish parents, finds his life forever changed while at university in Paris, as his girlfriend Fumiko shuts herself away in her room and refuses to leave or answer the door. She’s done this before, but this time her door will be knocked down by the authorities and they will find that she has killed herself. From this episode, we jump back and forward in time to see other women in Henrik’s life. There’s brief talk about his adoptive mother being dead, an episode where he is in college in Denmark and his girlfriend leaves him for their shared thesis advisor, which prompts his movie to Paris. And years later, working as a translator, he becomes godfather to the daughter of his best friend, a fellow translator who he went to school with. His goddaughter, Gem, becomes like a daughter to him, which feels right to Henrik and inappropriate to others. It’s fascinating to see how these few relationships form the life Henrik ends up living.
May 11, 2021
Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my review.
#NetGalley #FarrarStraussandGiroux #DavidHoonKim
This book tells the story of a man who is obsessed with the suicide of his girlfriend. This obsession drives him to examine himself and his past.
This author is very talented as a writer. His words are very poetic and his imagery is effective. The themes running throughout, such as grief, obsession, relationships etc. are well developed and deep.
This was a tough one. I had a lot of trouble caring about the main character, Henrik, or his plight.
The death of Fumiko was the main event of this, or so I thought. It was definitely the focus at first, but it seems to have been forgotten towards the middle and the end. I’m not entirely sure what the aim was there except maybe a character study. I didn’t find it very engaging.
I wish I had better things to say here as this story had a good foundation. This author is very talented. Unfortunately, overall this book wasn’t for me.
#NetGalley #FarrarStraussandGiroux #DavidHoonKim
This book tells the story of a man who is obsessed with the suicide of his girlfriend. This obsession drives him to examine himself and his past.
This author is very talented as a writer. His words are very poetic and his imagery is effective. The themes running throughout, such as grief, obsession, relationships etc. are well developed and deep.
This was a tough one. I had a lot of trouble caring about the main character, Henrik, or his plight.
The death of Fumiko was the main event of this, or so I thought. It was definitely the focus at first, but it seems to have been forgotten towards the middle and the end. I’m not entirely sure what the aim was there except maybe a character study. I didn’t find it very engaging.
I wish I had better things to say here as this story had a good foundation. This author is very talented. Unfortunately, overall this book wasn’t for me.
January 16, 2025
I fear this story was too artsy and abstract for me. I expected a lot more about Fumiko, but didn’t really get anything. I did not understand why Gem was brought in, not much of the entire story to be completely honest.
It was depressing, and not in a raw, honest way. It just followed a bunch of disillusioned, failing university students, and ended with a conversation with a strange woman on a train.
I would’ve much rather delved in Henrik’s identity as a third culture kid or Fumiko’s story… I just feel like there was no plot to this. The premise is based on Fumiko’s death, but after a little while, the story loses its connection to this event.
It’s entirely possible the plot of this book flew over my head, I can admit that. However, I am really curious to see what others have to say about it, because I feel lost.
Overall this book just didn’t wow me. I didn’t understand the plot, and the writing was fine, but didn’t knock me off my feet. I feel I missed some cultural references, but that might be because I’m American.
It was depressing, and not in a raw, honest way. It just followed a bunch of disillusioned, failing university students, and ended with a conversation with a strange woman on a train.
I would’ve much rather delved in Henrik’s identity as a third culture kid or Fumiko’s story… I just feel like there was no plot to this. The premise is based on Fumiko’s death, but after a little while, the story loses its connection to this event.
It’s entirely possible the plot of this book flew over my head, I can admit that. However, I am really curious to see what others have to say about it, because I feel lost.
Overall this book just didn’t wow me. I didn’t understand the plot, and the writing was fine, but didn’t knock me off my feet. I feel I missed some cultural references, but that might be because I’m American.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 15, 2021
I tried to give this book a chance. The audiobook's narrator's voice was breathy and grating, which did not help the novel itself.
The book attempts to tell the story about Daniel and his relationships with others, in particular, Fumiko. She kills herself while he figuratively wrings his hands about their relationship.
Part two has graphic descriptions of what med students do to Fumiko's body in their studies. This is the only time in the book where anything happens, and even this is boring.
It seems that the author wanted to present as very intelligent and maybe ethereal, but it just comes off as boring and confusing. The first person perspective likely doesn't help, as we get so little from other characters. I could not wait to put this down and stop listening, so if it got better in the last third, I apologize for my poor review, but I doubt it.
I was given an ARC of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
The book attempts to tell the story about Daniel and his relationships with others, in particular, Fumiko. She kills herself while he figuratively wrings his hands about their relationship.
Part two has graphic descriptions of what med students do to Fumiko's body in their studies. This is the only time in the book where anything happens, and even this is boring.
It seems that the author wanted to present as very intelligent and maybe ethereal, but it just comes off as boring and confusing. The first person perspective likely doesn't help, as we get so little from other characters. I could not wait to put this down and stop listening, so if it got better in the last third, I apologize for my poor review, but I doubt it.
I was given an ARC of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
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