Marie G. Lee

What a stunning novel! With amazing storytelling and a combination of social satire and devastating historical insight into the Korean War, The Evening Hero is the story of a Korean American doctor, from his childhood in war-torn Korea to the near future.

Dr. Yungman Kwak is almost a pathetic character, a nuisance to his wife, hopelessly anachronistic to his son, filled with guilt for leaving a brother behind in Korea. In Minnesota, he is surrounded by Finns named Maki who think he is Chinese show more and patients displaying anti-immigrant signs. His frustrated wife, who in Korea would have been a successful doctor, spends all her time volunteering at a Christian church run by the Kimm family.

After the rural hospital closes, Dr Kwak is forced to retire, but he has no hobbies, nor even a bucket list. His son Einstein Albert Schweitzer Nobel Kwak is part of a new venture and gets his dad a position in Retailicine, medical care offered in mall-based retail outlets. At the mall HoSPAtal, Dr. Kwak performs Brazilians on his ‘patients’.

In comparison to his life in America, the back story of how his family survived the Korean War, how he got into medical school, and the courtship of his wife, reveals a different man, a man of courage and persistence. It’s also a horrendous story of survival and loss. Continual war and devastation, from the Japanese occupation to the arbitrary division of Korea after the war, will likely be a revelation to most American readers.

“Sometimes, Yungman wishes he had something akin to a computer chip, a floppy disk he could just insert in his friend’s head and Ken would experience and learn and know exactly what he’d gone through, from age ten to now.”
The Evening Hero by Marie Myung-Ok Lee

When the doctor and his wife join with Doctors Without Borders to return to North Korea, the area he knew as ‘home’, he finally lives up to his name–The Evening Hero–for its never too late in life to fulfill one’s legacy and duty.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

This novel is part family saga, part immigration story, part critique of the American medical system/establishment. I really liked it, and I realized that I have read enough fiction and nonfiction about Korea that I can recognize the common historic threads in these books.

Yungman "William" Kwak has spent his career as the OB/GYN in small town Minnesota, after doing a residency in Birmingham, Alabama. As a Korean refugee, he took the positions available to him and was glad to have them and to show more get to practice medicine at all, after sneaking his way into taking the Korean medical school entrance exams--growing up during the Korean War, he knew hunger, death, disappearance, stealing, and the usual refugee life.

When the hospital is bought out and he is forced into retirement, he has to think. He meets his wife's church friends, and he thinks about the roads he did not take--and the road his wife did not take. He begins working for the same healthcare startup his son works for, and he vascillates between acceptance and horror. He thinks about his brother and his own guilt at abandoning him in Korea--and he finally opens all of the letters he has ignored over years. His guilt and wonder at how the years have flown lead him down a path he never expected to take.

I especially loved the parts about startup culture and American medicine--from buyouts, closing hospitals, profits, stock options, health care in mall storefronts, lawsuits, watches as surveillance tools, and more. Parts of SANUS made laugh, parts were horrifying--but it was all great.In some ways these satirical (yet not) bits did not mesh well with the more traditional family saga style of the rest of the novel--but I really enjoyed it all. I would love to read a dystopia or post-apocalyptic novel by this author, I think she could do a fabulous job because she has very clever and biting ideas.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with an egalley in exchange for this honest review.

Books with similar themes:
If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim
The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness by Shin Kyung-sook
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese show less

Ellen is a Korean-American teenager in her final year of high school. Her story is about applying for college, gymnastics training, Ellen’s relationships with her best friend and her first boyfriend, dealing with racism at school and with her parents’ expectations that she will follow her sister to Harvard.

It’s very short, first published in 1993. I was aware of all the places where a YA novel written today would be allowed to give more details and to expand the story, but it was still show more interesting.

“The people who call me names don’t study,” I say. “I guess I feel I can use the negative energy to do something productive, like prepare to go to college while they’re preparing to live in Arkin and work as dental technicians.”
“What’s wrong with being a dental technician?” He is smiling, but I hear the challenge in his voice.
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “But it’s not a life I’d like for myself, so I think of studying as a way to get me to college and away from those people.”
“That’s a pretty complicated thought process to go through when someone calls you a name,” Mr Rose says.
“The hurt from someone calling you names is complicated,” I fire back. “It’s not easy to make it go away. The olden times were simpler: if your name was ever smudged, you could just challenge that person to a duel.” show less

Trigger Warnings: Racism, classism, disabled slurs and bullying

Georgia is a Korean-American high school junior who just moved to a new town in the suburbs so that her brother, Leo, who has significant developmental disabilities, can get better assistance. At her new school, she makes friends with members of the hagwon that runs in the back of the Korean barber shop. Her parents have a rough relationship due to the strain of raising Leo and Georgie does everything she can to help be a show more caretaker of her brother.

I slightly remember reading Of Mice and Men in high school - not every detail, but I remember the ending, so I was very curious to see how this book would go.

This book definitely deals with a lot that I honestly wasn’t expecting. Georgia takes on a lot of responsibilities in the caretaking for Leo and I was always forgetting he was the older brother - even though she talks about how he’s a big, strong young man. I’m glad her parents were aware of the situation though and had brought it up to her a few times in the novel because it does take a toll on her for sure.

I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. I was rooting for Georgia and Leo and even though in the back of my mind, I kind of knew what would happen, I was still shocked at how the ending played out. It did come a little quickly for me, but I still liked the open-ending of it too.

This won’t be a book for everyone, but I still think it’s an important book that covers a lot of topics you don’t read about often.

*Thank you Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for a digital advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review show less