Matthew Hooton

Matthew Hooton's Typhoon Kingdom is a terrific book which deserves more attention than it's had. I bought it last year in a sale at UWAP, where you can still buy it for a song, and I'm here to tell you that you should get a copy before they're all gone. This is the blurb that attracted my interest:

rel="nofollow" target="_top">Based on the seventeenth-century journal of a shipwrecked Dutch sailor, and testimonies of surviving Korean 'Comfort Women,' Typhoon Kingdom is a story of war, romance and survival that brings to life the devastating history of Korea at crucial moments in its struggle for independence.

In 1653, the Dutch East India Company’s Sparrowhawk is wrecked on a Korean island, and Hae-jo, a local fisherman, guides the ship’s bookkeeper to Seoul in search of his surviving shipmates. The two men, one who has never ventured to the mainland, and the other unable to speak the language, are soon forced to choose between loyalty to each other, and a king determined to maintain his country’s isolation.

Three-hundred years later, in the midst of the Japanese occupation, Yoo-jin is taken from her family and forced into prostitution, and a young soldier must navigate the Japanese surrender and ensuing chaos of the Korean War to find her.

Matthew Hooton is a teacher of creative writing at the University of Adelaide, but has also worked as an editor and teacher in South Korea where as his UWAP author page tells us, he first encountered stories of the Dutch shipwreck and plight of Korean ‘Comfort Women.’

His first novel, Deloume Road, which also features scenes set during the Korean War, was published in 2010 by Knopf/Vintage in Canada, and Jonathan Cape/Vintage in the UK. It was awarded the Greene & Heaton Prize for best manuscript from the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA Program in 2008, and the Guardian’s ‘Not the Booker Prize’ in 2010.

(Now I'm on a mission to source a copy of Matthew Hooton's first novel Deloume Road. None of my libraries have it but I'll find one somewhere! Amazon has it.)

Typhoon Kingdom begins in the 17th century, also known as the Age of Exploration. Though Hooton's characters land in the hermit kingdom of Corea (Korea) by misadventure, the novel shows that lands being 'explored' by the Europeans were already inhabited and had their own government, customs and foreign policy. Unfortunately for the sailors of the shipwrecked 'Sparrowhawk', trading with Nagasaki for the Dutch East India Company, six of them are escorted to the king on the mainland and the other is covertly whisked away to a much worse fate. While the six are not ill-treated as they expect to be, they are not allowed to return home because they have knowledge of modern military weapons that the king intends to acquire from them. (Then, as now, there is hostility between Korea and Japan.) Van Persie, however, rescued by the fisherman Hae-Jo, is kidnapped by a pseudo-shaman who first tortures him, ostensibly to appease the spirits, and then exploits him as a caged exhibit because his blond hair and blue eyes makes him an oddity.

This first section of the novel is told from the perspectives of different characters: the fisherman Hae-Jo; the fictionalised Hyojong, the 17th king of Joseon; and the shipwrecked Dutch sailor Van Persie. Hae-Jo is poor and ignorant, but his life on the island has insulated him from the cruel mores of the mainland. He has a sense of humanity which guides him to rescue Van Persie and try to reunite him with the others. Ji-hoon had warned him about what to expect on his perilous journey:

'Stay clear of the King's roads, take shelter in the trees at night, and do not speak to anyone if you can help it. The King has spies in every village, at every crossing.'

Ji-hoon had also told him many useful and worrying things about the mainland—further rumours of famine, and customs that seem beyond belief.

'In the capital, there are men who own more slaves than we have grains of rice. This is true. If a woman kills her husband she is buried up to her neck by the roadside with a saw left next to her. So I am told. And no woman, not even the rich, are permitted outside of their homes during daylight.'

And though he cannot help but laugh at the thought of telling the women divers of his own island such a thing, he is troubled by how deeply different the customs of the mainland are, and he fears he knows even less than he once imagined. He is a poor guide, a stranger leading a stranger through a strange land. (pp.58-9)

Through the terrors of Van Persie's experience—alone, vulnerable, unable to communicate and having no agency of his own—Hooton deftly portrays an inversion of what so often happened when Europeans captured 'exhibits' to take home for exploitation. But he does find mercy in the woman who cares for his wounds and from Hae-Jo who risks everything in his quest.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/03/11/typhoon-kingdom-2019-by-matthew-hooton/… (more)

Deloume Road centres on the the varied residents of the road of the title, Mill Bay, Vancouver Island. The residents include a Native Canadian, a young pregnant Korean widow, an Estonian hoping for his family to join him, and descendants of the original settlers of Deloume Road. But at the centre of the story the four young boys of around ten years or less, Matthew and his retarded brother Andy, Matthew's friend Josh, and the excluded Miles.

The story, told in the third person, follows the events of a brief period in the recent past, but occasionally looks back about one hundred years to 1899 and the activities of the surveyor Douglas Deloume, whose name the road bears, and interspersed throughout is a present day commentary in the first person by one of the residents whose identity we gradually deduce.

Through the course of the account we learn about the characters, their history, their tragedies and their joys, but the story comes to a fateful climax following the innocent discovery of a hidden item with a history unbeknown to its finders.

The format of the account is interesting, told in very short chapters which in revolving sequence concentrate on each of the characters; often we see the same event from the different perspective of two or more of the residents.

The result is a fully involving read, we really get to know each individual, their worries and fears, and their interactions with others. Most are good hearted and well intentioned, most but not all. All are well drawn, and the boys are particularly appealing, Matthew is a natural leader and charmingly protective of his younger backward brother Andy, delightful in his simplicity; Miles although living with his parents is very much a lost and neglected boy. The story is beautifully told, imbued with a real sense of place and restrained community; pervading much of the story is a tension, a suggestion that something is about to happen, and when it eventually becomes clearer what is about to occur the outcome is never sure until it happens.

The conclusion is relative open, but what especially appealed was a late revelation that added a touch of irony, a sense of albeit tragic justice to a past event as it had a direct bearing on the present. Altogether Deloume Road is a most involving and moving story.… (more)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The story revolves around the residents of Deloume Road on Vancouver Island. Told in short chapters, the characters are beautifully drawn and the attention to detail in the flora and fauna of the island is just remarkable.
The 4 young boys’ role in the unrolling story reminded me a little of “Stand by Me”/ "Different Seasons". One of them, Andy, is autistic and his role was depicted very thoughtfully and skilfully. The adults range from a bullish, violent father who deals in junk, to a gentle, bemused Ukrainian butcher who has come to Vancouver Island to make a better life for his family….a family he is still waiting to join him. Irene, a Korean widow who is 8 months pregnant, cuts a lonely and desperate figure. The author has also managed to weave the history of the islanders in to the mix. We go back in time to almost the turn of the 20th Century, when Gerard Deloume has bought the land they all now live on. Many of the names mentioned are ancestors of the current residents. Deloume’s compass plays a major part in the story both past and present.
There is a pervading sense of menace throughout the book and you are just waiting for something bad to happen. When it does, it still comes as a shock.
Matthew Hooton grew up on Vancouver Island and his obvious love of it’s history and knowledge of the surroundings serve to make this a much recommended book.
This book was made available to me by the publisher for an honest review.… (more)