If You Leave Me: A Novel

My biggest exposure to the Korean War was through M*A*S*H. I don't mean this to be funny or tongue in cheek but just to point out that Korea has been rather a blind spot in much of our learning here in the US. So I am always interested when I come across a book that will open up new worlds to me. Crystal Hana Kim's debut novel If You Leave Me, promised to show me a Korea during and post war that I had never seen before, through young characters whose normal lives have been upended and now must make the choice between love and security, survival and uncertainty, in a world not of their own making.

Haemi, her widowed mother, and her chronically ill younger brother fled their village home and live in a refugee camp on the coast. Life is show more hard, food is scarce, and medicine for her brother scarcer. One of the remaining joys of her life is to sneak out at night with her old friend Kyunghwan. She dresses as a boy and they get into mischief. But she is also getting older so not only does she face social disapproval for her antics, but she and Kyunghwan are becoming more and more aware of each other, their love for each other becoming more complicated. At the same time, Kyunghwan's wealthier cousin Jisoo decides to court the lovely Haemi, wanting to ensure that he has a family waiting for him when he returns from fighting in the civil war. Haemi has an impossible choice to make. In the end, she must forsake Kyunghwan and marry Jisoo for all he can offer her, her mother, and brother. But as the years go on, Haemi has to live with her choice and its consequences, as must her children and all those who love her.

Set from 1951-1967, the novel is told in chapters narrated by Haemi, Kyunghwan, Jisoo, Haemi's brother Hyunki, and eventually her daughter Solee, all in the first person. The reader sees first hand the bitterness, disappointment, and despair that pervade these characters in so many aspects of their lives. They've all been marked indelibly by the war and their circumstances: soul mates separated, education unobtainable, distant parents, and more. The price of war is far more than just physical. The novel is also broken into five parts between which are gaps in the story's timeline, allowing the characters to move into new situations without the intervening getting there. This does lessen the impact of Haemi's misery some but keeps the reader from having to feel as trapped and depressed in her role as mother and wife as Haemi herself does. She is the character around whom the other characters turn, even if she is not valued as she should be, and her unhappiness colors everything. Each of the characters is flawed and hard in ways that challenge the reader to work past, something that happens with varying degrees of success. Ultimately the story is a heartbreaking one, clear by the end that there was no other possible ending to the story, no other option when life extracts such a high price, requires such a sacrifice. show less

The characters and the story rarely went in directions I wanted them to, yet I never lost interest.

The Korean War and Korean setting were the main reasons I wanted to try this book since I haven’t read a lot about either that time or that place. While this doesn’t really focus on the frontlines of the war, it does give a strong sense of how it was for the injured and how difficult life was for the displaced families during the war as well as in the aftermath, their struggles emotionally and financially, their hunger, their family members scattered and often lost forever. I felt like this delivered the kind of historic and cultural details that I had hoped to learn about.

There is a love triangle which I know a lot of readers dread show more and this triangle is particularly frustrating, the pair truly in love are constantly thwarted by circumstance and plenty of self-sabotage and alcohol, too, but those thwarted moments, and the attempts to love the one they’re with, the third wheel of the triangle well aware he’s on the outside, that stuff, these characters constantly getting in their own way it is psychologically compelling even if their choices are kind of maddening at times.

For the female in the triangle, Haemi, she develops mental health issues that become more and more concerning over the course of the story, and because of the time period, because of her gender, she receives very little understanding including from herself, which it’s tough to see her going through things and no one really making much effort to help her, but that unfortunately does feel realistic.

There were a couple times where I wanted to hear a bit more from Jisoo (I understood the basics of his behavior/his reactions still just a little more insight would have been welcome), but otherwise I was really pleased with the POV’s alternating between the three in the triangle and a couple other important voices, I thought it worked well for the story.

You’re with the three main characters for a good chunk of their lives so there are several time jumps throughout the book, once in awhile I lost track of certain characters ages, though that minor bit of confusion is worth getting to see these characters progress (and not progress in some ways) from teenagers into adulthood, it’s a scope that I really appreciate.

As for the ending, it wasn’t entirely what I’d hoped for but it’s not like it didn’t fit or wasn’t well-executed, it definitely made sense that it would go that way, it was just my heart that didn’t want it to, intellectually, I was fine with it. There were two important characters where I felt like I didn’t quite get the closure I craved, I wanted a few more hints of the direction their futures went in. There were also a handful of other characters whose futures we do get a glimpse of, a glimpse that left me wanting more, perhaps a sequel in their POV’s which would also then answer some of those questions I had about those other two characters. show less

I love this book! I peruse new releases monthly and select my books for the month. I initially passed this one by. I thought it looked like chick lit (not my genre of choice) with its flowery cover. I generally abhor stories about complex love triangles and infidelity. But I could not put this down. It is a complex, well-written story about the burdens of war, family, mental illness, and being a woman and mother in that place and time.

If You Leave Me is set in Korea during and after the Korean War. It is IMHO a as good as, but is altogether different from Pachinko and Island of the Sea Women, also set in Korea.

When Communist-aided forces in northern Korea invade the south, sixteen-year-old Haemi, her mother, and young brother, Hyunki, who’s tubercular, flee for their lives on foot. A year later, in 1951, the refugee family lives a precarious existence in Busan, a seaport nestled in the tip of the Korean Peninsula. Haemi goes to school and is bright enough to stay with it, if she wants.

But education is makeshift, and in a country invaded and a war that seems destined to remain a fruitless stalemate, even educated women have little scope. Besides, who can imagine a rosy, far-off future when tomorrow, and the next day, hunger will wrack your body and spirit the same way it does today?

As a form of escape, Haemi sneaks out at night to drink show more moonshine with Kyunghwan, a handsome, slightly older boy she’s known all her life. These risky outings, which she has to balance with her responsibilities for Hyunki’s care — the boy’s cough is alarming — provide another danger. Physically attracted to Kyunghwan, Haemi believes he shares her feelings and wants him to declare himself.

But he won’t, and when her mother pushes her to accept a marriage proposal from Jisoo, Kyunghwan’s cousin, because he has more money and better prospects, the girl agrees. The boys go off to war, and Haemi waits for her life to begin, though as a nurse’s assistant at a military hospital, she glimpses a path that she wishes she could follow.

An old story, a love triangle, and for at least the first half of If You Leave Me, Kim makes her narrative seem like a fresh take. It’s not just Haemi’s existence that’s precarious — it’s Korea’s — and the presence of the American “liberators” cuts in several directions. I like this part of the novel the best, in which Korean aspirations for freedom and prosperity, represented by the characters’ dreams, run up against poverty, desperation, and brutal circumstance. How these people carve out niches for themselves, or try to, makes compelling reading. Throughout, those who have money can skate through; those who don’t may well be beating their heads against a concrete wall.

Kim’s prose, sparse, carefully observed, and devoted to moment-to-moment gesture and feeling, fits the story like a glove.

Unfortunately, the novel loses momentum a few years after the war, when Haemi and Jisoo have children, while Kyunghwan has searched about for a successful career. Part of my impatience comes from how I see the characters, whose appeal wears thin after a while. Haemi, frustrated by her role as wife and mother, wants more and dreams of Kyunghwan, even though she knows it’s not a man she needs but a larger life. Her bitterness and mercurial moods upset everyone, and you want her to act. But this is midcentury Korea, so she’s trapped.

Jisoo, marked by his wartime experiences, can’t listen to her (or anyone else) and expects obedience. That’s an important cultural and political comment, and perhaps why Kim wrote her novel, but a theme isn’t a story, and I want to see other sides to him, to have this conflict go somewhere. As for Kyunghwan, he can’t befriend anyone for real, pleasant as he can be sometimes, so he too remains at a distance. Will he or won’t he visit his old friends? And if he does, what will happen? The answers are fairly predictable, yet still constrained by societal rules.

Finally, as the characters settle into their prescribed roles, the narrative presents a lot of back-and-forth, especially marital quarrels, that feels repetitive, both in action and theme. The almost constant argumentation seldom gets beyond “You’re selfish;” “No, you’re selfish.” That’s too bad, because the historical background, unfamiliar to me and probably to most Americans, furnishes an excellent atmosphere for what Kim wishes to say, and if she pushed the envelope a little, maybe the characters would have taken a leap.

If You Leave Me is her first novel. I hope the author’s future efforts develop her readily apparent gifts. show less

The author chose the alternating perspectives structure, which is frustrating for a couple of reasons. First of all, the reader has to keep reminding herself whose perspective she is currently reading. Second of all, the reader never really gets to go in depth with any of the characters, and as a result, we feel detached from all of them, as we are only given a cursory viewing of their thoughts, feelings, motivations, and their actions. In addition, because the novel spans decades, we feel doubly gypped. In fact, when the book reaches the perspective of the protagonist's daughter, I honestly felt very disengaged from her story. I did not feel in the slightest bit interested in a fresh new perspective on characters whom I didn't know show more very well to begin with.

I honestly didn't like the characters very much. They're all deeply flawed. Haemi is selfish, foolish, headstrong, all attributes that I know the author intended to portray in a 21st century feminist perspective of a girl ahead of her time, but in the context of the societal realities in which she was living these characteristics come off as simply maddening. For example, she knows full well the social dangers she puts her and her entire family in when she runs off in the middle of the night to drink with her boyfriend. And yet we are meant to view this action as some sort of feminist heroic rebellion.

Her boyfriend, and her eventual husband, are equally at times reprehensible characters, selfish, stubborn, Etc. We are meant to see them as prisoners of their time and place, with the Korean War as a backdrop excusing and explaining their actions and motivations. I just could not engage with any of them on a meaningful level.

Again, because of the lack of focus on one character, the reader just doesn't have a chance to align herself with one character fully in the way a standard novel allows and encourages.

The story is at its root a love triangle. However, because of the large time span that the novel covers, the reader does not get a sense of urgency or imperative to any one of the character's stories. The problem at heart is that the book is torn between 2 genres -- a multi-generational family war saga, and a love triangle romance. As a restult it does both genres a disservice in lack of focus. show less

This novel begins in 1951 in a refugee village during the Korean War. Haemi is 16 and helps her mother take care of her little brother Hyunki, who struggles with breathing. Her father died laboring in the mines for Japan when Korea was under Japanese rule.

Haemi regularly sneaks out at night to get drunk with her best friend Kyunghwan. She and Kyunghwan have feelings for one another, but neither has the nerve to admit it to the other.

Kyunghwan has a rich cousin, Jisoo, 18, who is determined to marry Haemi and then enlist. Jisoo is contemptuous of Kyunghwan for not wanting to enlist, but Kyunghwan doesn’t see the point:

“I wanted to tell him that I remembered our years under Japanese rule. How we were perpetually hungry, how we show more weren’t even allowed to speak our own tongue. We had no power in this fight, either. We were pawns, tossed around by Japan, then the Soviets and the United States. I didn’t want to join their cause. And above all, I was too weak, untrained. I would be killed.”

Analogously, Kyunghwan, although he loves Haemi, feels he has nothing to offer her either, unlike Jisoo, who could support her.

The story moves forward in time and also alternates among a group of narrators. Haemi does marry Jisoo, although she loves Kyunghwan. She tries to love Jisoo instead, but can’t forget Kyunghwan. It becomes even worse for them when Jisoo starts to seek comfort elsewhere. Nevertheless, they have several children.

Haemi sees Kyunghwan again after eleven years, and in some ways nothing has changed. Both feel the same, yet constrained by the roles not only determined by convention but by their gender and social class.

Tragedy strikes often in the lives of all of these people, but instead of strengthening them, it seems only to make them more despondent, and apt to go looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places. There is no redemption, but only anger and frustration. Perhaps, this is a more realistic turn of events than more upbeat stories.

Evaluation: This is one unhappy group of people, and I didn’t come to like any of them. But the portrayal of Korean culture is excellent. show less

I wasn’t sure what this book wanted to be. At first it seemed to be a sweeping historical fiction during the Korean War, then turned quickly to a stereotypical love triangle romance (if you are madly In love with your poor childhood friend who thinks you are the smartest person he knows it’s a bad idea to marry his rich cousin who loves you for your looks and can help your family. It’s just going to turn out badly), then the last 1/3 of the book somewhat continues the love triangle but really becomes a pretty serious narrative about post-partum depression and anxiety.
I liked that it was told from multiple characters point of view, except my favorite one who seemed the most well-developed character dies halfway through.