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The Last Story of Mina Lee (2020)

by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
5132348,085 (3.46)4
Fiction. Literature. HTML:A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Riveting and unconventional, The Last Story of Mina Lee traces the far-reaching consequences of secrets in the lives of a Korean immigrant mother and her daughter
Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot can't understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. Determined to discover the truth, Margot unravels her single mother's past as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother, Mina.
Thirty years earlier, Mina Lee steps off a plane to take a chance on a new life in America. Stacking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing she expects is to fall in love. But that moment leads to repercussions for Mina that echo through the decades, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.
Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee is a powerful and exquisitely woven debut novel that explores identity, family, secrets, and what it truly means to belong.
HIGHLY ANTICIPATED BY FORTUNE · POPSUGAR · PUREWOW · BETCHES · GMA.COM · VULTURE · BUSTLE · THE MILLIONS · LITHUB · BOOKRIOT · BOOKISH
"Painful, joyous... A story that cries out to be told." â??Los Angeles Times
"Kim is a brilliant new voice in American fiction." â??Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
"Suspenseful and deeply felt." â??Chloe Benjamin, author
… (more)
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    MM_Jones: Korean diaspora trilogy
  3. 00
    Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (MM_Jones)
    MM_Jones: Book two of Korean diaspora trilogy
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» See also 4 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 23 (next | show all)
A Family at Last

Mina and her daughter, Margot only have each other. Each character tries to communicate in their own way, so they never really connect. There is truly a ' failure to communicate '. After Mina' s death Margot finally gets to know her mother, ultimately understanding her mother's sorrow. I enjoyed the author's description of the food - I'd love to try some of the dishes. The author's depiction of the mother - day relationship in this book rang true. I loved the ending although it brought tears to my eyes. ( )
  Chrissylou62 | Apr 11, 2024 |
fiction - family secrets, drama/mystery

narratives switching between 1987 Los Angeles (Mina, recent undocumented immigrant from South Korea) and 2014 (Margot, Mina's American-born daughter, who finds Mina's deceased body when she arrives in town to visit). The causes of Mina's sadness, completely unknown to Margot, unfold slowly as the daughter tries to learn if there was more to Mina's "accidental" death than first appeared.

This was recommended to me by a friend, and I'm glad I read this. Skillful storytelling evoking the life of an undocumented immigrant scraping by (and trying to escape from various dangers and heartbreaks) in LA's Koreatown. ( )
  reader1009 | Oct 1, 2023 |
DNF at 71% because it's due back at the library and I've already been distracted by many other books. I don't know why I'm not connecting with this. In theory, it's so my type of book. But I had an ARC and struggled to get more than a few chapters in, and then I checked it out on audio and still managed to get distracted and really struggle with connecting to the characters. I think I'd prefer this if it was just Mina's story, as I enjoyed those far more than the Margot sections, where it feels a bit too much like it's telling Mina's story through a Margot lens kind of just to do so. ( )
  whakaora | Mar 5, 2023 |
Some of it a bit conveluted and far fetched ( )
  kakadoo202 | Feb 10, 2023 |
A mother and a daughter who prefer different languages, a husband and a daughter lost in Korea, two friends separated by accident, an orphan looking for parents lost in an old war, two grocery men - one with a stone heart and one who has been denied the truth... All these elements are woven together with beautiful storytelling and themes of loneliness, loss, survival, and finding love where you are. ( )
  WiserWisegirl | Dec 2, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 23 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Kim, Nancy Jooyounprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Jung, GretaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Dedication
For my mother
First words
Margot's final conversation with her mother had seemed so uneventful, so ordinary---another choppy bilingual plod. Half understandable.
Quotations
"Sometimes, agreeing to the same lie is what makes a family family, Margot."
And the whole world told women every day, If you are alone, you are no one. A woman alone is no one at all.
Margot never knew what to do with the bright flashes of who her mother was that would threaten to burn them all to the ground.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Riveting and unconventional, The Last Story of Mina Lee traces the far-reaching consequences of secrets in the lives of a Korean immigrant mother and her daughter
Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot can't understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. Determined to discover the truth, Margot unravels her single mother's past as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother, Mina.
Thirty years earlier, Mina Lee steps off a plane to take a chance on a new life in America. Stacking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing she expects is to fall in love. But that moment leads to repercussions for Mina that echo through the decades, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.
Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee is a powerful and exquisitely woven debut novel that explores identity, family, secrets, and what it truly means to belong.
HIGHLY ANTICIPATED BY FORTUNE · POPSUGAR · PUREWOW · BETCHES · GMA.COM · VULTURE · BUSTLE · THE MILLIONS · LITHUB · BOOKRIOT · BOOKISH
"Painful, joyous... A story that cries out to be told." â??Los Angeles Times
"Kim is a brilliant new voice in American fiction." â??Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
"Suspenseful and deeply felt." â??Chloe Benjamin, author

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