Snow Hunters: A Novel
Winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award, Snow Hunters is “a subtle, elegant, poignant read” (Oprah.com), featuring a Korean War refugee who emigrates to Brazil to become a tailor’s apprentice and confronts the wreckage of his past.
“Exquisitely enigmatic…a small but radiant star in the current literary firmament” (The Dallas Morning News), Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, a twenty-five-year-old North Korean POW refugee who defects from his country at the end of the Korean War, leaving his friends and family behind to seek a new life in a port town on the coast of Brazil.
Though he is a stranger in a strange land, throughout the years in this town, four people slip in and out of Yohan’s life: Kiyoshi, the Japanese tailor for whom he works, and who has his own secrets and a past he does not speak of; Peixe, the groundskeeper at the town church; and two vagrant children named Santi and Bia, a boy and a girl, who spend their days in the alleyways and the streets of the town. Yohan longs to connect with these people, but to do so he must sift through the wreckage of his traumatic past so he might let go and move on.
In Snow Hunters, “quotidian-surreal craft-master” (New York magazine) Paul Yoon proves love can dissolve loneliness; that hope can wipe away despair; and that a man who lost a country can find a new home. “The brief, simple sentences that form this elegant tone poem of a novel…have the effect of making you slow down to read them—which is a fitting way to experience the story of a man unmoored by memory and time” (Entertainment Weekly). This is a heartrending story of second chances, told with unerring elegance and absolute tenderness.
“Exquisitely enigmatic…a small but radiant star in the current literary firmament” (The Dallas Morning News), Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, a twenty-five-year-old North Korean POW refugee who defects from his country at the end of the Korean War, leaving his friends and family behind to seek a new life in a port town on the coast of Brazil.
Though he is a stranger in a strange land, throughout the years in this town, four people slip in and out of Yohan’s life: Kiyoshi, the Japanese tailor for whom he works, and who has his own secrets and a past he does not speak of; Peixe, the groundskeeper at the town church; and two vagrant children named Santi and Bia, a boy and a girl, who spend their days in the alleyways and the streets of the town. Yohan longs to connect with these people, but to do so he must sift through the wreckage of his traumatic past so he might let go and move on.
In Snow Hunters, “quotidian-surreal craft-master” (New York magazine) Paul Yoon proves love can dissolve loneliness; that hope can wipe away despair; and that a man who lost a country can find a new home. “The brief, simple sentences that form this elegant tone poem of a novel…have the effect of making you slow down to read them—which is a fitting way to experience the story of a man unmoored by memory and time” (Entertainment Weekly). This is a heartrending story of second chances, told with unerring elegance and absolute tenderness.
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Community Reviews
I'd give it a 2.5 if I could. I appreciate the writing style and think that it accomplishes a lot of interesting effects, but I just didn't enjoy it.
It pains me to not give this a higher rating.
I adored [b:The Mountain|32920266|The Mountain|Paul Yoon|https:i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1499340620l/32920266._SX50_.jpg|53537938] and this is similar. Perhaps too similar.
The writing is beautiful. The characters are mostly sad but also quite lovely. There are painful pasts aplenty.
I felt like I could not quite get to know Yohan. And perhaps that was intentional. He is a character with a past he does not speak of and emotions he does not proclaim. Unfortunately, it seemed that all the characters are like Yohan in that sense. It left me feeling a little disconnected and bummed out. I can handle that in short story doses, but this was a bit longer. I longed for some connectivity.
Still a beautiful little book. I'd read that sparse prose all day long.
3.5 Stars
I adored [b:The Mountain|32920266|The Mountain|Paul Yoon|https:i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1499340620l/32920266._SX50_.jpg|53537938] and this is similar. Perhaps too similar.
The writing is beautiful. The characters are mostly sad but also quite lovely. There are painful pasts aplenty.
I felt like I could not quite get to know Yohan. And perhaps that was intentional. He is a character with a past he does not speak of and emotions he does not proclaim. Unfortunately, it seemed that all the characters are like Yohan in that sense. It left me feeling a little disconnected and bummed out. I can handle that in short story doses, but this was a bit longer. I longed for some connectivity.
Still a beautiful little book. I'd read that sparse prose all day long.
3.5 Stars
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