We Do Not Part: A Novel

A haunting novel. One that stays with you. Incredibly beautiful writing, a dreamlike exploration of collective grief and trauma. I will definitely be reading more by Kang.

I don’t have a lot to say about this novel. The word that instantly comes to mind for it is “haunting.” Or better yet, “haunted.” It’s not just the actual ghost-story aspects of the narrative, but something more pervasive. The entire space of this novel—every character, every scene—feels as though there is something else hovering over it, observing and even manipulating it. The events of the past haunt the present; unresolved collective trauma is destined to haunt the future; the dead and departed haunt living, breathing characters—even spectres themselves seem to be haunted by still more obscure shadows. That atmosphere is the book’s most powerful aspect, but to be honest, I didn’t find much else to attach to. The characters themselves are more embodiments than animate beings, and they inhabit a setting & timeline that have no real narrative architecture. It’s obvious there is a lot of symbolism threaded through, but I wasn’t really drawn to untangle it. There were parts that worked—in particular, the novel does an impressive job representing the collective, transmissible nature of mass trauma. The blurring of the line between Inseon & her mother is an evocative narrative element, for example. But overall, I just couldn’t settle into the book—I suppose I could say that I wanted to admire it more than I wanted to actually continue reading it. I’d like to hope that it will stick with me; it feels like it should. And yet, I doubt it will.

We liked it. It was very emotional.

It really is hard to describe what this book is about. To say it is about the April 3rd Massacre would be doing it a disservice. While much of the book is centered around a dreamlike shifting between stories of the past and present, this book is at its heart more than that. It isn't so much about history as it is about how that history shapes a person. At its core this is a book about generational trauma, determination, love, and pain. My only real criticism is that the English version was, in places, difficult to follow. I sense that that was somewhat intentional and probably done in an effort to give the reader the most unadulterated version of the text possible.

This is a beautifully written, almost like poetry, novel about the journey one friend takes to Jeju Island to care for another friend's bird. The writing is what makes this book so deep that you want to savor each chapter whether it is about the bond a pet can create, the travels in a storm to fulfill a promise or the shocking history of the late 1940s of the Jeju Island massacre. It would be a great winter read by the fire.