Skull Water

When Insu returns to Korea from Germany, he realizes that his old home feels unfamiliar to him: “[I]t had seemed to me that we were stepping out under a different sun, into different air, as if we had not simply flown to some distant part of the same world but to an altogether new and alien one… .” Have you ever left your childhood home for an extended amount of time, only to return and find it significantly transformed? If so, what changed? Did your feelings about the place change, too? In addition to his childhood home, what else does Insu notice has changed in Korea since his absence?

Insu’s childhood best friends—Paulie, Miklos, and Patsy—have very different personalities, and yet their status as outsiders to Korean society, as “half and half”s—the children of fathers in the U.S. military and Korean mothers—bond them almost as family. What did you find most endearing about each of them? Do you believe the four of them would have been friends under different circumstances? Do you have childhood friendships that persist because of shared history or is the shared history merely the foundation upon which the friendships are based?

The novel alternates between Insu’s contemporary story and Big Uncle’s wartime past. How do the alternating sections handle point-of-view differently? Did you feel that these alternating stories were effective in moving the novel forward?

Big Uncle is at the end of his life, while Insu is just at the beginning of his, and they both have a very different conception of time. Discuss the role of time in the novel. What do you make of the novel’s ending, when Insu has what might be called a near-death experience and experiences time in a whole new way?

Superstitions, folktales, and the role of storytelling play an important role in Skull Water. When Insu tells his mother that the tales about Kubong Manshin’s true identity are “just old stories,” she responds by saying that “germs, molecules, electricity, [and] atoms” are “just stories too.” What does she mean by this? Do you believe that stories are just as real as germs, molecules, electricity, and atoms, and that these things are simply stories too? What do you believe Fenkl is trying to say about stories and about life?

The legend that “skull water” can heal people’s ailments initiates the quest story at the heart of this book. Though the boys never do bring skull water to Big Uncle, does their quest still have meaning? Are there any lessons that Insu, Miklos, and Paulie learn from their misadventures? Why do you think Fenkl called the novel Skull Water?

The mothers of Insu and his friends are unable to live with their husbands on the U.S. Army bases because they are Korean and are not “command sponsored.” Instead, they live with their Korean families, making a living selling Western goods from the army base on the black market. The Umbrella Seller begins her life as a prostitute to powerful men and later controls the fates of other women. Patsy harbors fantasies of becoming like Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and marrying an American, and in some ways she seems to succeed at both of these dreams. Do you view these women as trapped in their limited roles in Korean society or as powerful players who have agency?

The monk that Insu meets tells him, during their first encounter, “The human mind cannot know all the outcomes of causes and conditions. We are only people. But by looking at the trails of causality we leave that are visible to us in memory, which is also an illusion, we may learn a little about a thing called karma.” What do you think is the significance of the monk in Skull Water? How do you interpret this statement, and in what way do you think it applies to the larger story? Do you agree with the monk’s assessment that memory is an illusion?

At the end of Skull Water, during Big Uncle’s funeral, Insu is determined to find the lost arrow that Big Uncle has fired into the air. “Nothing would work without it,” he decides. “Big Uncle would return as a hungry ghost with his frightening han—all his grievous longing and his harbored resentment.” Why do you think Insu embraces the story of Big Uncle’s unsettled ghost, when earlier in the book he dismisses these kinds of stories as superstitious? Can you recall a point in your life when one of your firmly held beliefs radically changed? Why do you think it changed?

When Insu returns to Korea at the beginning of the novel, the country feels more developed and Westernized. And yet at the end, the monk Insu meets is heading to California to teach Westerners the dharma and Insu himself will soon be heading to the States. With Big Uncle gone and his best friends no longer there, what do you think Insu will miss most about his life in Korea?