Winter In Sokcho won the National Book Award for books in translation, and several French literature prizes.
A first novel from Elisa Shua Dusapin, who was raised in Paris and Seoul, and perhaps spent a quiet season in Sokcho, the seaside resort on the border of North Korea. This reads like an extended memoir, the tone quite French, and like the deserted town in winter, quiet.
A young French-Korean woman works at a guest house making meals and cleaning. The guests are a Japanese climber and a woman recovering from facial surgery. Her single mother, like many women in Sokcho is a fishmonger at the market. A new guest arrives; Yan Kerrand is a successful French comic designer, perhaps planning a new book. He mostly stays in his room and doesn't join for meals. She shows him the convenience store, a temple, and takes him to the demilitarized zone to view North Korea, from a distance (No photography. No laughing. No loud voices). There is not a lot to do in Sokcho in snow covered January (temperature -27C), unlike the summer months when tourists enjoy the sea, despite the electrified barbed wire fencing that runs the length of the coastline border. They become friends in a transient way, knowing he will soon return to France and she to her boyfriend when he returns from Seoul.
This is a quiet book that has been recommended for its sense of place. It was indeed interesting to visit Sokcho for a while, although nothing much happens besides a family holiday for Lunar New Year. The characters are well drawn, but they are not given a lot to do. I come away with a feeling of isolation, loneliness, and the sense nothing much will change. She longs to be seen, and I don't know that Kerrand has managed to do that.
Although it feels like a winter that never ends, perhaps when the season changes, and tourists return.
Enjoyed, but without enough to recommend.
2016 / Tradeback / 156 pages
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