Ambition, Rage, Gothic Hunger: New Novels from Min Jin Lee, Louise Kennedy and Catherine Chidgey
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What is the opening announcement and voting deadline for the Top 100 Australian Books Countdown?
ABC
Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. These are the pages to which Australia returns. The ABC Radio National Top 100 Australian Books Countdown.
Voting closes October 1st.
You don't have long. abc.net.au slash top100books. Vote now.
Hello, this is Cassie McCullough from The Bookshelf. The edition that you are about to hear does contain references to eating disorders and maybe disturbing for people with experience of those. So just take care.
Hello and welcome to ABC Radio National's The Bookshelf. I'm Kate Evans and this is where every week, well, we talk about some of the hottest books that are out this week, including the latest from the international bestseller Min Jin Lee.
And I'm Cassie McCullough and yes, Kate, that is a hotly anticipated novel. Also today, a story of friendship, exile and... the fraught process of returning home, and that's in Louise Kennedy's Irish novel,
Stations. Tony Burch is going to join us to talk about that one. And then there's a strange vaudeville turn in a near future in New Zealand writer Catherine Chidgey's The Starving Bride, and BJ Silcox will join us to talk about that one.
Yes, looking forward to hearing about that. But let's start with Min Jin Lee.
American writer Min Jin Lee was born in Korea, coming to America as a seven-year-old. Her first novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was published in 2007, but it was her second, Pachinko, from 10 years later, that catapulted her to both a huge readership and critical acclaim. And I guess we have to say, Cassie, that this is a writer whose books are epic. epic in scale. She tracks the Korean diaspora across history, families and movement between Korea, Japan, America and elsewhere in those first two novels in particular.
And now this new one, American Hagwon, which I read is the third of an anticipated quartet on this theme and no doubt almost spanning four decades. The first thing I think we have to talk about is the scale. It is 640 pages long. Yeah, that's a lot. It is. And particularly when it's printed in a font size on the smaller size. Now I estimate my copy was in nine point at most. So You can probably add another couple of hundred pages on. The audio version is not available until the end of the month, but I did check that out. It's 23 hours long. So that's the book. The story spans roughly 15 years from 1992 to 2007 and three continents. We're in Seoul in South Korea, in Sydney in Australia, and in Southern California in the US.
But Katie, it also spans multiple generations and multiple families, all intertwined South Korean families, from respected elderly grandparents to middle-aged parents to a generation moving from high school to college and university and working life. And then there's younger children who are just starting
their way through school. Maybe that's why she needed so many pages, because she's quite careful to establish all of the characters and their relationships and the family setting, including backstories. And so there's a lot of significant characters who we meet when they're schoolchildren and And, well, shall we talk about what's happening right at the beginning? There's a family who'd been living in Sydney for six years, partly because John, the dad, works for an international company and the family keeps on moving to different countries. But... It begins at a point of transition, which I thought was quite interesting, because Helen and John, the parents, have returned with the three children to Seoul.
And so the kids, Bo, DH and Mido, had been at school in Australia and now they're having to work out how to enter the school system, the rental market, how to negotiate the language, the country, the relationships there. again. And that's where we are as the story opens. I mean, this is a Korean family, but there's a significant shift going on.
Yes. And I think once again, Min Jin Lee has a hot take on something in this novel, and that is the increasing globalisation of our lives. People just didn't get up and move to other countries as often as they do now.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the opening announcement and voting deadline for the Top 100 Australian Books Countdown?
0:00–6:45
2
How does Min Jin Lee’s new novel *American Hagwon* explore family, ambition and the globalised education system?
6:45–17:38
3
Why does *American Hagwon* focus on the Korean ‘hagwon’ culture and its impact on social status?
17:38–33:56
4
What themes of friendship, exile and sectarian tension are introduced in Louise Kennedy’s *Stations*?
33:56–1:00:01
Speakers
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