The woman observes the man and never looks at him as a savior or stereotypical lover. Dusapin's novel avoids clichés in the woman's developing relationship with the lonely foreigner, who turns out to be an internationally renowned graphic novelist looking for inspiration for a new book. Despite pressure to marry, the young woman is ambivalent about her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, Jun-oh, an aspiring model in Seoul. After work, she visits her mother, who works in the fish market and is renowned for her delicious octopus soondae. The novel unfolds in brief vignettelike chapters that reveal the unnamed woman's daily life. She has never met her father, a Frenchman who left her mother after a brief affair, but has studied French language and literature in school and dreams of traveling to the country someday. When a mysterious middle-aged Frenchman named Yan Kerrand arrives, off-season, in the midst of the winter slump, the woman is intrigued. An atmospheric novel about an independent young woman in a South Korean beach town.ĭusapin's debut novel depicts a young biracial Korean woman living and working in a small guesthouse in Sokcho, South Korea, a beach town 60 km from the North Korean border.
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