Marie G. Lee

Trigger Warnings: Racism, classism, disabled slurs and bullying

Georgia is a Korean-American high school junior who just moved to a new town in the suburbs so that her brother, Leo, who has significant developmental disabilities, can get better assistance. At her new school, she makes friends with members of the hagwon that runs in the back of the Korean barber shop. Her parents have a rough relationship due to the strain of raising Leo and Georgie does everything she can to help be a caretaker of her brother.

I slightly remember reading Of Mice and Men in high school - not every detail, but I remember the ending, so I was very curious to see how this book would go.

This book definitely deals with a lot that I honestly wasn’t expecting. Georgia takes on a lot of responsibilities in the caretaking for Leo and I was always forgetting he was the older brother - even though she talks about how he’s a big, strong young man. I’m glad her parents were aware of the situation though and had brought it up to her a few times in the novel because it does take a toll on her for sure.

I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. I was rooting for Georgia and Leo and even though in the back of my mind, I kind of knew what would happen, I was still shocked at how the ending played out. It did come a little quickly for me, but I still liked the open-ending of it too.

This won’t be a book for everyone, but I still think it’s an important book that covers a lot of topics you don’t read about often.

*Thank you Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for a digital advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review… (meer)

This was an important book in terms of the subject matter. It deals with an immigrant Korean doctor(Dr. Kwak) who is an ob-gyn in a small town in Northern Minnesota. The timelines were fuzzy but I gather that the present was during 2016 etc. Dr. Kwak is forced into retirement when the big chain he works for closes the local hospital and he ends working for in a mall doing public hairr removal. The beginning of the novel is a very satirical look at health care in the present and was funny but a bit over the top. The book changes tone when it get's into Kwak's history during the Korean war and his subsequent coming to America. I found that part very educational as it portrays the relationship of both United States and Japan to Korea. My problem was with the way the novel moved back and forth through timelines and back and forth on the current medical versus the Kwak's history. It was a tough read but I did enjoy learning more about the history of Korea. The book ends with Kwak going back to North Korea as part of Doctors without Borders.… (meer)

fiction; satire / refugee story - middleaged Korean-American OB-GYN of rural Minnesota juggles unexpected career change (this is the satirical part) and family turmoil (wife growing distant, daughter-in-law is terribly racist and insulting) when his past (war trauma, family secrets) catches up to him

starts off ok but then starts to drag -- I got to p. 170 or so but gave up during Yungman's refugee flashback when pages and pages went by without having much idea of what was happening -- my brain just didn't care to put the work into it, and I could tell that I should be paying more attention (maybe if I had more background/interest in the War in Korea, which normally I would but not just now). Setting this one aside for now, but not sure I'll come back to it.… (meer)