Spring on the Peninsula

Shin’s melancholic debut centers on a 30-something Korean man in Seoul who’s just been left by his lover of nearly a decade. In the wake of the breakup, Kai latches onto his friends Han, Jung, Min, and the “markedly glamorous” Yoon, whom Kai “like[s] most in the world.” The graduate of an expensive international secondary school, Yoon attended class with Korean Americans and other foreigners with no Korean heritage, a milieu that allows Shin to probe matters of Korean national identity, upon which the opinionated and enigmatic Han has much to say: “Too many invasions, too many marauders have exhausted the Korean sensibility.... The Korean national character has sunk to its all-time low.” There are also scenes of startling violence—Kai’s occasional lover, a young hairdresser, ferociously beats her small child, and Kai’s brother is brutally hazed during his military service. Shin’s focus on such taboo subjects as Han’s heroin abuse and Jung’s abortion add to the novel’s provocative flair, though a central storyline never coheres. A cloud of sadness pervades over Shin’s diffuse canvas of contemporary Korea. Agent: Mark Falkin, Falkin Literary. (Apr.)