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The cover of the paperback edition of ‘Then She Was Gone’ has black branches on a gray background and a smattering of pink petals that look like they are being blown by a sudden gust of wind. The effect is ominous. It’s why I bought the book without even reading the blurb on a recent bookstore visit. The book is thick but the font is several points bigger than the regular font and the chapters are short so you are likely to breeze through it. I finished the book in two days. I would have probably finished it in a day if I didn’t have work obligations that couldn’t be pushed back. It helped that the plot was compelling.

Fifteen-year-old Ellie Mack is Laurel’s favorite child, though she knows a mother shouldn’t have a favorite. But Laurel doesn’t feel the same connection with Hanna and Jake that she feels with Ellie. Then one day Ellie disappears. She tells Laurel she’s going to the library to study but she never makes it there. The police think she has run away. The disappearance has all the hallmarks of a runaway. But Laurel refuses to believe it. Ellie wouldn’t just give up on her dreams and run away. She was a brilliant student and she was looking forward to her GCSEs. She had a wonderful boyfriend, Theo. She wouldn’t abandon him like that.

The event ultimately tears Laurel’s family apart. She blames Paul, her husband, for not trying harder to find Ellie. She looks at Hanna and wonders why it wasn’t her who went missing instead of Ellie. Hanna and Jake leave home at the first chance they get and Paul tells her that he has met someone he would like to start over with. Laurel lives with the hope of finding Ellie. Then she meets a man named Floyd who sweeps her off her feet. He has a nine-year-old daughter named Poppy and she’s brilliant. She’s also a splitting image of Ellie. What happened to Ellie? And what’s Floyd’s role in all this? As Laurel digs around, she unearths something far more sinister than one could ever imagine.

Then She Was Gone follows a pattern that most thriller writers employ. It is thus predictable. There are only a handful of characters so you can also guess what might have happened. But the how and why keeps you glued to the pages. I wish Hanna’s relationship with Laurel had been more explored. It could have been a great portrayal of a complex mother-daughter equation and how there is always more than what meets the eye in any relationship that is driven by both compulsion and love.

Lisa Jewell has suddenly blown up in my reading circles. Everyone talks about her and they have all read ‘The Family Upstairs’. Her latest book ‘None of This is True’ is also being discussed. A few celebrities have recommended it on Instagram as well. Then She Was Gone got me out of a reading slump and I’ll definitely read more of her works when I find myself unable to concentrate on reading. Then She Was Gone was a compelling story that consumed me. I was tense throughout—caught up in Laurel’s world of horror. It would be nice to have that shiver-up-my-spine feeling again while reading a book.

Thriller

Then She Was Gone

Lisa Jewell

Published: 2017

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Pages: 426, Paperback

Hwang Bo-Reum studied computer science and worked as a software engineer in Seoul, South Korea before leaving her job to become a writer. She has written several essay collections. ‘Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop’ is her debut novel. It was a bestseller in South Korea. I believe when people who are not professional writers choose to do it full time, they do so because they have a lot to say or share. They have stories in their heads that they want to tell. And books that come out of this need are generally great.

 Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop is perhaps what was calling Bo-Reum to pursue writing full time. In the acknowledgements, the author says she didn’t create many of the characters in the book before she started writing it. They popped in her head as the story progressed, she says, and she just went with the flow. It’s a good thing because all the characters in the book feel like people you would meet on the streets or someone you know—they are characters with a lot of depth and quite a few flaws.

 The book is essentially about Yeongju who gives up a high-flying career, divorces her husband, and starts a bookshop. Throwing away a ‘good life’ to pursue a passion doesn’t go down well with her mother, who pretty much disowns Yeongju, telling her to talk to her only when she comes to her senses. There is a lot of mental stress in Yeongju’s life, and she can never explain why she felt the need to do what she did. Everything was perfect but she wasn’t happy.

 As she spends her days at the bookshop in a quiet neighborhood in Seoul, Yeongju meets all kinds of customers and they all have their own problems and disappointments in life. There’s a guy she hires to make coffee at the bookshop who is lonely, a coffee roaster trapped in an unhappy marriage, a young chap who has no interest in books but whose mother is forcing him to spend time at the bookstore, and a writer who starts taking an interest in Yeongju. The bookshop has its appeal. It’s where people come to find some respite from their lives. It’s where they ultimately find themselves.

 There is an essay-like quality to the chapters that don’t follow a linear path. Some chapters are about certain characters while others are about Yeongju’s struggle with running an independent bookshop. There is a lot of introspection and analysis on love and life in the pages. Sometimes it feels a little preachy and cliché. But clichés can be comforting especially when they are life-affirming and the book is peppered with nuggets of wisdom that you will find that you have pushed to the back of your mind.

I loved Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop for its simple vibe. Everything from the language to the setting feels like a warm, cozy hug. You will find a caring friend in the protagonist despite her almost stoic personality. She is someone you wish you had as a friend, or better yet, a friend you wish you could become. Through her, the author has tried to show that success and conventional relationships don’t have to be the metrics of a life well-lived, and that we are all free to choose and pursue what makes us happy. All it takes is a little bit of courage. 

Fiction

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/133938826-welcome-to-the-hyunam-dong-bookshop  

Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop

Hwang Bo-Reum

Translated from Korean by Shanna Tan

Published: 2023

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Pages: 301, pages

“Gaun Aayeko Bato (A road to a village)” is a story following the advent of a roadway to a remote village in the eastern hill of Nepal. It presents the social changes brought by this infrastructural development, particularly in the lives of Maila Rai, a bamboo weaver, and his family. The movie begins with the worship of the bus that has reached the village for the first time followed by the inauguration of the “Lahure Store.” With it begins the marketization of the village, whose primary victim is Bindre, Maila Rai’s son.

‘Gaun Aayeko Bato’ depicts the unbidden invasion of consumerism and capitalism into the remote corners of the country tailing along with roads and buses. The notions of consumerism and capitalism climb the shoulders of their sister idea of development bolstered by the neoliberal projects. Maila Rai sacrificed his land and labor to pave the roadway to the village. However, as the materialist goods enter the village in those buses, his skills are rendered useless. His bamboo crafts are soon replaced by industrial goods produced in an assembly line, forcing him to seek out alternative means of production. Moreover, overlooking the conflicting timeframe of the events in the movie, coca-cola and noodles can be viewed as the representatives of consumer culture. Bindre’s demands for these items as bribes to attend his school highlights how smoothly consumer culture worms its way into the lives of people.

In addition, as depicted in the movie, infrastructure development is just one facet of capitalist and industrial colonization. Our lives and societal norms are inflicted by technological colonization in addition to industrial and capitalist colonization. As we navigate our way into the new terrain dominated by technology, the technological assimilation into the cultural and social framework is a challenge faced by today’s society. And not even the remotest villages have remained unaltered by this paradigm shift. Living among machines and accepting them as a part of our social fabric was the inescapable reality of the late twentieth century. In a similar vein, the twenty-first century is remodeling itself to accommodate Artificial Intelligence as a part of social structure. Although Maila Rai’s village is far from the introduction of Artificial Intelligence and is just getting in touch with the twentieth century’s innovations like television and smartphones, the pathway cannot be much different for it.

The movie seems to consolidate neoliberalism and brings to the fore its effects on social hierarchy and the rise of defeatist mentality in the people belonging to the lower social standing. At times, Maila Rai is overcome with grief for not being able to provide a respectable life for his family resulting from his unwillingness to be a part of the labor migration leaving his beloved wife and his son behind. As is true of many people in this country, labor migration to the gulf countries stands as the necessary evil harnessed to bring prosperity and wealth to the household, and along with it social recognition. However, be it intentional or resulting from a no-choice situation, workforce migration consolidates the pessimistic attitude of the people who fail to follow that path.

“Gaun Aayeko Bato” is a story of transition, its conflicts and challenges, as the old order and model of our societies are disintegrating and new realities are being constructed. There’s a dichotomy between the indigenous modes of survival and the nationalist ideas of development. The modern notion of development doesn’t provide the necessary space to the indigenous skills and ways of life. While their skills undergo redundancy, the nation fails to tackle this situation. Social policies can mitigate it through retraining and redeployment. The need of the authority to rethink about the future of work and to include indigenous knowledge systems into the developmental framework can be learned from the movie. We have moved past the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution and the corporate revolution. The next revolution will be technological. Yet, similar to the past revolutions, the technological revolution will entail a social revolution, and we should be prepared for this transition.

Nonetheless, the resistance exhibited by Maila Rai against the forces of slavery is highly commendable. Rai discards the illegal way of making money suggested and supported by the capitalist people and follows his skills, although resulting in a failure. This act of resistance is true of many indigenous communities in different parts of the world. Social resistance as such question the existing power structures, mobilizes public opinion, brings attention to the social injustices and systemic problems, and fosters a sense of solidarity, thereby pressuring the policy makers to address the concerns raised by resistance movements.

However, the movie falls short in exposing the social dynamics of the village. As most of the plot revolves around the family dynamics of Maila Rai’s family, the role of society at large isn’t given enough space in the movie. The family often seems detached from the society, particularly in the events following the devastating fate of Bindre’s life, which obviously was a bit overstretched for dramatic effect. This detachment makes the story come off as fragmented. Moreover, despite having the elements required to turn it into a triumphant movie, it is forced to be a tragic one. The financial aspect of the production and the likeliness of the audience to savor the emotionally tragic storyline could be the determining factor.

All things considered, “Gaun Aayeko Bato” is a good watch. It can contribute to the ongoing discussions regarding the notion of development, social resistance, the future of work, technological assimilation, and many such ideas, while simultaneously initiating new discussions pertinent to our social construction. Also, the outstanding acting of Dayahang Rai as Maila Rai, Pashupati Rai as Maili Rai, and Prasan Rai as Bindre Rai is an icing on a cake.

In 2013, Kaori Fujino was awarded the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prominent literary prize, for ‘Nails and Eyes’. Fujino, who holds an MA in aesthetics and art theory from Doshisha University, is best known for fiction that reimagines tropes of horror, urban legends, fairy tales, and science fiction. She was in residence at the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program in 2017. The English translation of her stories have also appeared in various publications.

Nails and Eyes is a slim book but you won’t be able to breeze through it because of its dark and dreary undertone. There are two additional stories of unsettled minds with eerie settings in the volume that I got. The three stories can all be slotted as horror but all of them deal with real people and the many problems in their lives. I especially liked the third story called ‘Minute Fears’ that revolves around the complexities of motherhood. The other two are equally good but I’m pretty sure everyone who reads this volume will have a favorite—perhaps one they will resonate with.

The main story is about a young girl who loses her mother and her father invites his lover to stay with them. He wants to marry her but they want to figure out whether they will work as a family before taking the leap. The woman tries to create a life for the three of them. She’s secretly relieved there’s a child in the picture and that she won’t have to get pregnant for a baby. It’s convenient that someone else has given birth to the three-year-old. But she’s unable to be comfortable around the girl and vice-versa. They have an amicable relationship at best. But the girl is watching the woman, tracking her every move, and there’s malice. The latter only realizes that when it’s too late.

 ‘What Shoko Forgets’ is set in a rehabilitation home. Shoko suffered a stroke and her memories are hazy. She’s being cared for by her oldest daughter and a disinterested granddaughter. She wants to go home and live comfortably on her couch. She feels she deserves that much at least now that her body is tiring and shutting down. But her daughter won’t listen and there’s someone who visits Shoko every night though everyone seems to be oblivious to it. Her memories of this disappear every morning and that’s concerning. Is it real or is she imagining the whole thing? You can never tell and the story stays in your mind long after you’ve read it.

Nails and Eyes is an interesting piece of literature, one that draws your attention to important themes like parenthood, aging, and isolation among others in a way that makes you think about them from different perspectives. It’s, hands down, unlike any other book I have ever read, in terms of how chilling it was. Fujino’s writing reminds me of Yoko Ogawa, another Japanese writer who has won almost every major literary prize in Japan including the Akutagawa Prize.

Fiction

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66092863-nails-and-eyes 

Nails and Eyes

Kaori Fujino

Translated by Kendall Heitzman

Published: 2023 (Original text: 2013)

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Pages: 138, Paperback