Shelter
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- 4,99 €
Publisher Description
A powerful domestic drama, Shelter reveals the secrets and troubles of two generations of a Korean-American family.
You never know what goes on behind closed doors.
Kyung Cho owns a house that he can't afford. Despite his promising career as a tenure-track professor, he and his wife, Gillian, have always lived beyond their means. Now their bad decisions are catching up with them, and Kyung is anxious for his family's future.
A few miles away, his parents, Jin and Mae, live in the town's most exclusive neighbourhood. Growing up, they gave Kyung every possible advantage – expensive hobbies, private tutors – but they never showed him kindness. Kyung can hardly bear to see them now, much less ask for their help. Yet when an act of violence leaves Jin and Mae unable to live on their own, the dynamic suddenly changes, and he decides to take them in. For the first time in years, the Chos find themselves under the same roof where tensions quickly mount and old resentments rise to the surface.
As Shelter veers swiftly towards its startling conclusion, Jung Yun leads us through dark and violent territory, where, unexpectedly, the Chos discover hope. In the tradition of House of Sand and Fog and The Ice Storm, Shelter is a masterfully crafted first novel that asks what it means to provide for one's family and, in answer, delivers a story as riveting as it is profound.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her intense debut, Jung explores the powerful legacy of familial violence and the difficulty of finding the strength and grace to forgive. As the novel opens, Kyung Cho and his wife, Gillian, are on the verge of financial calamity: they are deep in debt, and selling their house in suburban Boston won't help their mortgage is underwater. Just when Gillian has almost convinced Kyung to swallow his pride and move in with his wealthy parents, Kyung learns that his parents have been the victims of a brutal home invasion. In an instant, Kyung must decide whether to find room in his home (and his heart) for his traumatized parents. Doing so, however, requires him to bridge the distance he's deliberately maintained from them, to overcome the resentment he bears toward his parents for his unhappy childhood and his persistent feelings of failure. As Kyung's situation grows increasingly unstable, he finds himself lapsing into familiar patterns of anger, distrust, and violence. Despite some lengthy asides, especially in the novel's first half, that threaten to drown the narrative momentum in emotional reflection, a lot happens in this family drama rife with tension and unexpected ironies. Kyung's greatest struggle, in the end, is learning how to see not only his own life but also his parents' with clarity and understanding.
