Impossible Children
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In these inventive short stories, characters must navigate an impossible world: America as we know it. Two estranged brothers on a road trip attempt to reconcile but end up at a Revolutionary War reenactment camp; a young woman moves in with her boyfriend and discovers an eerily personalized seduction manual on his bookshelf; a middle-aged Korean-American father attends college courses and is either blessed or haunted by the presence of Edward Moon, an eccentric billionaire who also happens to be “the most successful Korean in America.”
Playfully engaging with genres like science fiction, the fairy tale, and the Gothic tale, the interconnected short stories of Impossible Children pit tiny heroes against tiny villains; the result is a stunning mapping of geography, heritage, immigration, freedom, and the mysterious forces behind epic ruins and epic successes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 18 stories in Yune's debut provide a sharp, fresh perspective on the Korean-American experience. In "Princeton," a Korean father new to America temporarily leaves his two young children, Jason and Tommy, in the care of a well-to-do New Jersey doctor and his wife, whose prize possession, an Anasazi bowl, becomes inexplicably coveted by one of the boys. In "Clear Blue Michigan Sky," a college dropout working in an automobile scrap yard befriends a female coworker who has a radical approach to career guidance. Jason and Tommy return in "Stop Hitting Yourself" as estranged adults who hit the road together and accidentally become involved with a group of New England Revolutionary War reenactors. Three of the stories revolve around Jennifer Moon, a young woman who has rebelled against her family, especially her father, Edward Moon, a tech tycoon whose imposing presence is felt elsewhere in the collection. And "The Impossible Daughter" is an extravagant faux fable about a princess whose emperor father auditions her suitors with an exacting toll for those who don't make the cut. The author has a playful imagination, which he exhibits to fabulist effect in these stories that showcase his original takes on Korean immigrant assimilation. This is a sly, entertaining debut.
