Violets
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
By Man Asian Literary Prize winner Kyung-Sook Shin, "a moving delve into a lonely psyche" that follows a neglected young woman's search for human connection in contemporary Seoul (YZ Chin).
San is twenty-two and alone when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul’s bustling city center. Haunted by childhood rejection, she stumbles through life—painfully vulnerable, stifled, and unsure. She barely registers to others, especially by the ruthless standards of 1990s South Korea.
Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San meets a curious cast of characters: the nonspeaking shop owner, a brash coworker, quiet farmers, and aggressive customers. Fueled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer.
In Violets, best-selling author Kyung-Sook Shin explores misogyny, erasure, and repressed desire, as San desperately searches for both autonomy and attachment in the unforgiving reality of contemporary Korean society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Man Asian Literary Prize winner Shin (Please Look After Mom) takes a disturbing and evocative look at an isolated young woman. Oh San was born unwanted in rural South Korea, and her father abandons the family shortly after. Ostracized and lonely, San's only friend during her school years is neighbor Sur Namae, but their friendship ends suddenly and violently after a moment of romantic intimacy, a rejection San never recovers from. At 22, dreaming of becoming a writer, she works at a flower shop in Seoul, where she befriends the owner's niece, Su-ae. The two young women become roommates, and the worldlier Su-ae teaches San how to deal with plants and aggressive customers. However, their relationship becomes strained after a photographer shows up to take photos of violets for a magazine. The photographer compliments San and takes photos of her as well, which initially makes her feel uneasy, but leads to an obsession with him. In one of her bids for attention, which makes her increasingly remote from Su-ae, she plants violets near his office, and the fixation ends up taking a dark turn. With sensuous prose intuitively translated by Hur, Shin vividly captures San's tragic failure to connect with others. This is hard to put down.
