Jonathan Mirsky
Korea Moves
Chang-rae Lee has written two earlier novels that won important American prizes, and he teaches creative writing at Princeton University. But it is as if two authors with identical names wrote this book. One Chang-rae Lee tells an engrossing, even poignant story, only occasionally marring it with an unnecessary, fancy or incorrect word. The other Chang-rae Lee entangles the same story in a thicket of awful English.
For example, what does this sentence mean after its first clause? ‘The corner windows of her apartment faced north and west onto the stone-and-glass towers of Midtown, and through all the years she lived here she had never quite seen this depth of gleaming or coloration, the low
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers