Something New from Korea

J.M. Lee is an accomplished author in his native Korea.  For the first time, one of his novels is available in English in the US.  Based on the life of Yun Dong-ju a dissident Korean writer who died in Fukuoka prison,  The Investigation is a locked room mystery with an unusual setting.

  The novel takes place in Fukuoka Prison in the Korean peninsula in 1944.  The most sadistic of the prison guards is found murdered with his lips sewn shut.  The prison houses Korean political dissidents as well as criminals. All the prisoners were accounted for at the time of the murder. A young prison guard is assigned to the investigation. It soon becomes apparent that nobody wants this crime solved.

This novel is a mystery, a war story, another view of the role of Japan in World War II, a glimpse into Korea, and the redemptive power of poetry.

Scaring myself silly!

Although it is past Halloween, the gathering darkness in New England fives rise to all sort of creepy feelings.  I offer you two books to give you an excuse to sleep with the light on.

First, Karin Slaughter' Pretty Girls is a riveting, intense drama in which you do not know who is telling the truth until the last page.  Is the heroine's husband who he says he is, or is there a darker side to him? The novel is very graphic and not for the faint of heart.

If Pretty Girls is terror on a physical level, there is another book out right now which is even scarier on a psychological level.  David Mitchell's latest Slade House is a haunted house mystery in the tradition of Henry James The Turn of the Screw.  What is reality and what is fantasy?  Could a house really exist every nine years in order to claim its next victim?   What makes you a victim?

Of the two books, I would say that Slade House was creepier!

Enjoy and don't say I didn't warn you!

Deep Down Dark

One of my book groups just finished reading Chilean author Isabel Allende's The House of Spirits.  I was inspired to read a totally different book about Chile.  Hector Tobar wrote an account of the 33 miners trapped in a mine in Chile in 2010, Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that set them Free. Taken from numerous personal interviews, the book is an inspiring piece of writing.  It is a testament to the human spirit to read how 33 men coped with several months of darkness, starvation and solitude. The families, most of whom were poor and indigenous stood their ground and insisted that the men were alive. Further, the international rescue effort should be a lesson to world leaders.  I just saw that the book will be released as a movie next week. So take some time to read it or watch it. Sometimes, the human race can actually come together in a crisis.