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English(English) Article

The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim review – heartbreaking Korean war tale

About the Article

Article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/09/the-waiting-by-keum-suk-gendry-kim-review-heartbreaking-korean-war-tale
Journal: The Guardian
Issued Date: November 09, 2021
Page: -
Language: English(English)
Country: UNITED STATES
City: -
Book: The Waiting
Writer: Kim Keumsuk
Translator: Janet Hong

About the Author

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
Birth : 1971 ~ -
Occupation : cartoonist
First Name : Keumsuk
Family Name : Kim
Korean Name : 김금숙
ISNI : 0000000477401160
Works : 17

Descriptions - 1 Languages

English(English)

The author of Grass works another miracle with this semi-autobiographical tale of a family separated by conflict Thanks to the pandemic, most of us now know what it’s like to be apart from those we love: for the rest of our lives, we’ll remember the waiting and the longing, the fear of being forgotten. Is this why I found Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s masterly new graphic novel, The Waiting, so extremely painful to read? Perhaps. I know that I brought some of my own stuff to this, an account – half fact, half fiction – of families separated by the Korean war, tears rolling down my face as I turned its inky pages. But I won’t compare my own experiences to those of its characters – they don’t even come close – and nor do I want to take anything away from her achievement in this book, her first since the award-winning Grass (a novel about a Korean girl who becomes a “comfort woman” during the second world war). Keum takes the reader inside some of the human heart’s most inaccessible chambers, places that are all but closed to most visitors – and yet she does so almost casually, the stark economy of her drawings no guide at all to their lasting emotive power. What a talent she is.

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