The debut novel by Jung Yun places us in a world where nobody is, was, or ever will be happy. It is, in fact a chronicling of abject misery – the victims of victims of domestic abuse; the victims of home invasion and sexual assault; the victims of circumstance. It’s a powerful read to say the least, and a great one, too.
Thematically, Shelter explores the many interpretations of the phrase ‘safe as houses’. This notion that your home is safe, and through owning it you have some measure of financial security which is unparalleled; that idea gets played out in a host of ways in this novel. We open with a discussion between two home owners and a realtor – the value of the house in question is played out, and the couple which owns the home in question can’t afford it, and selling it would net them a significant loss. Upon this scene wanders a naked middle aged woman, the mother of the novel’s protagonist, who has been the victim of a brutal home invasion. And things go downhill from there.
Safe as houses, indeed. Safety, security, place and purpose is, according to Jung Yun’s work, all a façade – the truth of it all is that everything is fine, until everything isn’t.
This is a novel deeply rooted in the experience of the first and second generation immigrant. The central family to this drama is from Korea; in the quest to achieve the American dream they find themselves within grasping distance of security, but only financial, where their emotional instability is something that no amount of money could remedy. Race, and racial politics plays a heavy part in it, as the central protagonist, Kyung, has married a white woman, and needs to explain that what is logical and natural for her and her culture, is a different kettle of fish for Koreans. Husband first, child second, parents third, wife a distant fourth is the natural order of things and not something to be questioned.
The novel has a riveting, if emotionally taxing plot and characterisation. But Yun’s prose is matter-of-fact and deliberate, which takes a narrative fit for movie of the week melodrama and lifts it into something far more substantial. It is unrelentingly serious; moments of even brief levity are kept very much at bay to the point where even a small scene involving a toddler and his grandfather assembling a bicycle is laced with an undercurrent of resentment, bitterness and sadness.
The dynamics between parents and children are complex at the best of times, especially when the children drift, even crash into adulthood and responsibility. It’s through Shelter that we might examine how extremes of circumstance can be responded to, and be grateful for the occasional generation gap-fueled tiff as the lesser of two evils.
Available now
Picador.
$29.95