Forgotten Country

by Catherine Chung

Weaving Korean folklore within a modern narrative of immigration and identity, Forgotten Country is a fierce exploration of the inevitability of loss, the conflict between obligation and freedom, and a family struggling to find its way out of silence and back to one another.

On the night Janie waits for her sister, Hannah, to be born, her grandmother tells her a story: Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, their family has lost a daughter in every generation, so Janie is charged with keeping Hannah safe. As time passes, Janie hears more stories, while facts remain unspoken. Her father tells tales about numbers, and in his stories everything works out. In her mother's stories, deer explode in fields, frogs bury their loved ones in the ocean, and girls jump from cliffs and fall like flowers into the sea. Within all these stories are warnings.

Years later, when Hannah inexplicably cuts all ties and disappears, Janie embarks on a mission to find her sister and finally uncover the truth beneath her family's silence. To do so, she must confront their history, the reason for her parents' sudden move to America twenty years earlier, and ultimately her conflicted feelings toward her sister and her own role in the betrayal behind their estrangement.

Weaving Korean folklore within a modern narrative of immigration and identity, Forgotten Country is a fierce exploration of the inevitability of loss, the conflict between obligation and freedom, and a family struggling to find its way out of silence and back to one another.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Asia, Family, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Asian American

296 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2012

About the author

Catherine Chung is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Director's Visitorship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She was a Granta New Voice, and won an Honorable Mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award with her first novel, Forgotten Country, which was a Booklist, Bookpage, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2012. She has a degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and worked at a think tank in Santa Monica before going to Cornell University for her MFA. She has published work in The New York Times and Granta, and is a fiction editor at Guernica Magazine. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[J.L. Sutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Each life contains as much meaning as all of history.”



Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country is the story of a family who leaves Korea and begins a new life in the U.S. Told from the perspective of Janie, the oldest of two daughters, Chung explores what it means to leave something behind, whether that be family, home or memories. Despite also being about immigration and identity, the core of the story rests on relationships, most striking between Janie and both her father and younger sister. There was a fair bit of drama in these relationships, but they resonated for me. I also liked how Korean folk tales were woven into the story, but didn’t at any point take it over. They really worked and were quite beautiful. I also liked quotes that reflect on Chung's outlook on life (such as the one at the top). It seems very Emersonian to me. Chung’s Forgotten Country is a well written and engaging read!

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

For all that I grew up surrounded by those who can trace their lineage back to the so called East, a geographic hilarity when considering which side of the Pacific the United States finds itself on, I very rarely read their literature. Lahiri, Tsukiyama, Ozeki, a pitiful number when considering the hoops I've gone through to read those from other continents, some of them even translated to boot. Maybe it is a subconscious 'Oh, I've immersed myself in that type already', but when considering the number of white authors I've indulged in and have yet to fill my plate with, I have to dwell on the canon, the contemporary, what is it that minimizes the amount of time my mind spends on those writers with such multifarious countries in their blood; what is it that makes me content to while away the days with my Taiwan-born American-bred best friend, but hesitate to seek out the narratives of others like her.

I couldn't even get it right this time, for Korea is not Taiwan is not China is not Japan, the last of the latter playing such a horrible part in the first of the former's history that those of us who play the "Guess the Country" shit should stop. Just stop. My friend has talked about how many times she's been thought to be Japanese, just one category of the many misconstruals people feel the need to impose up on her: "Where are you from? No, where are you really from." "Can you fight?" "Say something in your native language!" And then there's the "yellow fever", but only along the lines of straight white men and whomever they happen to choose. Of course.

She watched the deer skim over land no human foot had ventured to cross in twenty years.

This book has a lot of that, along with family dynamics I'd interpret along the lines of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother if I didn't know any better. The authority here is an attentive one, one that demands and obliges, a close unit of ties that are a mix of loving adherence and gasping flight as anything else that exists between human beings, as usable and abusable as those of a white family and their distance. Certain patriarchal tendencies are more explicit, the same breed that would have made my friend an only child had she been a son, but I'm reading Kristin Lavransdatter right now, and I have to wonder how much European derived civilizations have changed in the last six centuries in regards to preferred gender. I no longer need to come with a dowry, but I would still have to lose my name.

If I didn't know it was math, I'd think it was art.

As gorgeous as the cover is, I am glad that the content does not follow in its spidery pink steps. Power plays are everywhere and it does not take much for violence to follow, between soldier and civilian, between child and child, individual and family and death and life. If you have ever hated how much you have loved a family member, if you have ever tested the limits of freedom and found worse things than what has been inflicted on you by your kin, if you would kill them and be killed for them in the space of a heartbeat, acting beyond all thought of propriety and social heritage, this one is for you.

There is no reason to be proud that there is nothing you can do for him. It does not put you above us. One day you will be here, too.

[Debbie is on Storygraph · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book extremely well-written, but I never really connected with it except on a very superficial level. Janie, the narrator, was very sympathetic but not very empathetic. She was very... flat. Her emotions and motivations never shone through the story. Hannah, her sister, was this great mysterious void, but once she showed up in the plot again shrank into the background.

Throughout the book, I wanted more. More emotion, more background, more explanation, more exposition. For a first person narrative, I didn't find out too much about Janie as a person, especially since this is a coming of age story of sorts, despite Janie already being an adult. She had allowed herself to be subsumed by her parents' expectations for her, and in the story she slowly begins to exert her own own authority over her life. At the same time, Hannah had the opposite journey where she had completely renounced her parents and then started coming back to them.

This was a theme that I wish had been explored more, rather than the soap opera reasons for the two sisters to pull away from each other and from their parents (physically for one, and emotionally for the other). Instead, the story focused on Janie's relationship with her father in a meandering and not always satisfying fashion.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer Program

[Britany · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't you just hate reading a book thinking its about one thing when it's really about something totally different?? Another Reader pet peeve, if you will. The jacket of the book mentions the bond of two sisters, and how the family has a curse-- one sister always gets "lost". The key is the family secret left behind in Korea. The book did include minor pieces of sisterhood and a "family secret" but more than anything else it was about family. A family split apart by cancer. The patriarch of the family is diagnosed and has to go to Korea for alternative treatment. The family has to deal with this disease and how it impacts each of them and their extended family.

This one was just OK for me. Especially given that it ended up being about something different than what I was expecting...

[Ciara · Rating 2 out of 5]

the reviews & jacket copy for this book were very misleading. check them out--they say thatjanie's sister hannah mysteriously "goes missing" & in the process of searching for her, janie stumbles across a "family secret" about how every generation of her family "loses a daughter". i was definitely anticipating more of a mystery--about the lost daughters, about hannah's disappearance...about anything.

instead, this is a book about two adult daughters & a wife standing vigil while the patriarch of their family succumbs to cancer. had i known that, i probably wouldn't have read it. i prefer non-fiction to fiction anyway, & if i am going to read fiction, i want it to at least have some narrative tension. death is sad, cancer is sad, & the death in this book was especially unfortunate because the father was one of the few tolerable characters around, but ultimately, reading a book about a man dying after he is given five months to live is not exactly an exercise in appreciating narrative tension.

& hannah doesn't so much "disappear" as she just packs up & moves to california apropos of nothing (as far as her family can tell). she wasn't kidnapped or brainwashed or in an abusive relationship or anything. she just moved. i know i'm not exactly the poster child for healthy family dynamics, but i have definitely moved to other states without telling my family. i'm an adult, after all. hannah's move was a bit more dramatic because she dropped out of the college her parents were paying for & enrolled in UCLA & paid for it herself, but i think that shows gumption & independence more than it shows some kind of deep horrifying mystery.

plus hannah remains in touch with her friends, who give janie her new contact info. her parents pressure janie to fly to california & bring hannah home because of the father's cancer, & when janie finally relents, she has no problem tracking janie down & they have a perfectly normal sister hang-out until janie gets all pissed & tells hannah, "our parents are done with you. they don't want you to come home." i seriously flipped back a few pages to see if i had missed some kind of dramatic sleuthing where janie pulled some cloak & dagger moves to track hannah to her undisclosed location, but...nothing. she seriously just booked a flight & called her sister & said, "pick me up 3pm." i mean, basically. *yawn*

there's also a lot of exposition in this book, a lot of crap about the girls' childhoods that never really pays off. there's a long piece about janie's best friends in elementary school, the games they played together, & how their relationship changed after a classmate's father murdered a chinese american man. janie talks about how her classmates chased her one day, & one of them pushed her, & she hit her head on a wall & got a concussion & knocked out some teeth. it was all a very effective description of racism, & especially that particular anti-japanese/asian racism that infected rust belt cities in the late 80s & early 90s, but...none of it was really relevant to the plot. i don't know.

i did really enjoy the korean fairy tales that were woven into the story. they were beautifully written & employed with a light touch. i felt that they really did add to the manuscript. but the primary story suffered from an over-abundance of annoying characters & low stakes.

[Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In college I'd taken a class on knot theory, and learned that sometimes a knot is impossible to unravel without cutting it apart. Sometimes it can't be undone. For my whole life my family had been so tightly bound that we had stifled each other just trying to breathe, just trying to go our own ways."

"It seemed to me that everything important in our lives was hidden."

I feel as though these two quotes encapsulate the thesis of this novel. That is not to say there is a clear answer to what this novel means, but rather captures its essence: that of a person uncovering secrets and how that action can either build bridges over or carve rivers through the landscape of a family's history.

I think the 'mystery' element introduced in the book's description is misleading. This is far more a character study of a young woman who feels as though she bears the burden of responsibility in her family, as she reflects on her childhood as a Korean immigrant in America, the effects of her parents' decisions, struggles with her father's cancer diagnosis, and works on her doctoral thesis as a sort of penance for her perceived sins.

Catherine Chung is a sensitive writer. There's so much left unsaid, lying under the surface of these characters' lives. In ways it reminded me strongly of Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You and Fatima Farheen Mirza's A Place for Us in how it dealt with the power of family secrets, but also in its somber, melancholic tone. I won't lie: I found this book to be incredibly sad. In fact, I think its biggest strength for me was how it made me feel. It's not manipulative but manages to convey such specific emotions, especially revolving around familial responsibility, the pains that come with broken relationships, and struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I appreciated how complex and unresolved the story was. It didn't leave plot points unanswered, but it left many questions up in the air such as how do we move on from past trauma? When it comes to family, at what point is it okay to say 'enough is enough'? How can you comfort someone when you yourself are in need of comfort?

These are all things many people, at any given moment on earth, are debating in their minds. Chung takes us into the mind of one such person, Janie, and manages to convey so much history, so much love, so much frustration, so much powerlessness, and so much forgiveness in the span of less than 300 pages.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first chapter alone, it was clear that this book was going to be tremendous. I could not wait for it to come out. And, luckily, I didn't have to. I just finished a galley copy, and it is fantastic.
The writing reminded me of aspects of both Shaker furniture and Ishiguro's best works---it was perfectly crafted, dealing with big themes in an understated and unadorned but rich and beautiful manner. And the characters broke my heart in the best way possible.

[Cheryl Strayed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forgotten Country is a richly emotional portrait of a family that had me spellbound from page one. Catherine Chung’s beautiful and wise novel will haunt me for years to come.

[Sara Kovach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forgotten Country is a very emotionally moving novel full of heartbreak, betrayal, forgiveness, reunion, and death that spans many generations and two countries - America and Korea.

At the heart of this novel are two sisters born in Korea and raised in America by immigrant parents. Younger sister, Hannah, mysteriously leaves, and Janie has the burden and responsibility placed on her by her family to find her and bring her home. The girl's father has become ill, and the urgency to bring Hannah home is intensified.

All I can say is WOW! I read this novel straight through - only stopping to eat, sleep, and shower - and struggled to do so then!!! What a powerful story. So much wrapped up in the pages of this book - so much history - both for the country of Korea and the family involved. The family's past is so entwined in the history of Korea, and it follows them to America. The family dynamics is a very integral part of this novel, especially the connectedness with the generations that remain in Korea - grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.

I so felt for Janie. So many layers to this character. She has so much responsibility on her shoulders - placed there not only from herself, but her family as well. Her parents never had a son, so felt the pressure to take up many of the duties that a son would have. Always looking after her sister, following in her father's footsteps in her graduate studies, always doing as her parents asked.

Hannah was so different from her sister. She is so distant, so foreign throughout most of the story. Although her story is very deep, it is not until the end that we get to understand just where she is coming from.

Living in America we often take for granted how families work. The culture described in the pages of this book was very fascinating for me to read about - so different from anything I have personally experienced - very informative. The author's writing style makes this story so inviting and easy to read. It is hard to believe that this is her debut novel. I look forward to more from Catherine Chung.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another wonderful, heart rendering book by a new author. Starts in Korea, moves to the United States and than ends back in Korea. Much Korean history is related but the book is mainly about two sisters, a father and a mother. Does a great job of highlighting the complexity of a family, positions and roles within families and how easy it is to assume one knows things about a person only to find out years later one is wrong. Love the Korean stories and folk lore told by the girls Korean grandmother. This was an enjoyable if heartbreaking novel.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book from a goodreads giveaway;

I was under the impression that this book was going to be about Janie's search for her younger sister, which it isn't really.
Instead, I was met with a young Korean-American woman, who reminisced about her times as a childhood and other family stories. (I am secretly grateful it wasn't a mystery novel after all.)
Janie's devotion to her heritage and family is tested, however its not really a book about how she came out stronger or better or smarter, its more about her relationships that she encounters along the way and how they lead into the situation at hand.

This is the perfect book to read for leisure. I found it beautifully written, with the folktales, past memories, and present incorporated with such flow and thought. Wonderful mix of culture and a problem that people worldwide suffer from-caner.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, a story that follows a family/the eldest daughter for ~20 years, and focuses on their family relationships through growing up, separation, and death, incorporating shared stories from Korean folklore with relevant themes. Some things could have been tied up a little bit more, but overall it was well done and moving.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family. The intricacies of family relationships. Our families can define us, our families can destroy us, our families provide us with the roots with which to ground us, and our families love us. But for all the complexities behind family relationships, for all the cruelty and anger we harbor against some of them, there are ties that continue to bind and support us in times of need.

Hannah is missing and her parents expect her older sister, Janie, to find her. Nobody knows where she has gone or why she's left without leaving them a message, or why she won't take their calls. But Hannah must be found before it's too late.

Moving between the past and the present, we are gradually presented with a multi-branched family tree, each leafy branch holding its own story while linked to ancestral pasts.

This story explores the relationship between a husband and wife, between parent and child, between cousins and between siblings. What do we do out of family obligations, whether or not they are misconceived? What indignities or injustices do we put up with because they've been inflicted upon us by a family member? And yet who do we reach out to or lean on when we have to face the harsh reality of a loved one's terminal cancer diagnosis?

[Celeste Ng]

A lovely debut novel that explores--in deceptively simple, elegant prose--complicated relationships between sisters, between mothers and daughters, and between fathers and daughters. The father-daughter relationship in particular felt finely sketched to me and brought me to tears, which is rare for a book.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my GOD. So good. Bleak but beautiful. Wow.

[Raquel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seemed to hold a lot of promise but I felt disappointed in the end.

Janie's Korean family is haunted by a curse of sorts: every generation, a daughter is lost. So when Janie's sister Hannah is born, she is warned by her grandmother to watch over and protect her. Janie tries to, not always succeeding, and when they girls are in college, Hannah inexplicably disappears (sort of--they figure out where she is but Hannah refuses to talk to them and basically emancipates herself from her family--for reasons that are never made clear to the reader, which is frustrating).

The jacket copy is an inaccurate description of the book. Yes, Hannah goes missing, but what Janie "discovers" that is alluded to is not terribly revelatory. In fact, all she really learns is more mystery. Her mother's sister disappeared but except for one or two stories told by the family, no one will really talk about it. The reason for her parents' sudden departure from Korea is not clear or dramatic enough. And at the crux of the story is the true meat of it: Janie's father has terminal cancer, so he moves from the States back to Korea to seek treatment. This storyline was very moving and strong, but many of the subplots, not so much.

The writing was beautiful, as was the imagery, but there were so many storylines to nowhere--so many expositions that built up tension and then were left hanging loose. So many threads that were just never connected. It was frustrating to me as a reader because I couldn't understand why I was being told all these seemingly important pieces of back story and all these subplot lines if they were just left by the wayside. There was abuse, racism, inappropriate sexual advances--yet there was little to no emotional reaction to these, and I wasn't clear on how these stories fit into the larger narrative because the impact of these events was never revisited. I know that life doesn't wrap up neatly in a package with everything being perfectly resolved--and I don't particularly like books that do that. But I do feel like in the limited scope of a novel, every detail the author chooses to share with us is supposed to be important--a clue or puzzle piece toward piecing together the whole arc of the story. In this story, I was left with a lot of leftover pieces that didn't quite fit in anywhere.

I was also not entirely clear of the timeframes when everything was happening in the book and had to do some inferring, as I am admittedly woefully ignorant of recent Korean history in any meaningful detail. I feel like more historical explanation would have provided a bit more context that would have helped me better grasp some of the dramatic tension in the book.

I had very high hopes for this book and sadly my expectations were not met. I ranked it as I did because Ms. Chung is clearly a talented writer and the storyline about the father was very powerful and well-rendered, but the rest of it just didn't come together in a satisfying way.

[Mara · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the outset, this book seems to be about a fairly ordinary Korean-American family. Although the younger sister has left town without telling her family where she's gone, her actions seem like an understandable act of rebellion (as opposed to the mystery the jacket-blurb would have you believe). In point of fact, she is relatively easily found and returned to the family fold, although the real reasons she left are frustratingly left un-fleshed out.

Soon after we meet this family, however, it seems as though the book is really about cruelty. There are acts of cruelty perpetrated by the government, by spouses, sisters, parents, and other family members against one another. This part of the book is very difficult to read, not just because of the descriptions of cruelty, but because they were so unexpected after the book's opening, and because I never really understood why we were presented with so much cruelty. It doesn't seem to help us understand much about how the family interacts during the father's illness and decline, which takes up much of the book. Yet even here the story seems insubstantial and can't support the weight that the author seems to be trying to give it.

There might have been more to this story if it had been told in multiple perspectives. But because it is told in the first-person of the older sister, a character who doesn't seem to grow or change, the book itself stagnates. By denying us the insights of any of the other characters, the author limits what the reader can get out of the book.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this quiet book. Beautifully written, but it is the small shared experiences that ring familiar. An apple peel, stories of persimmons, the ”death” of an aunt that hides a stranger truth and a pervasive sense of melancholy. I don’t often get to read stories that obliquely mirror my own experience and I’m grateful for the experience. That is also a perfect cover.

[Waven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those stories that hangs onto you like the smell of smoke, creeping in and making itself at home whether or not you really want it to. It begins with Jeehyun and Haejin, sisters born in Korea whose family moved to the U.S. when they were young. Now both in college, their names Anglicized to Janie and Hannah, the sisters who were once so close have grown apart until they hardly know each other. One day, without a word, Hannah disappears. Through friends, Janie tracks down Hannah's new phone number and finds she's moved two thousand miles away. And wants nothing to do with their family. But their father is ill, their parents moving back to Korea for treatment, and Janie is charged with finding a way to get her sister back.

What follows is an exploration of family ties, of hope and failure, love and obligation. And intertwined with their experiences are stories of extended family and Koreas of the past, both real and mythic. The result is beautiful. It's a journey across almost every border, the ones we draw around ourselves and those we draw around others, in an approachable and enthralling mix of worlds. And despite its moments of darkness (there are many), it is not bleak and un-hopeful as it could easily become in less skilled hands.

With sometimes terrible honesty, with surprising truths and revelations buried in simple prose like landmines, Chung has written a wonderful tale as biting as it is touching. It is hopefully the first of many.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3+ Forgotten Country is a poetically written portrait of two estranged sisters facing their father's illness. The novel often resonated emotionally with me and I think I would have loved it if the structure had been simpler. Chung crammed in several other story lines in the 296 page novel - the mother's and father's histories in Korea, the sisters' childhoods, Korean folklore and more.

I don't know why so many debut novelists choose "jumping around in time" structures for their novels. I think it takes considerable skill and experience to pull it off. In the case of Forgotten Country," the disparate strands just don't coalesce. And what could have been (and was in parts) a powerful novel was often a staccato reading experience. But I would still recommend.

[Rita Chin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most beautiful book I have ever read. It's one of those rare books that has changed me for having read it and has stayed with me in such profound and unexpected ways. FORGOTTEN COUNTRY tackles themes of love, loss, familial bonds and loyalty, immigration and the ways in which "home" can both hold and betray us, and the human capacity to rise and to heal-- with boundless grace, stunning precision, hauntingly gorgeous imagery, and a quiet ferocity that will break your heart. Luminous, insightful, poetic, and absolutely unforgettable, FORGOTTEN COUNTRY should be on everyone's To-Read list! I am so grateful for having read it, and will no doubt return to it for the rest of my life.

[Basmaish · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this so much more than I thought I would. (And I also have to say after the few books I’ve been reading and disliking, it was incredibly pleasant to read something that I’ve really enjoyed.)

I want to sit with my thoughts on this for a bit before writing a full review (even though I know I’ll forget to come back to this).. but in a few keywords words this story is about family and family structure, the relationship between daughters, the bond created within a family, family and cultural traditions, education, sexual harassment, Korean War, sickness, grief, love and loss. The author has woven a beautiful story connecting each of these and I can not wait to read more by her.

[Catherine Siemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is beautifully written. Its exploration of the family dynamic in a Korean immigrant family is sensitive and very real -- nobody is entirely likable, nobody is entirely to blame. People looking for resolution, for clearly drawn lines, will not like the book, but the author does a wonderful job of exploring the complexities of real life.

[Darrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

After almost 8 years living in Korea and 26 years of marriage to a Korean (now Korean-American) spouse, I can still find myself surprised when I find some tidbit of Korean culture I did not know or did not fully understand. I found several instances of this while reading Forgotten Country, where I had to stop for an "aha" moment when I thought back to some past incident, family moment or activity that, I realize now, I didn't fully understand at the time.

I have to wonder, however, whether a non-Korean or, more broadly, a non-Asian audience will appreciate all the subtleties of the cultural dynamics going on between the characters described in this book. How many readers will get the references to Korean mythology or the dynamics of multi-generational relationships, fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters and, of course, sisters and sisters which is what a lot of this book is about.

Which is not to say that it is not well written and enjoyable...it is. In fact, I put it on my favorites shelf because it echoes so much of my own experience with my extended Korean family or, more accurately, my wife's experience of family, and family history. The book draws on Korean history...the Japanese colonial period, the student uprising and massacre in Kwangju and the politics of a Korea that was still wavering between dictatorship and democracy.

My wife's father's family was once part of the local government in Cholla province and lost their positions to Japanese administrators. Later, during the Korean war, in order to avoid being drafted into the ROK military (this was as much of a death sentence at the time as fighting in the war), my mother-in-law helped her husband hide in mountain caves and secretly brought food to him and others. So much of what has happened since then to my wife's family was dependent on what happened during these historical events which is what this book also conveys.

So much has changed since we left Korea in 1997 and every time we go back we have to navigate a culture and family traditions that we no longer participate in or, have changed so much that even my wife feels out of place. This is much like Janie and Hannah in the book, and I found myself empathizing with Hannah especially, because I see my wife's growing distance and, at times, anger with the way she is treated as the youngest member of what would be considered a very large family here in the US. Hannah is straightforward and says exactly how she feels, even at the risk of offending family members, my wife holds her tongue and keeps the anger and frustration inside.

I am already reading Catherine Chung's second novel, The Tenth Muse, and, I am already thinking it will be as good as Forgotten Country.

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving story of a family shifting apart and together as they traverse the difficult realities of life and death that face every family, seen through the eyes of a middle class academic Korean American family. I listened to the audio book read by Emily Woo Zeller.

[H.A. Leuschel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very engaging, well-written story about two sisters who face the dilemma of being torn between family obligations and loyalties and the yearning to break free and build an independent life.

[christa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Janie takes her role as eldest daughter seriously in “Forgotten Country,” Catherine Chung’s debut novel about a family that comes to the United States, out-running potential political persecution in their home country, Korea.

Hannah, her younger sister, has a bit more moxie. When the family’s traditions start to weigh her down, she runs away to California without leaving a forwarding address. Janie’s resentment toward her grows when their father is diagnosed with cancer and eventually decides to return to Korea, where treatment options surpass what can be done for him in Michigan. Janie tracks down Hannah on the coast and the sisters have a fight. Hannah is incredulous because her sister doesn’t understand her position; Janie freaks because Hannah was so selfish to leave the family wondering about her safety and whereabouts, so she lies to her. Tells her their dad is sick, but that their parents don’t want her around.

Then Janie puts the stall on her grad school-level studies of mathematics -- following her brilliant father’s footsteps, though it doesn’t come as naturally to her -- and travels to Korea with her parents.

Back in Korea things seem better for her father. Days are spent taking walks and tending to the garden. Greeting family members they haven’t seen in two decades. Stories of the past -- how her father and older escaped when the rest of the family was murdered, the wooing stages of her parent’s relationship -- are revealed, as well as the story of the family’s early days in America and the racism that they were greeted with, including vandalism and schoolyard abuses.

The side stories and folklore are well-done quick-hit snippets with tons of punch. And the characterization of Janie as a do-gooder adhering to a traditional family role and taking on the part of both son and eldest daughter, are well-done. She’s completely selfish and unlikable, but not unknowable. There is a balance here that makes it possible to feel empathy for her, even in lying to Hannah in what could potentially mean the difference between being allowed a sobbing death-bed scene. Hannah, too, is well played. She wants to buck these traditions and resents the way her sister has failed to develop as an individual, rather than just a role in the family’s structure. While she’s more relatable, she is also pretty selfish.

The story goes off-roading in the latter half: An added bit of familial drama that explains strained relations, a revelation that seems mis-timed and understated in its set up, making it jut from the novel’s flow like a double-jointed limb. It’s followed by a scene involving Janie that also feels ill-conceived in a novel that already has enough dramatic moments, it doesn’t require unsolicited sexual advances from a thesis advisor to add to her characterization or add salt to the plot.

Some of this is really sink-into-able, but it also really drags with a sick bed scene that turns the father into something akin to the killer in horror films, always popping up for one last gust of terror.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read the blurb and back cover, I expected this book to be about Janie's search for her sister, Hannah, and the unraveling of the curse that causes their family to "lose a sister in every generation since the Japanese occupation" of Korea. However, the book was much more about the family relationships and the father's cancer diagnosis and gradual decline. This is unfortunately the second book I have read this week about which the advance information implied a mystery to solve that was not delivered by the novel. On a related note, I wish publishers would just be honest about what the book is about. Most of us would read it anyway and for those who would not, I would think you'd prefer they skip it than have a negative feeling about your house or your author. /rant
What this book did deliver was a touching and poignant relationship between father and daughter and between the two sisters. Both sisters had notions about each other, who was more loved, who was more free to be themselves, who had it better growing up, that turned out to not necessarily be the case. Their father's illness caused them to become closer and face some things about their relationship and also about themselves that they had been hiding from. I found Janie, the first person narrator to be genuine and relatable with actual flaws and a dynamic arc.
The writing is beautiful and elegant, elevating the miserable and depressing parts about the father's illness and the sisters' ugly arguments. It also lends the anecdotes of past events (which there are many) a dreamlike and parable-like quality, which I would characterize as very Eastern.
One other mildly irritating thing was the lack of proper names. Mother, Father, Grandmother, Uncle, "Big Cousin"...we never learn their real names. The narrator tells long anecdotes about her family referring to them only by their relationship to herself. At times this is awkward and confusing, particularly when telling a story that involves "my mother's grandmother" and "my grandmother's mother", who are, of course, the same person, as well as "my mother's grandmother's sister." Had the author given these people names, it would be more clear to the reader whom was being spoken of. We never even learn the narrator's last name.
Besides this and the fact that there isn't really any resolution to the curse of the multiple lost sisters, I enjoyed reading about Janie and Hannah and their family. I was thrilled to learn more about Korea and the Korean way of life, which I don't know much about. My favorite parts were when Janie related some fable her parents or grandmother had told her when she was a child.
I would recommend this book to fans of novels about family relationships, but not those who are expecting a good mystery.

[Kerry Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a gorgeously written debut novel with lovely insights into the complicated relationships between sisters, between husbands and wives, between parents and children. Interwoven throughout the family story are beautifully rendered Korean folk tales and fables. I'm not going to use this review to outline the plot or analyze the characters, I'm simply going to quote one of the many passages that dazzled me with its language and imagery and see if you can resist wanting to read this book:

     "I sat, looking at my father with the hat over his face, watching the rise and fall of his breath, thinking of a book filled with all the things I still didn't know about his life. I thought: let him get better. I lay down beside him.
     On my back, squinting against the light, I thought I could see the air moving. On the tree above us, a lone leaf quivered recklessly out of sync with the rest. When we were children, our mother had told us how trees grow: about the roots gripping the ground, the stable trunk, the branches, the separate leaves. She told us about veins we couldn't see carrying sap to all the branches, the chemical processes that turn light into sugar, chlorophyll infusing each leaf with green as it unfurls.
     She told us that beneath the ground, where no one could see, some trees gripped each other's roots in the ground like so many held hands. Mahogany did it. Aspen. Gnarled wood grasped gnarled wood until one tree's roots were another tree's roots. In times of drought they passed water, when there were fires they passed messages of danger. Burning, an aspen would send the alert root to root so that even if it died itself, the other trees could bring up sap to save themselves from danger.
     'Even plants live longer if they're closer to their families,' she'd said."

[Webster Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was amazing. It really opens your eyes to another culture and how someone moving to the United States from another country can be treated differently. The love of family or being a member of a close group can make you stronger or pull you apart when you are in a difficult situation.

The main character Janie is trying to get her doctorate in math. She was born in Korea and was transplanted to Michigan with her mother father and sister. The books starts out with Janie's sister Hannah disappearing and Janie being forced to find her because of filial duty. Hannah does not want to be found and this is where the story unfolds. We the reader get to see into Janie's life through the stories she tells about growing up in Korea and Michigan. She also tells stories of her mother, father and grandmother growing up in war torn Korea. The stories give the reader a real sense of how different people's problems were with family members getting carted away by soldiers and either being murdered, tortured or raped. The hardships that her family went through are intermixed with ancient fairy tales from Korea. These stories help to lighten the mood. At the core of the story there is plenty of sorrow, sickness and death so it is good to hear these touching reminders of childhood.

Being a white American I felt slightly ashamed for the way Janie and her family were treated in America. We as American's feel this is the home of the free but only for those who look a certain way and speak the language. This book made me aware of injustices and made me feel for the characters. I think it will touch any reader and make them a better human being for it.

Jenny Paxson
Readers Advisory Librarian