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Miles from Nowhere

3.42 of 5 stars 3.42 · rating details · 1,427 ratings · 311 reviews

A major new voice in fiction debuts with the electrifying and heartbreaking story of a teenage runaway on the streets of 1980s New York.

Teenage Joon is a Korean immigrant living in the Bronx of the 1980s. Her parents have crumbled under the weight of her father�s infidelity; he has left the family, and mental illness has rendered her mother nearly catatonic. So Joon, at t...more

Hardcover, 289 pages

Published January 2nd 2009 by Riverhead Hardcover (first published March 13th 2008)

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Best Asian-American teen fiction

33rd out of 79 books — 101 voters

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Books about Korean-Americans

16th out of 22 books — 9 voters

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Jan 08, 2009 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

[I received an ARC of this book through Goodreads' First-reads program.]

“I was trapped in my body, and my body was trapped in this empty lot with men who knew nothing about love or pity but everything else crucial,” our young narrator, Joon, tells us early in this debut novel by Nami Mun. Like so much of Joon’s narration, it is a statement made with the chill accuracy of retrospect. And, given the context in which the line appears, its implications are terrifying.

Miles from Nowhere, which tells...more [I received an ARC of this book through Goodreads' First-reads program.]

“I was trapped in my body, and my body was trapped in this empty lot with men who knew nothing about love or pity but everything else crucial,” our young narrator, Joon, tells us early in this debut novel by Nami Mun. Like so much of Joon’s narration, it is a statement made with the chill accuracy of retrospect. And, given the context in which the line appears, its implications are terrifying.

Miles from Nowhere, which tells the story of Joon’s teenage years spent living on the streets of New York City, is a book that knows everything about love and pity, including how to withhold both. It contains images of startling brutality — a dog, fed chicken bones, dead in the gutter with “a little dish of blood under his mouth”; a “small pregnant girl” with a bruised cheek sitting in the “rusted” light of a dirty bathroom — and depicts despair with crystalline intensity. The reader may flinch; the prose never does.

Given this, it is a measure of Mun’s artistry that Miles from Nowhere is not overwhelmed by the darkness it contains. The book’s power lies in all that it does know about love and pity, and the ways in which that knowledge shines through. Setting plays a part in this: in Mun’s hands, even the dirtiest and most mundane corners of New York are capable of flaring with sudden radiance. In one extraordinary passage, which cannot be adequately explained in summary, the brightly lit windows of a ninety-nine-cent store, its aisles lined with multicolored detergent bottles “like an open box of crayons,” offer momentary, almost mystical comfort to Joon at the end of a harrowing night. (I should add, though, that in this book such moments rarely come with the clichéd flashbulb burst of an epiphany; rather, they arrive like the sunrise: by the time you actually notice the light, the shadows have already been shifting for some time, as if in preparation. Mun is an exacting, word-perfect author in this regard — the moment cited above is a full forty pages in the making.)

If Nami Mun’s New York is a place of darkness shot through with unexpected glimmers of light, then her narrator, Joon, is the perfect tour guide. Joon comes to understand early on that “[i]n order to get what I needed — shelter, food, money, friendship — parts of me, piece by piece, would have to be sacrificed.” And yet of all the things that Joon does sacrifice — her health, safety, sobriety, dignity, and perhaps even at times her sanity — she never loses her essential capacity (to keep returning to my talking points) for love and pity. Like one of Balzac’s flaneurs, Joon is a camera, constantly observing others, interweaving her own story with theirs if only for the temporary comfort of togetherness that this provides.

Reviewers who have called this book “depressing” are missing the point. Miles from Nowhere pits Joon’s need for love and pity, and her ability to bestow the same upon others, against the howling vacuum of the city. In this light, Joon’s resilience is miraculous — and all the more so because the reader believes in it, roots for it all the way. (Rarely has such a simple line as “I was that person” left me so exhilarated.)

As a novel, Miles from Nowhere is episodic; reading it, I find myself reminded, in a way, of a picaresque: the journey is as important as the destination. There is no conventional, overarching plot “problem” save the unceasing daily pressure to survive. As an avid reader of short fiction, though, I should mention that a number of the chapters here were originally published in literary journals as short stories; one of them, “Shelter,” received a 2007 Pushcart Prize. The book coheres as a novel — thanks in large part to the pitch-perfect consistency of Joon’s voice and the intensity of the reader’s feelings toward her — but Mun is a skilled engineer of the short-story form, and the reader who also studies these chapters as short stories will be richly rewarded. Note, for example, the intricately interwoven timelines in “On the Bus,” or compare the ending of Mun’s “King’s Manor” with that of Denis Johnson’s “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” (one a drug-induced fever dream paradoxically promising connection, the other promising just the opposite). The very finest chapters/stories here — “Avon,” “King’s Manor,” and “What We Had,” by my reckoning, though there's not a weak entry in the bunch — are intricate engines of tragedy, and in their formal perfection they bestow upon Joon and her supporting cast a stark, cool beauty. This beauty is the truest solace that literary art can offer its subjects and its readers. Those familiar with Robert Stone’s best short stories — “Helping” and “Miserere,” for example — will recognize the effect.

That this is Mun’s authorial debut is astonishing; it feels like the work of an author in mid-career, completely assured of her powers. Like Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Point or Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere does not simply “herald the arrival of a significant new talent” (that old reviewer’s trope, endlessly trotted out to describe promising first books). Rather, it stands as evidence of an enormously skilled, confident, and compassionate author who somehow has come to us already fully formed.(less)

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Oct 22, 2009 Angie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

It's like this: I was in the second bookstore of the day (Waldenbooks; first had been Hastings) and was browsing the shelves. Just browsing; I wasn't planning on buying another book. I saw this book, and didn't recognize the name.

I looked at the cover. I didn't want to touch it; it's light, white in the middle, soft blue at the outside, and I know what happens when I read books like those. You should see my Salinger collection; the covers are smudged with black fingerprints.

But I couldn't take m...more

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Nov 03, 2008 Kimberly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It was so stark yet so poetic and full of life. Nami Mun had some ludicrously beautiful lines in the novel that just blew my mind.

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Dec 18, 2008 Dan rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who like really depressing books

Recommended to Dan by: firstreads

Shelves: firstreads

This book is the story of Joon, a teenage runaway in New York in the 1980s. The book jumps around in time a lot. But in general it details the main character's parent's marriage falling apart, her mother descending into mental illness, her running away, becoming a prostitute and getting hooked on drugs. She gets off drugs, and gets back on drugs. And gets back off drugs again. Along the way there are many heart breaking and heart wrenching vignettes about her life on the streets. Its sort of lik...more This book is the story of Joon, a teenage runaway in New York in the 1980s. The book jumps around in time a lot. But in general it details the main character's parent's marriage falling apart, her mother descending into mental illness, her running away, becoming a prostitute and getting hooked on drugs. She gets off drugs, and gets back on drugs. And gets back off drugs again. Along the way there are many heart breaking and heart wrenching vignettes about her life on the streets. Its sort of like a 1980s female version of A Million Little Pieces

All in all, I thought this book was pretty well written, but the main character was sort of superficial. The first person narrator talked a lot about painful experiences, but not really about how that made her feel. Like every painful experience made her feel empty. And because this character is so superficially fleshed out, all these painful events that happen to her don't really affect the reader all that much. You can't feel sorry for a character that you never got introduced to or attached to. The author slams you with traumatic event after traumatic event, but you just sort of shut yourself off, and don't get too involved because you got no stake in it. This book would have been much better, had the author given more time to describing the actual character and her thoughts and deeds in normal times, and less time describing all the bad events that happen to her.

I feel like this book is "emotional pornography." The author just throws terrible situation after terrible situation at the protagonist. It gets somewhat desensitizing after a while.

The writing style in this book shows real promise. There are beautifully crafted passages. However, the style is inconsistent. It feels like the author is experimenting with several different writing styles at various points in the book and sort of cycling through them. I found this very distracting, and while each distinct style showed a lot of promise. However the way she jumps around shows that she needs a lot more focus.

One thing I really like about this book is that it is very fashionable for girls to wear trashy throwback 80s clothes. This book will disabuse anyone about any sort of romance for the trashiness of the 80s.

I read this book because I got it from first-reads.
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Nov 07, 2008 Wisteria Leigh rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: high school and older

Recommended to Wisteria by: read review on shelf awareness

Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun[return][return]I received Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun about a week ago, and decided to glance over the first few pages on Saturday. When I receive an ARC I thumb through the book, read a little and try to obtain an overview before I sit down and read it. [return]It soon became apparent that I wasn� t going to put this book down, and it quickly landed on top of my TBR pile. I can� t think of a better way to spend a rainy day. As I began to read Miles to Nowhere...more Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun[return][return]I received Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun about a week ago, and decided to glance over the first few pages on Saturday. When I receive an ARC I thumb through the book, read a little and try to obtain an overview before I sit down and read it. [return]It soon became apparent that I wasn� t going to put this book down, and it quickly landed on top of my TBR pile. I can� t think of a better way to spend a rainy day. As I began to read Miles to Nowhere, I came to know Joon, a thirteen year old run-a-way, living on the streets. The story takes place in the 1980� s in New York City. [return][return]As the story begins, Joon a Korean girl lives with her parents. Their marriage is a rocky relationship always on the brink of failure. One day her father finally has enough and decides to leave home. This sends her mentally ill mother, unable to cope with his desertion, on a tragic trajectory of wacky behavior. When Joon takes to the streets she fights for survival wearing the scars of pain. Her battles become narcotic addiction, failed friendships, and lost loves. She tries to climb out by working in a variety of jobs from dance girl hostess to an avon door to door salesgirl. The story is written episodically with Joon as the narrator. We learn about all the friends, parents and the people Joon meets through her point of view. You can� t help but love Joon and want to protect and embrace her and tell her it� s just a bad dream. Time passes in Joon� s mind, sometimes rational, sometimes fragmented. You feel her confusion, her sense of loss and despair all through her cognition. Mun makes it look easy the way she has managed to create the passage of time over five years as Joon ages to eighteen. This book does not come out until December 26th, but you will want to get a copy as soon as you can. This is a warm, sensitive, reflective story, sometimes amusing, sometimes dispiriting but carrying a message of hope. You will close the cover and say ahhhhhhh.(less)

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Feb 22, 2009 Elsie rated it 3 of 5 stars

An unsentimental and unapologetic look at life on the streets for Joon, a teenager sleepwalking through the boogie-down Bronx just before and during Reagan's trickle-down prosperity. Missing are site-specific details of the borough, but Nami Mun makes up for it with an unswerving look into the mind of a teenager lost within her own heartbreak, confusion and numbing drug fog. Mun keeps it short, seeming determined to keep the reader from slipping into knee-jerk liberal responses to the violence a...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Jackie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: work-review-related-reading

This is the debut novel of Mun, and it isn't an easy one. At the age of 13, after her father left them for another woman and her mother went completely insane (she was already half-way there, but...), Joon decides that she would be better off on her own, on the streets. The book is basically 5 years of vignette's about the various situations she had fallen into. Most are not pretty, but Joon accepts them all without anger or much emotion at all--some of that is the drugs she's on, but most of it...more

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Dec 12, 2008 Brittany rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, goodreads-giveaways, 2008

[This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy won through GoodReads Giveaways. The book will be published January 2009.]

This book is filled with marital infidelity, mental illness, homelessness, prostitution, homosexuality, drug addiction, alcoholism, abortion, and suicide. In other words, it's not a book I would usually be interested in. But despite its vulgar and depressing topics and overall roughness, it is at once quite easy to read and hard to put down for any long period of time. The ch...more

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Feb 04, 2009 Deirdre rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, 2009-reads

Miles from Nowhere , by Nami Mun, is the tale of a teen runaway living on the streets of New York in the 1980s. Joon is an almost-likable protagonist, but I found myself getting more and more frustrated every time she made the wrong choice. She does try to make her life better, leaving the reader with enough hope to get to the end of the book.

Mun, a new author, seems to have written this fictional book based on her own life experiences. For having overcome her past, I commend her, but I wasn't t...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Janet rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, writing

While the subject matter of most of these stories was downright depressing---a teen facing drug addiction, living on the street, hustling--I was struck by how clearly the author had taken things that had proably happened to her in her own life and created fictionalized accounts, snippets in time dramatized not only to capture the moment itself but the life lesson as well. This is the way I'd like to handle that memoir, that teen fiction, that book that I've got in me.

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Mar 02, 2009 C(h)ristine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Much has been made of the novel’s “episodic” structure and I can see why–those of us used to a more traditional narrative will gnash their teeth trying to find their footing. In workshop, I can see this manuscript getting a lot of feedback about time/place. But the book still sucked me right in from the first page, and I found myself swept along in the narrative because I trusted the voice and loved the characters. I was still annoyed by how the chapters didn’t seem linked at all but I coped by...more

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Sep 30, 2008 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

[This review refers to an advance reader's copy. The book is due out in January 2009.]

This is usually not my sort of thing, but I picked up and began reading and couldn't put it down. It's a very well written story about a Korean teenage runaway and drug addict in early 1980's New York. At times it's laugh-out-loud funny and at other times it's heartbreakingly sad. Like the main character, the writing is no-holds-barred and not sentimental. It reads incredibly quickly with some beautiful writin...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Karina rated it 3 of 5 stars

In my personal opinion while reading the novel "Miles From Nowhere" it seemed to me as any old, average book. I truly wasn't very impressed by the content or the story line that the author, Nami Mun had created for a story, that I feel could have had a very different approach. With the characters having a hard life and with the conditions they were put under, I feel it could have had more excitement and surprised to occur in order to make the book a more intriguing read for myself.

The main chara...more In my personal opinion while reading the novel "Miles From Nowhere" it seemed to me as any old, average book. I truly wasn't very impressed by the content or the story line that the author, Nami Mun had created for a story, that I feel could have had a very different approach. With the characters having a hard life and with the conditions they were put under, I feel it could have had more excitement and surprised to occur in order to make the book a more intriguing read for myself.

The main character Joon-Mee, who is a young girl that lives with her family in New York. Herself and the family live as runaways and are homeless. With the author giving this main setting of the character and her background being Korean- American, I was expecting the author to gives a twist to how the life of the family would be able to be improved. Yet, in the novel what really occurs is the family is living day to day, barely making it by living in a homeless shelter, with prayers that each day could start as a new beginning for Joon- Mee and her family. Joan-Mee works each day to help her sick mother to try and get better and in this process she slowing begins improve their lifestyle by accepting the life they live and knowing that it was what was meant for her and her family, as this realization came to her mind Joon-Mee stated; "And at the start of every new day, I still believe I could choose my own beginning, one that was scrubbed clean of everything past" (Mun 89). With Joon- Mee coming to this realization with her life each day began to lighten and she noticed a new positive thing that was in her life, even though she still had struggles.

This idea went on for quite some time, in my opinion it became a little redundant and tedious to continue to read on. The message of the story I feel was very heartfelt and positive with what the author had created the character's mind set to be. Yet, in my opinion it didn't seem to interest me all too much. The story continues to give the feeling of hope as Joon-Mee is introduced to several new characters that help open her up to view the world and her homelessness and not such a bad situation. She was thinking to herself about the lessons she learned and what ideas were brought forth from those who she met and said; " Life's only as bad as you make it out to be. It's go nothing to do with the way it is" (Mun 156). In my personal views on how the author portrayed the character was to be overall very optimistic and positive on the outlook of her life.

The overall book wasn't truly a great book for me, more just alright. I feel like I was expecting more from the author to give as writer to develop the story in a way that wouldn't have been as predictable as it was. I was also expecting the novel to move more fast pace, yet the book was more of a relaxing and pleasant type of read, which was one thing I enjoyed. It gave me the feeling that i was able to take my time with the novel and still be able to enjoy the writing. (less)

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Aug 10, 2012 John Woodington rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Nami has the rare ability to produce writing that reads urgently while conveying depth and power. This story, about a young Korean American girl named Joon growing up on the streets of 1980s New York, blazes by, and yet hooks barbs into the reader with each page turned. Some of the episodes Joon faces are disturbing and heart-wrenching, but the text avoids sentimentality, and carefully toes the line between drama and melodrama.

In the end, this feels like a story about redemption, and when it is...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nami Mun's Miles From Nowhere is a bold and gritty account of a young girl who leaves home at thirteen and experiences life on the streets, rape, addiction, and a series of horrific life events. She writes with no holds barred and her book reminded me in some ways of Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. It's has that succinct, in-your-face style of writing that is both riveting and painful at the same time.

Joon is a Korean girl who leaves home at thirteen. Her father is a philandering drun...more Nami Mun's Miles From Nowhere is a bold and gritty account of a young girl who leaves home at thirteen and experiences life on the streets, rape, addiction, and a series of horrific life events. She writes with no holds barred and her book reminded me in some ways of Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. It's has that succinct, in-your-face style of writing that is both riveting and painful at the same time.

Joon is a Korean girl who leaves home at thirteen. Her father is a philandering drunk who is physically abusive and her mother has been unable to function since her father left. Her mother is virtually catatonic and does not interact with Joon at all. Sometimes Joon finds her mother lying in the dirt in their backyard. Her mother has stopped speaking to her. As Joon says, "One night I found her reading her bible on the sofa. I sat next to her and begged her to say one word, just one. I even gave her some suggestions: Apple. Lotion. Jesus. Rice. She didn't look up from the pages. This lasted six months. This lasted until the day I left".

The book is structured in chapters, each one capable of standing alone as a short story. In fact, several of the chapters have been published as short stories in different literary journals. The chapters show Joon's life past and present, providing the reader with Joon's story: her feelings, experiences, loves, friendships, disasters, pain, and ultimately, hopes for the future.

The novel begins with Joon in a shelter for run-aways. There she is befriended by a girl named Knowledge who is present in several of the book's chapters. Knowledge is more worldly than Joon and tries to mentor Joon in the ways of the street. She actually gives Joon lessons in street morality asking her what she learned today. She proudly tells Joon, "Sometimes you gotta do wrong to do right, know what I'm saying?" There's a complex rule of law for the street, very different from the rule of law that governs regular citizens.

During the course of this book, Joon struggles with heroin addiction, alcohol abuse, and uses most every drug she can get her hands on. She works as a hostess, a street vendor, a hooker, an Avon lady, a geriatric aide, and as a food deliverer. One can't help but wonder if some of this book is not autobiographical. The author herself is Korean and the blurb about her states that she worked as an Avon lady, a street vendor and in a nursing home. She also attained a GED before college rather than going the usual route of high school.

Joon is a survivor. She struggles and finds herself challenged at many junctions but she plods on. She even finds it in herself to help others who are in worse shape than she is. However, the presentation of her ultimate aloneness in the world is profound. She has no one and is on her own as a child in the dangerous world of the Bronx. She often is homeless, sleeping in abandoned buildings or at bus stops. She is a pragmatist, knowing that life in the streets is not easy or good for her. " In order to get what I needed - - shelter, food, money, friendship - - parts of me, piece by piece, would have to be sacrificed." Joon learns to leave others before she is left, to move on without having to feel intimacy, even if she needs to squelch her feelings with a needle and smack.

This is a powerful book, not for the faint of heart. It is also a rewarding book, one that allows the reader to companion Joon in her life. It keeps our eyes open to another world, one that we may not have lived ourselves but one that is lived every day by so many of the children in the world. By the time I had finished this book, Joon had grabbed my heart and taken a piece of it with her.
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Oct 24, 2011 Cmorice rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Joon est une adolescente d’origine coréenne, venue en Amérique avec ses parents à la recherche d’une vie meilleure. Mais le rêve tourne mal, l’ambiance familiale devient insoutenable, et Joon fuit pour vivre dans la rue. De sa voix pleine de fêlures et de pudeur, elle raconte les expériences effroyables qu’elle accumule de 13 à 18 ans, la plongée dans l’enfer de la drogue et de la prostitution, l’errance de foyers en squats, mais également l’amitié très forte nouée avec une autre gamine des rues...more

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Apr 26, 2011 Annarosepenny added it

This is another teen runaway story, only this takes place on the streets of New York, which were seemingly more grimy in the 1980s than they are today. Joon, a Korean immigrant, runs away from her father who keeps running away, and her mother, who lives for her father (and loses her self every time he runs off, or she pushes him to run off). Nami Mun writes about beautiful and SAD moments, so sad you can barely stand it at times, and then you have to wonder: why did she write this? On the street...more

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Oct 04, 2010 Stephen Gallup rated it 4 of 5 stars

A few pages in, I was thinking that Nami Mun had written a now version of Oliver Twist , and having finished it, I believe that comparison still holds water. It reminded me of other novels as well, such as I Love You Like a Tomato, but the treatment in this case is grimmer. Also, while it works as a novel, the separate chapters do not lead chronologically from one to the next. Apparently, several were published separately as short stories first. In this arrangement, they have the effect of isol...more

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Sep 23, 2010 Gwen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010-read

Miles from Nowhere pushed me out of my reading comfort zone. Nami Mun writes with poetic realism and grit as she tells the story of Joon a Korean-teenage runaway living in NYC in the 1980s.

Joon's parent's marriage falls apart even after leaving Korea to come to the US. Her dad's an alcoholic, who cheats on his wife. Her mom is a nurse, who has psychological problems. In the first few pages, Joon tells of how her mom dug a hole in the backyard and begins burning her husband's things, including h...more

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May 28, 2010 Taylor rated it 3 of 5 stars

I struggled with whether to give this book three or four stars. The writing was great, and so was the subject matter, but in the end it all felt too anecdotal. I think I read that this novel began as short stories (or maybe I'm making that up), and if I were to re-read each chapter through that lens, I might feel differently about it--as short stories I think a lot of these chapters would be luminous and spare in a way that can be very successful in short fiction. But reading them as parts of a...more

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Mar 02, 2010 ABC Group rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nami Mun's debut is nothing short of stunning. 280+ pages of raw human suffering, and somehow, the author has the ability to make the reader want more...not in any voyeuristic sense though. There's a certain participatory demand that is made of the reader if you choose to forge through Miles From Nowhere.

It is rare that an author's debut is so honest and compelling. There's a net of complicated characters that are weaved together by a teen girl named Joon, whose life itself is overcome with addi...more

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Oct 04, 2009 christa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sit down at a table at Subway. Pull Nami Mun's novel "Miles from Nowhere" from your purse. Open the sandwich, take a bite, then crack into Chapter 3, "On the Bus." And read this:

"Two days of speeding, bagging, drinking creme de menthe, and snorting procaine, and now it was daylight, and the worms were already digging into my skin. The guy sitting next to me bit into a soggy taco. The smell of wet beef made me want to vomit."

Rewrap sandwich. Close book. Leave Subway.

Mun's debut is the story of...more Sit down at a table at Subway. Pull Nami Mun's novel "Miles from Nowhere" from your purse. Open the sandwich, take a bite, then crack into Chapter 3, "On the Bus." And read this:

"Two days of speeding, bagging, drinking creme de menthe, and snorting procaine, and now it was daylight, and the worms were already digging into my skin. The guy sitting next to me bit into a soggy taco. The smell of wet beef made me want to vomit."

Rewrap sandwich. Close book. Leave Subway.

Mun's debut is the story of a teen-aged runaway, Joon, whose beautiful mother suffers from the kind of mental illness where she may sprawl out in the garden, still wearing her nursing uniform, and lay there, unmoving and unblinking for hours. Long enough for the neighbors to see the crazy. Joon's father frequently disappears, sometimes to a nearby hotel, where he makes piles of cigarette butts in the bath tub, and drinks himself into a stinky, sweaty unconsciousness. Sometimes he returns, sometimes Joon brings him home, until finally he just stays gone for good. Joon follows suit not long after, when she is 13.

The novel is told in vignettes over a 5-year span of Joon's life and how she pokes, prods, and claws her way through a pretty bleak world. There is a story of escaping a shelter with a toughie named Knowledge, who teachers her street etiquette. They hole up in an abandoned building, and steal a Christmas tree from Knowledge's family's living room. Joon dabbles in prostitution, get all hopped up on drugs, falls for the wrong guys. She sells Avon, she goes to NA meetings, she works at a nursing home. Then more drugs.

The stories aren't necessarily the kind of thing you gather friends around a hearth to read aloud. It's pretty dark and hopeless. But the words! This novel is a collection of some pretty fantastic sentences and descriptions, including the ones that ruin lunch.

When Joon's selling newspapers on a subway: "The car smelled of cooked cheese."
When she's on a bus that crashes into a station wagon: "The asphalt was a lace of sparkling diamonds -- a beautiful, jagged doily for the crushed picnic basket, the soggy bib, the map stuck to the pavement with sticky blood."
When her mother is laying in the garden: "The left side of her nursing cap was bobby-pinned to her hair but the right side had come undone, as if that spot on her skull had erupted and blow the cap off onto the dirt."

These little gems crop up throughout the book, and the plot pales a bit in comparison. It's good, don't get me wrong. In fact, while paging through it again, I'd think "Huh! I forgot the one about starting her boyfriend on fire." Then, "Tee hee. The part where she gets rip-roarin' drunk at that bar with that rich friend was fun." But it's when she describes the trannies legs, as she leans against the bar, as "one leg vining the other" that I really felt the bigger kicks.

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Sep 23, 2009 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars

This account of a life on the street filled with "all the bad stuff" (drugs, prostitution, abortion, homelessness, getting clean and then falling off the wagon, etc.) is written from the point of view of Joon, a Korean-American girl whose parents marriage falls apart and sends her to the streets looking for solace after her mom succumbs to mental illness. I like the style that it was written in - the voice is as disjoined and skips around in time as if the author really were strung out on smack...more

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Jul 25, 2009 Kathleen Hagen added it

Shelves: 2009-audio-books, 2009-fiction

Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun, Narrated by Ali Ahn, produced by Recorded Books, downloaded from audible.com.

This is a debut novel which won some awards, the Pushcart Award. June, a Korean immigrant with her family, lives in The Bronx. At age 13, she leaves home because her father has walked out on her and her mother, and her mother only cares for her father and doesn’t care about June at all. June ends up at a shelter where she and two other teens leave the shelter because they find it too res...more

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Jul 11, 2009 Bob Redmond rated it 4 of 5 stars

In today's Tour de France, a few kilometers towards the end, the Russian rider Vladimir Efimkin bolted in front of the three others he'd been trailing for half the stage. For a couple minutes, Efimkin led everyone by about 20 or 25 meters and for some, proabably at least for Efimkin himself, he, his pedaling, his breathing, his effort, was the sole focus of the event.

This seems to be the approach of Nami Mun in her novel MILES FROM NOWHERE. The story of a runaway teenager in 1980s New York City,...more In today's Tour de France, a few kilometers towards the end, the Russian rider Vladimir Efimkin bolted in front of the three others he'd been trailing for half the stage. For a couple minutes, Efimkin led everyone by about 20 or 25 meters and for some, proabably at least for Efimkin himself, he, his pedaling, his breathing, his effort, was the sole focus of the event.

This seems to be the approach of Nami Mun in her novel MILES FROM NOWHERE. The story of a runaway teenager in 1980s New York City, the novel focuses so strongly on the experience of the narrator, that even while there are peripheral characters, it becomes a novel of personality rather than meaning.

In the Tour, Efimkin was eventually passed by Sandy César and Luis Sanchez; Sanchez took the stage win. Even that drama was virtually meaningless because all the race leaders were in the peloton a couple minutes back. The real story (for the spectator) was how Rinaldo Nocentini held on to the overall lead, with Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong seconds behind.

Similarly, while Mun's book has its own dramas, it stops short of illuminating something bigger. It's a corner of a Breughel painting; only one hand of a Bach fugue. Those corners and melodies, however, are terrifically fresh: unlike the too-careful prose of Ron Rash (just reviewed), Mun manages to write unexpected endings to sentences and paragraphs, to change rhythm and key. Her chapters leap out of the gate; her dialogue means something. Stuff happens in the space between chapters; in the unsaid moments between passages. The story therefore races through the narrator's time as a dance hostess, Avon Lady, drug addict, and other depravities. It all rings sadly true, and Mun does try to spin something out of it, but like Efimkin's ride, it's just not enough.

The writer James M. Cain advised that a story should have a point, internal to the narrative, of being written down. Thus his narrators are often literally writing the story: usually as some kind of criminal confession. Mun's book doesn't need such a literal device, but could benefit from Cain's advice to have a more ostensible purpose for being told. If she had, or had she worked on a grander scale, she could have written something for the ages.

PS: The character's name is JOON, and her boyfriend is BENNY. Is that a coincidence? (Any possible reference to the 1993 movie seems random.)

WHY I READ THIS BOOK: Picked it up at the 2008 book industry convention and, looking for a contemporary novel recently, took it from the pile.

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May 23, 2009 Christine rated it 5 of 5 stars

“Miles from Nowhere“ is a beautiful novel in the way that street graffiti can engage a city’s sense of artistry. Its strength comes from its sheer beauty in the face of so much ugliness, disappointment, and despair. In this novel, author Nami Mun can take a dollar store window full of soap and turn it into a kaleidoscope of colorful beauty, can turn the words of street kids and junkies into poetry. It’s not a journey everyone will want to make, but for those who do, there are some amazing litera...more “Miles from Nowhere“ is a beautiful novel in the way that street graffiti can engage a city’s sense of artistry. Its strength comes from its sheer beauty in the face of so much ugliness, disappointment, and despair. In this novel, author Nami Mun can take a dollar store window full of soap and turn it into a kaleidoscope of colorful beauty, can turn the words of street kids and junkies into poetry. It’s not a journey everyone will want to make, but for those who do, there are some amazing literary rewards in store.

What feels like more of a compilation of short stories than a running storyline in a novel, “Miles from Nowhere” is the saga of Joon-Mee, a Korean-American teenager whose Bronx family life is so disturbing that she decides living on the street is better than remaining in her dysfunctional family. Following her life from homeless shelter to escort club, from deep dives into heroin to selling Avon door-to-door, the stories are engaging yet sobering, spare and beautiful.

Moreover, just when the reader is ready to write a situation off as hopeless, along comes a turn of phrase that completely reverses the entire scene, making it as beautiful as the moon emerging from a dark, clouded sky. It speaks volumes to Mun’s writing ability that she can turn a situation on a dime, making the most downtrodden characters into prophets and most mundane of situations into something extraordinary, and worth exploring.

For those who would rather not see the sordid underbelly of the big city or follow the antics of its down-on-their-luck residents, “Miles from Nowhere” is not for you. Readers need a big view and a willingness to be open to seeing old things with new eyes. Mun has a great future ahead of her as a literary star if she can apply the writing chops demonstrated here to other subject matter. The book is a stunning debut novel. Writing a second novel that equals “Miles from Nowhere” will be the true test of what she has to offer the literary world.

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Jun 12, 2011 Glendalee rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't know about the others who read this book but this book was like a journal. Its just random thoughts of the main character and the trails she faced living on the streets and her drug abuse written together to make a story (in my opinion others might feel differently..oh well). Anyway the book started off great I couldn't put it down,but then a pattern started forming (like in the book piece of cake) where it was just the same thing over again Whoring, Drug Abuse bla bla and then it would...more

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Feb 12, 2010 Benjamin rated it 2 of 5 stars

I bought this book for three reasons. One, it looked like it wouldn't take a long time to read. Two, I liked the cover—Helvetica, faded blue, the yellow lights from the sprawling city's windows. Three, I had recently watched "Taxi Driver" and another gritty story in New York sounded interesting to me.

But I guess those three reasons were not enough to make this book all that fulfilling of a read. Mun actually has a knack for some great writing (e.g. she compares a handshake from her mother to ho...more

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Jun 25, 2009 Dree rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009-reads, the-northeast

I grabbed this off the "new fiction" shelf at my library. What a surprise!

Mun's writing is fabulous. Spare, yet incredibly descriptive. Every word is important, every experience is key, every small bit about her mother ties in to give us a picture of a character we never meet. Her descriptions are unique--and I don't usually like overt cleverness--but these work. "The morning was hot and gluey", "each family's window clicked by like View-Master frames".

Though this story seems sad and depressing...more

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Jun 08, 2011 Sojyung rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: korea-korean-american-related

Mun has stated in interviews that Miles from Nowhere began as a short story ("Club Orchid" which then became Chapter 3) and that as she continued to write she chose to maintain the episodic nature of the book to demonstrate the fractured mindset of her narrator. Although an absolutely fitting decision, it nevertheless highlights the work's greatest weakness. If Miles from Nowhere is indeed a collection of snapshots and vignettes that don't necessarily need a narrative coherence, what were the cr...more

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About Nami Mun

Nami Mun grew up in Seoul, South Korea and Bronx, New York. For her first book, Miles from Nowhere, she received a Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize, and was shortlisted for the Orange Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Miles From Nowhere became a national bestseller within first weeks of publication and was selected as "Editors’ Choice" and "Top Ten First Novels" by Booklist, "Best Fic...more

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Quotes from Miles from Nowhere

“He had no idea that grief was a reward. That it only came to those who were loyal, to those who loved more than they were capable of. ” — 11 people liked it

“Hope was based on the unknown, and I liked knowing things. Like that I was going to fail. Failure had better odds. ” — 6 people liked it

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