Snow Hunters

by Paul Yoon

1954. At the end of the Korean War and after leaving the prison camps established by the Americans, Yohan, a young soldier from the North, is offered, like thousands of his unfortunate comrades, the opportunity to emigrate. He chooses Brazil, of which he knows nothing and does not speak the language, and settles, under an agreement with the United Nations, in a village on the coast where he finds work. Although a stranger in this land, Yohan finds a father in the person of his employer, Kiyoshi, a Japanese tailor established there since the end of the Second World War, then a family with Peixe, the son of fishermen who became the caretaker of the local church, and two young orphans. But building a present doesn't erase a painful past, and Yohan will have to fight to banish the demons that haunt him...

Like Alessandro Baricco in Silk, Paul Yoon, the author of Autrefois le rivage, captures the essence of life and its beauty in the resilience of a being who survives horror and reinvents himself.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Brazil, Literary Fiction, Novels, War, Asian Literature

208 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2013

About the author

Paul Yoon was born in New York City. His first book, ONCE THE SHORE, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Debut of the Year by National Public Radio. His novel, SNOW HUNTERS, won the 2014 Young Lions Fiction Award.

A recipient of a 5 under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation and a fellowship from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, he is currently a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard University along with his wife, the fiction writer Laura van den Berg.

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Ha Jin, William Maxwell, Katie Kitamura, and Per Petterson collaborated on a novel, the resulting work might perhaps have half the magic and brilliance of Snow Hunters. I highly recommend it to readers who appreciate spare prose, authentic characters, a focused, interior story, friendships between male characters that ring true, glimpses of Korea before, during and after the Korean War. It is a quiet story, supremely well-told.

My opinion of this novel is at odds with those of several GR friends for whom I have the utmost respect, so take my all-in, 5-stars, disgruntlement at not being aware of Snow Hunters when it was initially released (in 2014) and since as an outlier viewpoint. Better yet, judge for yourself with the following several excerpts.

A girl on a bicycle approached and he stepped onto the sidewalk as she sped past him, throwing newspapers against closed entrances. He paused, caught by a memory. He had not seen a bicycle in years. The rain lifted off the wheels as the girl pedaled farther away.

************

And it was there, standing in front of the tailor’s shop, as the rain fell, that he felt the tiredness of his journey for the first time. He heard the rush of a storm drain and his legs weakened and he grew dizzy. He gripped the umbrella and thought of the years that had passed and were an ocean away now. He thought of Korea ... and he thought of the camp ... where he had been a prisoner for two years.

************

And some wept and said they were sorry, so very sorry, and he wondered what they were sorry for, but it was all right because in their eyes he could see that they were not looking at him but someone else in the last of their dreams.

************

There were often power outages in the town and on those nights they stayed on the roof in the dark, in the company of a distant trumpet or a guitar or the ticking of playing cards wedged into bicycle wheels.

************

As children, they had seen each other only a few times a year at most, and they had not thought of each other until that moment. And yet, on that night, on that train, they had embraced fiercely, unwilling to let go, laughing, waking the other men....
The momentary bridge. The wonder of a shared memory, returned. Of a place once theirs and a life that had already been lived.

************

And as Yohan mended whatever clothes he could, trying and starting over, the doctor read aloud from the book so that the guards and the wounded could hear as well, and they all turned to him as he flipped the pages with his stained fingers.
In those times, in that vast tent in the field, there was only his voice, a steady wind, the whistle of glass, and a story.

************

He thought of these years as another life within the one he had. As though it were a thing he was able to carry. A small box. A handkerchief. A stone. He did not understand how a life could vanish.. . .How it could close in an instant before you could reach inside one last time, touch someone’s hand one last time. How there would come a day when no one would wonder about the life he had before this one.

I'll read anything Paul Yoon writes. Anything. Consider joining me.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The one word that kept coming to me when I read this book was "Exquisite." I have not read Yoon before but have heard many accolades. They are justified.

I can't say this book is for everyone. It embodies that Q word lit writers often hear from agents/editors: Quiet. This is one of the quietest novels I've ever read. But I love quiet when it's done well. I love folks on the margins who have so much empty space around them that they notice every drop of water or slant of light. Reminds me of CE Morgan's All the Living.

The story begins when Yohan, after experiencing the horrors of the Korean war ("Men lay in the backs of trucks, their mouths pooling with the afternoon rain"), arrives in a small sea village in Brazil. Life is so desolate for him, he literally hangs on to the smallest of connections: "They had once attempted to share a clothesline to hang their laundry but someone stole their shirts...they had shared that rope briefly, and sometimes he liked to imagine it still there."

The prose is absolutely . . . exquisite. I had many pieces of paper in the pages to mark passages. And the loneliness in the aftermath of trauma allows for every small gesture of kindness to have huge import. We go on a journey with Yohan, and hopefully we gain more compassion and understanding of the world outside our borders. I think some readers avoid books with Asian male characters, mistakenly thinking they can't connect. This book will change those minds. Highly recommended.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently I read Paul Yoon’s new book called
“Run Me To Earth”, an advance reader - due out in January, 2020.
It was powerful
and deeply affecting.
I feel drawn to read all of Paul Yoon’s other books. I admire his intentions and purpose....
That said...
The writing felt fuller and more intimate to me in “Run Me To Earth”.
than in “Snow Hunters”.
It took me half of the book to get use to his writing and to feel an emotional connection.
Yet... I admire the heck out of this young man/author.

It’s a sad story....told by Yohan.... a Korean POW...who ends up apprenticing a tailor in Brazil. The most moving scenes for me involved a couple of children.

This is a quiet story...
filled with loss, loneliness, trauma, and displacement....
with sweetness and tenderness!

It felt to me, though, as if the author was at arms distant from his own story.
I eventually got use to the ‘telling’ of this story.... but I wished for more interactive dialogue.
Yet.... most important - I deeply applaud this young author passionately dedicated to writing about the vengefulness of war.

3.5...

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

First impression: There is beauty in the words. You feel the North Korean war refugee's aloofness in his new country, Brazil. The distance he feels and his reticence is palpable. Narration by the author adds to the lines' impact. A blanket of quiet overlays the story.

People can talk without words. What is not said can speak louder than what is said. And what a person does doesn’t always reflect what they are really saying. When Santi returns after Kiyoshi’s death and steals and slashes the dummy, he doesn’t return to steal. He doesn’t return to destroy. He returns because he is devastated by Kiyoshi’s death!This book captures that. It draws a world of silence and solitude that does speak and does convey a message. You watch what happens. You feel the atmosphere. There is a distance to all that happens and to the characters themselves. The manner in which this is achieved is artistically done. Beautiful rather than boring. You are drawn in. Slowly, slowly this North Korean war refugee assimilates and comes to feel at home in his new country, in an unnamed village in Brazil. S-l-o-w-l-y the past recedes, the memories blur and he melts into a new life. You read this book to feel his dislocation, the alienation of one who leaves one country for another. Leaving both horrible memories and good memories, sort of like stapling up picture upon picture until the pictures at the bottom aren’t gone but are superseded by others that are newer, stronger, more vibrant. You cannot just rip out those pictures at the bottom, can you?

Is the ending realistic? No, maybe not, but I am OK with that. You do not read this book to follow the plot line from A to Z. Neither does the story follow a chronological order. Memories come and go, and that is how you learn of the past

An atmospheric novel, to be read to understand how it is to be completely alone in a new world. You never start from scratch, since we all have our own pasts.

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've changed my rating several times today from 3 stars to 4 and back to 3. I decided that my final rating will be 4 stars . After giving it some thought , I realize that there are more things about it that I liked and that I really was touched by the quiet , lonely life of Yohan , a North Korean refugee , who comes to settle in a port town in Brazil , after spending several years in a war prison camp . The writing drew me in from the first page .
*****There may be some spoilers below*****

Not a lot happens in the years that Yohan serves as an apprentice to Mr. Kiyoshi , the tailor who takes him in . Through flashbacks , we learn of Yohan's past as a young boy , a soldier and a prisoner . It seems that Yohan loses everyone who has been a part of his life - his mother at birth , his father when he is a teenager and his childhood friend Peng in the war .
When Mr . Kiyoshi dies , Yohan's life is quiet , uneventful -a portrait of loneliness . While he interacts with his customers and the people in the town on a daily basis , he has little emotional connection with anyone except Peixe who works at the church, and the children he met at the ship on the day he arrived . The two vagabond children Santi and Bia who come and then are gone for long periods of time .
My heart was broken for this man who had no one until thank god Bia returns as an adult woman and we are left with the hope and possibility that Yohan will not be alone .

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a John Updike story called "Delicate Wives" that I remember reading when I was 18 and obsessed with the idea of becoming a New Yorker-type writer. In the story, a wife on the cusp of her thirtieth birthday is stung by a bee and goes into anaphylactic shock; it is only because her husband rushes her to the local hospital that she survives. But the story doesn't concern her so much as the man with whom she'd had an affair the summer before--Les, who learns of the emergency through the gossiping of neighborhood wives and is struck by pangs of jealousy. Veronica is the woman's name, and he wonders what would've happened had she been stung during their affair, and if he would've been calm and knowledgeable enough to be her savior...or if the panic of the moment would've meant the end of her life. The story moves forward through the years, tracing both Veronica's inability to recover and Les' desire for a rekindled affair as parallels, until Les' wife finds a lump in her breast, and the story ends with him connecting both the bee sting and his wife's possible cancer in his mind. And in that one moment--a short, closing paragraph--Updike's story is fulfilled and, at the same time, falls apart. He has revealed the inner workings of his story like a magician telling us just how he performed the trick, and the story is suddenly meaningless and flat. We see through the mirrors and magic words and realize Updike has sold us a wooden box; the characters are cliched, the dialogue is poorly written, and even without the closing giveaway the attempts at complexity and dimension would still be lazy and shallow.

Most authors spend their entire careers trying to perfect what John Updike fails to do in "Delicate Wives": balance an interesting and well-written story with deeper meaning. It's a balance that takes exceptional skill. If an author builds his literary house on the foundation of Deeper Meaning, the entire structure becomes a secondary consideration, something even the most naive and untrained of readers can take apart with a five-dollar hammer and reduce to nothing; all that remains is the foundation, a slab of perfectly poured concrete that is now little more than an altar to kindling.* At the same time, if an author eschews all meaning whatsoever and writes pure plot, they are deep-sea fishermen choosing to cast their nets across a wide and lifeless puddle. Yes, the story will be interesting, but a half-hour after its last words are read it will be forgotten--one more throwaway potboiler destined for its place along the 49-cent shelves at Goodwill.**

Every so often, though, an author manages to not only strike that balance but make it seem almost effortless. What strikes you first about Paul Yoon's Snow Hunters is its brevity: in your hands, the novel is scant, almost like a children's book, and at less than 200 pages it's a quick read. (I finished the entire book in one ninety-minute sitting.) There is very little exposition, and most of the characters have proper names but are referred to--and remembered--by what they are: sailors, the tailor, a boy and girl. There's also very little dialogue. The protagonist, for example, speaks no more than a dozen words throughout the entire novel, though his silence is understandable--he's a Korean refugee living in Brazil, and he isn't fluent in Portuguese. The man he lives with--a Japanese tailor--doesn't say much, either, though both men seem content with this arrangement. Later, we will learn that he's a survivor of Japanese internment, just asYohan, the silent protagonist, is a survivor of a POW camp. And in this relationship we begin to understand just how connected this shy, almost reclusive expatriate is to the strangers around him.

In fact, if Yoon's novel has one discernible foundation--a Deeper Meaning--it's the idea that no matter how far from home we may be, no matter the hells through which we've crossed and the languages we speak, there are still those with whom we can connect. Throughout the novel, we're offered flashbacks of Yohan's time in Korea, when he and a friend named Peng lose touch and then, in the middle of war, find one another again; even after Peng goes blind, they stay together and survive for as long as possible. In Brazil, Yohan finds a connection first in the Japanese tailor who takes him in--they're both quiet survivors who are skilled with the needle and thread--and later when the young girl grows up and returns to town. She is, after all, a poor and homeless wanderer--a member of the small community who live along the shore and survive on fish and the charity of the townspeople. She herself once had a companion of her own--a boy who was not in any way related to her--until the boy left town not long after the tailor passes away.

Normally, novels concerning refugees or immigrants are wide-sweeping in their scope: the poor shivering individual arrives and is swallowed up whole by his or her new home, dwarfed by the tall buildings and pulsing crowds used as ultimate contrasts by the author. In these stories, the outsider is small and vulnerable, but they have promise--some day, they will be as tall as those buildings and as alive as the crowds. In Yoon's novel, we find the opposite: an immigrant who does not belong and cannot assimilate easily but doesn't have to. The small Brazilian town absorbs him as though he were always a part of their community; there are no moments of xenophobia or raised noses, and at no time does Yohan collapse in sadness or longing, his thoughts anchoring him to home. Instead, the land to which Yohan arrives is just like the land from which he left, and the connections he forges are as strong and important to him as the ones he had in Korea.

Even without this foundation, Snow Hunters manages to be a beautiful story. Minimalistic in its style, it nevertheless show us the vast world we solitary creatures call home. Yohan--quiet, scarred, alone--survives a war, crosses half the globe, makes friends with sailors, becomes a professional tailor, picnics along the beautiful Brazilian countryside, falls in love, and goes fishing in the ocean. We understand the pains he has felt, his empathy for the old man who mentors him, the simple ecstasy of sitting on a rooftop at twilight, the apprehension that gives way to calm when he dances for the first time. It is a world of balance, where the loss of one companion opens the door to another, where the tragedies of the past are matched by the pleasures of the present, and where someone can find themselves on the other side of the world and still be home.


*See: Don DeLillo, William Golding, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Franzen, and so on.

**See: James Patterson, Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts, Nicholas Sparks, and so on.


This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated this novel from a distance. I admired the author's poetic language in this quiet novel about a North Korean refugee. Yohan lives a simple life as a tailor in Brazil but is haunted by his memories of life in a POW camp during the Korean War. I wanted to like this novel more than I did - but the beautiful words left me lukewarm.

[Q · Rating 4 out of 5]

~~ Snow Hunters Paul Yoon ~~

This Is Paul Yoon’s first novel (and second book). I have read his 3 books in backwards order but not yet read his short stories. This, like Run Me To Earth, is also beautifully written. This is delicate and simple. Lovely, Lovely prose. Sometimes like poetry. He describes a walk up a hill, being in the rain with a blue umbrella; the small things that make up a day - taking time to look at the clouds in the sky, the details of making a jacket and offering clothes he made to others. Or being up on the roof seeing the city at night; these many moments add up to making a rich and peaceful life. How living more in the now time, slowly breaks down the trauma of war and time of youth and touches his life anew.

Youn, our main character is Korean. He was a prisoner of war youth from North Korea and was in an internment camp in the south. In the camp he takes care of a friend who has become blind. A year after the war ends the United Nations offered him the opportunity to be repatriated but he chose instead to go to Brazil and become a Japanese tailor’s asssitant.

This is his story. How he lives. And how time places out, many years, and a few new friends are formed and kindnesses and a sense of place over time creates a home. He is hard working like his dear mentor. They live a quiet life and through this he found a sense of purpose in life. Sweet memories return at their own pace and are enriched by the orphaned and poor kids in town and learning to dance.

Paul Yoon’s characters are memorable. As the story develops in this short novel he brought forth tender spots in my heart for Youn.

One of the things I enjoyed at the end of the book was the author’s interview for book clubs. He talks about his writing and his adventure reading short novels. He was influenced by A month in the Country by J.L. Carr. I very much enjoyed this Carr’s short novel this year. And I like this form too.

He also said that Michael Ondaatje’s prose and poetry influenced him a lot. Ondaatje is one of my favorite writers too because of his wondrous use of language and story telling about life.

In the three books I’ve read by Paul Yoon he has written with heart and truth about Human Rights and trauma and displaced people. Am grateful to him cause he doesn’t turn away from the characters he creates - and gives them life as they are. Each book has been different. This was the most tender and sweet.

This is a favorite book of the year.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Author opens this tale successfully with a scene where his protagonist is arriving at a harbor in Brasil on a boat from Korea, he lets you feel and see the scene with his writing. The story starts intriguingly, with a great sense of place and people, you want to be with this Korean and see how he manages in the pursuit of his happiness in Brazil. Lost in translation he may tread forth, lost in soul and love his is not.
Told with a wonderful fluid and elegant prose, his writing has you feel and possess a keen wonder of the characters and the world around our main protagonist.

A great sentimental tale, words and sentences that hold a voice of this author, a certain style that tells and shows well characters in pursuit of a happiness out from a darkness they left behind in different shores, a tale that strikes up feelings of nostalgia, empathy, tenderness, and love.
A memorable story that possess a certain grace, a tale that would beckon a re-read on your shelf in the days and months to come, a must read amongst the best released in 2013.

Excerpts:

“The town was large, almost a city, and opened out along the rise of the hill. As he moved farther into the town he felt its density, its height. He kept looking up at the unfamiliar architecture, the designs of gates and entrances, the high floors. Buildings were the color of seashells. The dark windows everywhere like a thousand doors in the land.”
“And it was there, standing in front of the tailor’s shop, as the rain fell, that he felt the tiredness of his journey for the first time. He heard the rush of a storm drain and his legs weakened and he grew dizzy. He gripped the umbrella and thought of the years that had passed and were an ocean away now. He thought of Korea and the war there and he thought of the camp near the southern coast of that country, beside an airbase, where he had been a prisoner for two years. He thought of the day he woke and saw the trees and then the men with their helmets and their weapons swaying around him like chimes.
The Americans called them northerners and those first weeks they kept his wrists bound. But then the doctors, in need of men, untied him and the others, and he dug graves and washed clothes in buckets. He carried trays for the nurses and took walks in the yard with
Peng or the missionaries who visited, following the high fences, the men in the towers looking down at them.
He slept in a cabin with the other prisoners and in the winters the heat of their bodies kept them warm. Moonlight kept them company, the way it leaked through the timber walls and shifted across them as the hours passed; and sleepless, he thought of his father and all that snow in the winters in that mountain town where Yohan was born and where he had lived and it all seemed so far to him then, as though the earth had expanded, his memories,
too, and he could no longer grasp them. And only then, when those thoughts began to recede, fading into a thin line, would he sleep.
He did not know when exactly the war ended. He did not hear of it until some days later.
One day he was told they would return him to his home.To his country, they said.To the north.
—Repatriation, they called it.
He declined their offer. From the camp he was the only one.”



“In the harbor, crates hung suspended in the air. Birds circled them.The sea was clear. It moved toward him and faded and he felt the time that had passed and his time here. He thought that he had made the best of it all, that he had worked and made a living, and he felt the contentment of that. He thought of what the years would bring, what sort of life was left in him.”


“He thought of these years as another life within the one he had. As though it were a thing he was able to carry. A small box. A handkerchief. A stone. He did not understand how a life could vanish. How that was even possible. How it could close in an instant before you could reach inside one last time, touch someone’s hand one last time. How there would come a day when no one would wonder about the life he had before this one.”
“There were days when he believed there was nothing more to come. That there was nothing else. He had arrived and he had stayed. He had made a life. He had entered the future.
And in these hours, in this silence, the shop seemed larger to him, as though each night as he slept the floors extended, the walls grew; they carried with them the lives they once had as trees, some quiet tremor he could not detect.
He thought: he lived in a forest. He would wake one day to see branches in the spaces. The shadows of foliage, ivy. The tailor’s dummy standing in the corner, rooted into the earth.”

Review also @ http://more2read.com/review/snow-hunters-by-paul-yoon/,/a>

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant story about a man who relocates from Korea to Brazil after being captured and spending over a year in a prison camp. There are only a handful of characters. Yohan is taken in by a tailor and becomes his apprentice. He meets a pair of orphaned children. He makes a friend of the groundskeeper at the local church.

This is a sparse poetic story of a man trying to find his way back from the trauma he experienced during the Korean War to form a life in a new country. He has trouble connecting with people, we assume due to suffering from PTSD (though this is not stated). It is beautifully and atmospherically written. We learn Yohan’s backstory via (minimal) flashbacks.

Yoon’s writing appeals to me. It is elegant and expressive. In only a few words, he can draw scenes that become vivid in the mind’s eye: “But there were also times when he was unable to move, unable to look at her, afraid he had been imagining this and that she wouldn’t be there. It seemed possible. And when he considered this an emptiness overwhelmed him, as if he were no longer here, that there was just his shell of a body bent over a table. And even as he continued to hear her behind him he felt a sadness, though for what he could not say.”

It is a quiet, meditative story. This book is not for anyone looking for plot or action. It is a delicately drawn character study. I found it a well-crafted piece of writing that packs a great deal of emotional content into relatively few pages.

“In this way the days passed. Those days became years. Those years a life.”

[SUSAN *Nevertheless,she persisted* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serene,tranquil,subtle,charming,beautifully written. Full review to come.

[Zoeytron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This small book was charming. Oddly sized, one reviewer noted that it was about the size of a hand. In my case, it was smaller than my hand, but every page was filled with lovely, sometimes heartbreakingly beautiful prose. I am not sure how wide its appeal will be with no action and next to no dialogue, but for sheer imagery and captivating passages, it glows like a moonstone.

Shortly after the Korean War ends, Yohan boards a cargo ship bound for Brazil, choosing to defect from North Korea. With letters in hand confirming residence and employment, he steps off the ship and begins to make his way, ‘his body overwhelmed by the noises of the town, its new smells and unknown language’. He arrives at the shop of Kiyoshi, a relocated Japanese tailor for whom he will apprentice. The relationship forged between the pair of them is moving. Although there is rarely a word spoken between them, the love and respect is clear.

I simply cannot resist sharing these just to give a taste of what is in store for you when reading this book. Maybe it will let you know if it is to your liking. 'The war you survived but that stayed in your voice and your steps'. Two children are repairing a rope, their ‘fingers moving like birds’ as they rebraid the lengths. Upon unexpectedly running into a man he knew in childhood, ‘This momentary bridge. The wonder of a shared memory, returned. Of a place once theirs and a life that had already been lived.’

This was a first-reads giveaway, thank you. It was quite lovely and I hope it finds its niche.

[Giuseppe Sirugo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Al tener que atribuirle un adjetivo diría que es un libro introspettivo. Un libro que vale la pena leer. Con un primer acercamiento lo que llama la atención es la simplicidad. Luego hay su concisión: concisión que combinada con lo que puede ser una novela sobria podría interpretarse como un libro para niños. Sin embargo es la maestría de Paul Yoon que ha logrado hacer una historia corta y sencilla. Dándole a la novela el equilibrio adecuado ya que los episodios narrativos que el protagonista relata se interpretan con gran intensidad.
La escritura podría haber tenido un diálogo más abundante, pero lo que más se destacó largo la novela es el "silencio" del protagonista: esta particularidad sobre el cuento hizo que la misma historia se convierta en una mutación inherente al personaje. A la vez enriqueciendo la historia con continuos flashback. La historia tiene muchos recuerdos. Son recuerdos que inesperadamente continúan asentándose en la vida cotidiana de Yohan. Algunas figuras en el cuento existen, y también tienen sus propios nombres. Pero el protagonista cuando se recuerdan de estas figuras son principalmente mencionadas: en el sentido que no existe una presencia física de personas. Entonces a la historia se justifica el poco diálogo entre los personajes, y la elección del silencio para el protagonista principal es lo que domina más

Yohan es un refugiado coreano que vive en Brasil. Como extranjero, Yohan no habla correctamente el idioma portugués. Mientras la persona con quien vive es un sastre japonés. [...] A lo largo de la narración Yohan en algún momento se da cuenta que quien lo recibió y le dio el trabajo es un sobreviviente de una internación japonesa. De esta relación, los dos comenzarán a comprender completamente las situaciones de aquellos que fueron reclutados o expatriados: a pesar de esta ola común de pensamiento, el sastre en este sentido tiene una idea más profunda. Para el sastre no es tan importante como uno ha estado fuera de casa, o el infierno que podría haber cruzado. En el silencio mental que vive el sastre, tampoco es importante si una persona no habla el idioma correctamente: su conciencia echa de silencio está motivada por los hechos que hay personas que permanecen excluidas, personas que ya no pueden tener ese tipo de comunicación hecha de pocas palabras y comprensión recíproca.
El sastre como persona es absorbido del lugar donde vive y desde Brasil es tratado como si fuera uno de su comunidad. Igualmente el empleador intentará hacer algo por Yohan; normalmente las novelas que afectan a los refugiados o los inmigrantes están muy extendidas en su ámbito, pero en este caso el pobre coreano será completamente acomodados en un nuevo hogar. No obstante, en un ambiente concienzudo que básicamente dentro la sastrería está hecho de aguja y hilo, el protagonista con los recuerdos retrocede al pasado como si estuviera viviendo el evento en el mismo momento. Devolviendo a toda la historia un conjunto flash black. Aunque si ambos sobrevivieron, son tranquilos en sus vidas. Son gente experta en coser ropa. No hay momentos de xenofobia. En ningún momento Yohan cae en la tristeza o llega al deseo patriarcal, aunque sí sus pensamientos siempre están anclados al lugar de origen: eso por que el país que recibió a Yohan es como la tierra de donde se fue. Y las conexiones forjadas son tan fuertes e importantes como las de Corea.

A lo largo de la escritura el protagonista muestra el vasto mundo que la gente solitaria puede llamar tranquilamente casa: en plena soledad cruzó la mitad del globo terrestre y sobrevivió a la guerra. Sin ninguna compañia llegó en Brasil para convertirse en un sastre profesional. Como persona solitaria las únicas amistades que tenía fueran con otros militares, mientras al final de la historia tendrá un enfoque con una mujer brasileña; un contacto femenino que fue contado casi con la misma frialdad de sus propias reminiscencias.
Además, la historia no sigue un orden cronológico porque los recuerdos del protagonista desaparecen y vienen, en manera que ello aprende a construir el presente desde su pasado: constantemente se percibe la lejanía de un refugiado de la Corea del Norte, a lo que será el nuevo país adoptivo. Mientras la reticencia y la distancia que siente el protagonista son palpables.
Al personaje principal existe la soledad y la empatía con el viejo sastre que decidió de ayudarlo, a pesar que su apoyo tarde o temprano podia morir. En general lo que el protagonista está experimentando es un mundo equilibrado. Tanto es que cuando habrá la pérdida de su compañero Yohan no se derrumba en la tristeza. Para él se abrirá una puerta nueva: con esta pérdida afectiva y operativa el protagonista tendrá una mayor conciencia de la circunstancia y las tragedias del pasado irán a combinarse con los placeres del presente.

Para concluir, se puede definir como una novela introspectiva. Es una historia che dibuja un mundo silencioso echo de mucha soledad, donde ambos componentes hablan y transmiten mensajes: un libro de leer para comprender cómo la persona puede sentirse completamente sola cuando se encuentra en un nuevo contexto. Aunque si para el protagonista hay nuevas situaciones, las personas nunca comienzan desde cero porque todos tienen su propio pasado. [...] Según el protagonista, es un libro que se puede definir como historia basada en el mutismo: en el sentido que las personas pueden hablar sin palabras. Lo que no se ha dicho unas pocas veces puede tener un significado más fuerte de lo que se pronuncia verbalmente: esto por que lo que la gente dice no siempre es reflexivo.

[Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of the stack that I bought on BookOutlet for next to nothing. I thought the cover was pretty.

Yoon's writing style is so sparse, and it kind of reminds me of Hemingway or Steinbeck in that he communicates so much without gushing words all over the page. Yoon was able to create this gentle streaming consciousness between the present day of the protagonist and his memories from war-torn Korea. It's emotional writing.

Only a couple of things bothered me. The biggest was that Yoon doesn't use quotation marks for dialogue, and that little bit of stylistic choice rubs me the wrong way. Call me a traditionalist, but that's how I feel about it. No one is above using quotation marks. The other thing that unsettled me was that I had a difficult time figuring the time stamp of the setting. I think that maybe Yoon wanted it to be nebulous and flowing, but when a world event, a large conflict, plays a large role in the narrative, you have a set time marked. Also, Yoon mentions that it is 1963 toward the end of the novel, and I was like, "what? Then what year was it before?"

For the most part I found the writing beautiful. I might grab other things from Yoon. His writing is soothing.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

 
A Precious Novel

PRECIOUS. The word can have two meanings. Rare, valuable, exquisite—or just too self-consciously arty for its own good. The trouble is that both meanings can apply to this book, and it entirely depends on your taste whether you treasure it or dismiss it. So let me try to keep my own mood out of this for as long as possible, and look at the book objectively: first the facts, then the arguments pro and con.

FACTS. The story begins in 1954, shortly after the end of the Korean War. A North Korean soldier named Yohan is released from the POW camp, where he had stayed on after the end of hostilities doing various odd chores. Electing not to return to the North, he is sent by the UN to an unnamed Brazilian port city where he becomes the apprentice to a Japanese tailor called Kiyoshi. At first, he feels lost so far from home, but the tailor is kind and he soon finds himself taking more responsibility in the business and making friends in the community, especially an older groundskeeper named Peixe, and two children, a girl and boy named Bia and Santi. Indeed, one of his most treasured possessions is an old blue umbrella given him by Bia when he first lands. By the time the book ends a decade later, he will feel "he had made a life; he had entered the future."

PRO. First and foremost, Yoon writes beautifully. It is the kind of book that gets hailed as prose-poetry, filled with simple but lovely word pictures. More importantly, Yoon has the ability to segue from a physical description to its interior meaning. So for example, he describes a juggler, blindfolded for show, but really blind underneath, practicing with children's shoes to the delight of the kids. But then he imagines him going home at the end of the day and removing his blindfold:

He rubs his eyes, squints from the light. I imagine this for him. In my dreams, he takes all of us by the waist and throws us into the air. He lifts his arms and we rise. He watches us. And it is beautiful.

CON. This is clearly written and marketed, not as a normal novel, but as something exquisite. Its short length, square-page format, and artistic design combine with the poetic quality of the writing to make something self-consciously beautiful. Poesy rather than poetry. Perhaps it is the cynic in me, but I feel that is am being flattered for my aesthetic discernment in appreciating it, just as The Elegance of the Hedgehog is designed to flatter its readers as intellectuals. There is a deliberate vagueness to the writing, especially as to place and the passing of time, that is part of the poetic miasma, but it has the downside of not making anything quite real. There are flashbacks, for example, to the horrors of war and captivity, but they have little bite. There are moments of joy also, but few of them come convincingly into focus. As a result, while the general arc of the book is clear, it lacks defining events and there seems little real reason why it ends where it does.

AND YET, one thing that Yoon does quite well is to capture the peculiar mental situation of the displaced person; even as a voluntary emigrant, I can recognize this. Looking back on his past life, Yohan…

…thought of these years as another life within the one he had. As though it were a thing he was able to carry. A small box. A handkerchief. A stone. He did not understand how a life could vanish.

And although the watercolor washes of Yoon's prose makes it difficult to grasp the hereness and nowness of any particular moment, they do have the great advantage of making all Yohan's various lives flow together. There are many times in the later parts of the book when you lose track of whether you are reading about Yohan's life in Brazil, his wartime experiences, or his childhood in Korea. Not only these time periods but to a certain extent also the lives of the other characters, Kiyoshi, Peixe, Bia and Santi, are linked together by images and parallel experiences in a way that would be quite impossible with more literal writing.

SO… what kind of picture do you want? A poetic watercolor, a substantial oil painting, or an engraved map? If the first of these, Paul Yoon's book will seem a miniature marvel. It is not my preference, and were I rating simply on the basis of personal liking, I would give it only two or three stars. But for what it sets out to do, and for the right reader, it is certainly a four, perhaps even approaching five

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be as gregarious as I am, there seems to be something in these subtle, little reflective novels that draws me in. For the most part, a story of a man who leads a life spent in almost solitude. I know that sounds exciting- and if action packed, suspenseful reading is all you care for then avoid this one as you will probably not find much here that appeals to your endorphin receptors.

The writing here is minimalist. It's prose, but written poetically. A 180 page haiku of sorts without the restraint of formal structure. All told in third person, but done in a way that it feels first person. Really tastefully done, it would be darn hard to write something so simplistic that carries such deep inner meaning; I am sure it was highly edited with thought going into every word, every revision, every arrangement. With time, I would probably bore had this drug along, but the way that Yoon presents this subject there was a "page turning" element despite the quiet and reflective tone. Glad to have found this on several recommendation lists only days before I saw it sitting on the new release shelf at the library.

[Paltia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This tiny book felt so right in my hands. I read it in one sittng and upon finishing am having that experience of "what will I read now?" Maybe you know that feeling. You find a book that is so fitting for your mood, your place in time, and that yields precisely what you were hoping to find in the next book you read. It is perhaps cliche to say it was moving, but, it truly is. Yoon writes with a trance-like style, taking you away to a distant, yet somehow familiar, world. I am wondering, what will I read now? Thank you Paul Yoon for writing such a tender and insightful story.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, short book. The story of a refugee from North Korea to Brazil. It describes the adapting to a new country after fleeing your old one, and is full of memories and new encounters.
A slow and elegantly written novel.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is like learning to breathe again. That's how I described it to a friend. You feel the air enter your lungs when Yohan arrives at the Brazil docks and gets an umbrella from an apparition in a long scarf far above him on the deck. When he looks again, she and her small companion are gone. You hear the air enter your lungs when Yohan meets Kiyoshi who waves his hand for him to enter. Come in, come in and our young hero leaves his blue umbrella outside the door. And Yoon then sweeps you through the ventilator because without noticing, you forgot how to breathe. Here his friend Peng with the white blaze in his hair who knew the traveling circus juggler and then knew the agony of war. Peixe and Bia and a bicycle remind you that you can breathe on your own. Oh, this is a marvelous book and Yoon is fortunate to be visited by the muse in such an extraordinary endeavor. Simon & Schuster and jacket designer Christopher Lin deserve applause for actually using the story to create the cover design. The overall book size makes this book even more personal and profound. Bravo, brava to all.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A GR friend used the following words to describe this book: Serene, tranquil, subtle, charming. I don't dispute that. It really was all of those things. BUT......I am definitely not a fan of authors reading their own work. A few authors can carry it off, most CANNOT!!! This was read in the same exact tone and it was kind of drab. Thankfully it was a short book. I would not recommend the audio. If you want to read it, get the kindle or paper version.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snow Hunters is a quiet book written in short, deft strokes. It is similar to Hemingway in style, if not in content. Admittedly, it is a difficult thing to pull off, a mood thing. The author's purpose? To subdue the reader unawares until he feels fully invested with the protagonist (here, Yohan -- a Korean ex-pat) and fully infused into the setting (here, the coast of Brazil). Unusual? Yes. And thus my interest, despite the glaring weaknesses in plot.

It's only a partial success, alas. At times the language seemed a bit precious in its attempts at lucid simplicity. It's like being a the theater and having trouble losing yourself in the narrative dream of the film because you're distracted by a blemish on the screen or by the tapping of the person behind you's foot. This is how I felt when the language had a patina of the midnight oil's smoke on it. I did, however, like the strange but respectful partnership that forms between Yohan and the tailor, Kiyoshi. The bit about the two kids (Bia and Santi) who mysteriously appear and disappear in the streets around Yohan was less effective.

Ultimately, the short book hits its stride at the end. Yohan is finally at peace with his new world and language. He goes out into the country in the pre-dawn hours, delivers papers, lies on the earth and waits for the sunrise. Fans of nature writing will like this peaceful denouement, even if the book itself has unsteady moments along the way.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very spare, minimalist book that is almost like poetry. It did not really pull me in; while I admired the writing, I felt detached from the story, which is about a Korean prisoner of war who leaves Korea at the end of the war to start a new life as a tailor in Brazil. Part of the problem - certainly not the fault of this slender little book - is that I read it right after "The Goldfinch." The books could NOT be more different in style and substance and I think I may still be "under the influence" of that magnum opus.

A 3.5 for me.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is not one spare word in Paul Yoon’s Snow Hunters, a 192-page reverie to what it means to start a new life after traumatic loss and displacement. Written in a minimalistic style, the writing style might be described as “ala prima” – quickly sketching the scenario with rapid and broad brushstrokes, at the same time creating lines to establish the form.

The story centers loosely around Yohan, a solitary man who chooses to restart life on the coast of Brazil rather than submit to repatriation at the end of the Korean War. There, he works for a tailor named Kiyoshi, who symbolically, creates new clothes for him, one each year. The others – Peixe, the groundskeeper at the two church and two orphaned children named Santi and Bia – represent his entire world.

Hidden in this simplicity are some complex and poignant revelations: “He thought of these years as another life within the one he had. As though it were a thing he was able to carry. A small box. A handkerchief. A stone. He did not understand how a life could vanish. How that was even possible.” Much as he wants to connect, he cannot.

He is unable to mine his inner life or embrace the one that is in front of him. As Mr. Yoon writes, “He understood that he would never be able to hold all the years that had gone in their entirety. That those years would begin to loosen, break apart, slip away. That there would come a time when there was just a corner, a window, a smell, a gesture, a voice to gather and assemble.”

Here is where the book rating system gets challenging. Does Paul Yoon succeed in elegantly creating a meditation to second chances, a poetic and lucid ode to shedding one’s old skin and moving quietly and steadfastly to connection and joy? Yes he does. This is a confident author who is in control of his material.

But did I find it particularly satisfying? Aye, there’s the question…and it’s a question that will no doubt be answered differently by each reader. I felt curiously distanced and disconnected; I admired, rather than loved. While I appreciated and understood what Paul Yoon was doing, I was seeking a more visceral interaction with Yohan that eluded me. In short, I wanted more.

But that’s just me. And I think it’s important for me to add that this is not a 3-star book…it’s a 3-star book for this particular reader.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a 3.5 star book but I rounded up because of the elegant language.

Snow Hunters opens with North Korean twenty-five year old Yohan arriving in Brazil via a cargo ship shortly after the end of the Korean War with a business card of a Japanese tailor in hand. Thus begins the introspective telling of Yohan’s journey. It is a testimony to the sparse elegant prose that so effectively conveys the quietness and solitary soul of Yohan with a gentleness of a whisper.

I was not quite sure what to expect from this story but was intrigued by the blurb of learning of a migration and war we do not often hear about, and was rewarded with a fascinating yet melancholy read. As Yohan’s figures out the world around him based on his past and present – it is with an open eyed innocence with an eye for simplicity yet fullness of spirit as he needs to figure out which of his memories he will be able to keep, what new memories will replace the ones, and once he is gone who will have a memory of him.

But, time and time again it was the beauty of the language that just so much with a perfect phrasing of a sentence. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy lyrically told stories with a freshness of storytelling style.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Joon has written an epic spanning continents and decades, incorporating two very different time periods and yet integrating them so seamlessly, resulting in a work of lyricism and heartbreak. Upon the "end" of the Korean conflict, Yohan is a North Korean prisoner of war conflict who chooses not to return to the north. The United Nations has assigned him to be assistant to a Japanese tailor in a coastal city in Brazil. I don't know whether these opportunities were provided to soldiers who chose to defect at that time, but the premise provides a story of luminescent clarity and beauty. According to the publisher's note, the original manuscript ran to over 500 pages, but the finished product is a lean 194. While there are large tracts of time that are compressed, there are also finely detailed descriptive passages that resonate. Memory plays an essential role in Yohan's journey as experiences from the past are brought back into sharp focus triggered by an aroma, a sight, a sound. Highly recommended.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snow Hunters features a meditative prose almost as delicate as the thin pages the story was printed on. A recent arrival to South America, Yohan is a North Korean War refugee who finds himself an apprentice to a Japanese tailor in a port town of Brazil in the 1950s. Yoon’s writing style is similar to that of Hemingway, concise and stripped, but his quiet writing style also provides a subtle tenderness.

Brevity may the one of the first words that come to mind at the sight of this small 208 page debut novel, but what’s inside is a complex winding tale of human connection…. It evokes many moods as it shifts through time; somber and contemplative just the kind of book I look forward to losing myself in on a beautiful, autumn day. I will be keeping my eyes pealed for more of Yoon’s work in the future, reading this was a wonderful breath of fresh air!

[Hope Decker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm going to 2 it, you might 5 it-- I won't deny that it is most likely a fabulous book; it just wasn't for me.

I was not dissuaded from reading Snow Hunters on account of it being relatively slow and a "quiet" book. I loved Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, and The Lake, by Banana Yoshimoto, which I would also characterize as gentle prose. I think the reason Snow Hunters wasn't for me was that I couldn't get beyond the idea that the novel was a series of observations. I didn't quite vibe with Yohan, and wasn't really sure how he felt. Yoon kept Yohan at a distance, in my opinion.

I've really enjoyed reading the excerpts from the novel in some of the other Goodreaders here. I think I might have liked it more if I was in a poetry state of mind, because the writing really is beautiful. I just wasn't transported.

[hans · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story of a guy during pre and post Korean war, good at sewing and been sent off to Brazil after war ended to work with a Japanese tailor, Knowing a little few people throughout his life, this is a story of a journey and struggle, a hardship of trying to forget and move on, a diary of his whole life. I like the historical part although it was not that depth for an emotional rant, a bit 'blunt' that those feelings didn't hit as much sorrowful as it should sound. It was subtle and storytelling was a bit minimalist I did not feel that much attached to it. Yohan was too 'quiet' and too reserved for a main character. Not much of a conflict and it feels like the author only phrasing his narratives just on the surface. Don't really favor the ending too.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Won the ARC through Goodreads giveaway*

Such a small book with so much life and power. It moves in a slow deliberate and eye oping ways. Taking us from North Korea to Brazil in the mide 50's. Nothing in this book happens fast it all small wonderful steps opening in what I would say reminds me of frame by frame of a flower turning towards the sun. In this book you will find loss, death, hope and love. If you are in need of now, now, now lets go. then this not for you.. If you want to see life blossom then you could find it here.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

sometimes I think I am incapable of catching the nuances of a book like this... I guess I am just used to more detail in the books I read so I wasn't real sure of the story of this one.. I just wanted Yohan to have a better life.......