Whale

by Myeong-kwan Cheon, Jae Won Chung (Translation)

While "Whale" begins with Chunhee, a mysterious young brickmaker of imposing physicality who cannot speak, introduced a the Queen of Red Bricks, it quickly situates her story within a longer multi-generational saga composed of three parts. While we learn of Chunhee s tragic path to her becoming someone who makes bricks of the highest quality, the novel retraces the familial circumstances that shaped her. While poignant yet brutal, "Whale" is also a satire of how we the general public, mass media, even artists and writers tend to romanticize voiceless figures of history."

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Historical Fiction, Asian Literature, Short Stories, Asia, Fantasy

420 pages, Paperback

First published December 24, 2004

About the author

Cheon Myeong-kwan is a South Korean novelist, screenwriter and director whose work has been translated into eight languages.

Upon publication of the author’s first story, Frank and I (2003), he received the prestigious Munhakdongne New Writer Award. Cheon’s debut novel, Whale, was published the following year. It won the 10th Munhakdongne Novel Award and has become one of the most loved novels in South Korea, where it is regarded as a modern classic.

Associated Names:
* Cheon Myeong-Kwan
* 천명관 (Korean Profile)

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update: I read it. It did not win, unfortunately. The other one I thought it was likely to take the honors did. Too bad I dis not enjoy it as much as this one.

Shortlisted for the International Booker prize 2023

I am still reading the novel but I wanted to write a few words about it before the winner is announced Tomorrow. I think the novel has the best chances to win. I loved Boulder more but I am not sure it will win. This one epic, longer and “big” in every way, from the themes explored to the writing style and plot.

“Life is sweeping away the dust that keeps piling up, as she mopped the floor with a rag, and sometimes she would add, Death is nothing more than dust piling up.”

As the writer said in an interview, he did not exactly know what he wanted to read so he put all his ideas in one book. What resulted is the epic fantastic history of a few women. The novel starts in the present with the release from prison of Chunhui, who returns to the ruins of her village. Then we move to a few generation into the past where we begin to follow the destiny of different
characters until we return in the present back to Chunhui. Some of the themes the author discusses are fate, ambition, loss, love, gender struggles, politics, and motherhood. It is a story about big things, big lives, big loves, big turns of fate. It is quite exciting and rich.

[zuza_zaksiazkowane · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF w 70%
Ta książka wypaliła mi mózg. Nie rozumiem i nie kupuję.
Było tak wiele obrzydliwych scen, że dziwię się że doszłam tak daleko. Nie wiem, może ktoś z Was znajdzie jakieś wartości w treści, ale ja nie mogę przejść nad groteskowością tej fabuły i sprowadzaniem kobiety do roli erotycznej maszyny.
Serio, wtf

[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Shortlisted for International Booker Prize 2023*

“Life is sweeping away the dust that keeps piling up, as she mopped the floor with a rag, and sometimes she would add, Death is nothing more than dust piling up.”

As the story begins, we meet twenty-seven-year-old Chunhui as she returns to the ruins of her village after a stint in prison for a crime she did not commit. As she looks round her, she sees the ruins of the mountain village of Pyeongdae, a village once made prosperous through the industriousness of her mother Geumbok – a woman who rose from an impoverished life to become a wealthy entrepreneur in a predominantly patriarchal society. Chunhui, Geumbok’s mute daughter with a large build and uncanny strength, is more than often treated with neglect and indifference by her mother. Chunhui, though mute, was capable of communicating with an elephant named Jumbo she had known since she was a child and who was her only friend. The lives of mother and daughter are impacted by the legacy of an “old crone” and her one-eyed daughter whose stories are directly to Geumbok’s good fortune and ultimate downfall and tragic death in Pyeongdae. The story continues as we flow Chunhui as struggles to survive a solitary life among the ruins of her mother’s legacy, striving to make a living on her own using and improving on the skills she learned when was younger.

The narrative switches between past and present as we follow the stories of these different characters and the people and events that impact their lives. The author incorporates themes of ambition, loss, gender identity and politics, motherhood, and found family into this rich and engrossing narrative. Though Geumbok’s story dominates the larger part of the narrative and we follow her struggles as she overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles to carve a niche to herself in a hostile world dominated by the will of men, I found Chunhui’s story to be the most emotionally impactful. Despite its fairy tale like quality and moments of humor, Whale by Myeong-kwan Cheon (translated by Chi-Young Kim) story is drenched in tragedy, violence and abuse, mostly directed toward women. The symbolism of the whale - an animal Geumbok sees for the first time in a harbor city which leaves a lasting impression – and the impact of the same on her life and her action in different stages of Geumbok’s life are well constructed. A significant change Geumbok exacts in her life toward the end of her life is particularly significant in summing up her disillusionment with the way women were perceived and treated in that era and how she, in turn, viewed the men in her life in terms of power and influence.

The tone of the narrative varies between satirical and humorous to dark and disturbing, often detached and matter of fact. As we follow the stories of these women , the author takes us through the changing social, economic and political landscape of South Korea spanning the Korean War, communism and its aftermath and the emergence of capitalism, modernization and economic prosperity as well issues pertaining to gender roles and politics. Initially I found the different threads of the story a tad disjointed but the author skillfully weaves it all together together in a fantastical story steeped with magical realism and folklore, larger than life characters, and vivid imagery. The non-linear narrative and somewhat inconsistent pacing takes a while to get used to but does not detract from the overall reading experience.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rate this book 3.5 stars rounded up. The blurb says that it is shortlisted for the international Booker prize. It goes on to say that it is brimming with wicked humor.
There are supernatural elements in this book about 3 women, one of whom is able to converse with elephants, but not people. Another is killed early on in the book, but comes back to life and causes significant events in the book.The book is set in a remote village in South Korea.
There is some humor in the book which merit a chuckle or two. There are also vivid descriptions of rural life in South Korea.
The translation was excellent.
One quote, describing an abandoned brickyard: "Purslane, thistle and foot-tall weeds had worked their way up through the hard, trampled earth and grown thick and tangled around the kilns. Daisy fleabane in particular had always crowded the perimeter of the brickyard like soldiers surrounding a forest, and once the humans were gone the plant had instantly infiltrated the site, occupying the entire place."
Thanks to Archipelago Books for sending me this eBook through Edelweiss.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize - and THE WINNER OF THE 2023 SHADOW PRIZE

Shortlisted for the 2024 National Translation Award in Prose.

From that day on, the terror of death ruled the girl. Her goal in life became fleeing death. Her mother’s death was the main reason why she left her small mountain village, why she left the harbor city and roamed the country, and why she built an enormous theater that resembled a whale. She wasn’t obsessed with the whale just because of its size. When she saw the blue whale from the beach, she had glimpsed what eternal life looked like, life that had triumphed against death. That was the moment the fearful small-town girl became enraptured by enormous things. She would try to use big things to beat out small things, overcome shabbiness through shiny things, and forget her suffocating hometown by jumping into the vast ocean. And finally, she became a man to hurdle over the limitations of being a woman.

Whale is Chi-Young Kim's translation of 고래 by 천명관 (Cheon Myeong-Gwan), a debut novel which won the 10th 문학동네소설상 (Munhakdongne Novel Award) on its first publication in 2004.

An earlier translation of the novel, Jae Won Chung, also titled Whale, was to be published in 2016 by Dalkey Archive Press in their (rather poorly promoted) Library of Korean Literature - although this was never actually published and I am unsure if the previous translation was even completed.

A comparison of the two translations of one passage is below, and while I haven't sourced the original to check fidelity, if anything I prefer the more vivid atmosphere of the previous version.

However, the new release of the novel in a better publicised format (which may for copyright reasons have required a re-translation), and with a more alluring cover, is certainly a positive, as this is a distinctive and fascinating novel.

It opens in what I think is around 1980, with one of the two main characters, Chunhui (춘희) returning from a decade or so in prison, now all alone in the world, to the brickworks founded by her mother Geumbok (금복). Geumbok was, with 800 others, killed in a fire, which Chunhui was convicted of starting, that burnt down firstly the Whale-inspired movie theater, which Geumbok had built using her own bricks, and then much of the surrounding town:

Chunhui—or Girl of Spring—was the name of the female brickmaker later celebrated as the Red Brick Queen upon being discovered by the architect of the grand theater. She was born one winter in a stable to a beggarwoman, as the war was winding down. She was already seven kilos when she emerged and plumped up to more than a hundred kilos by the time she turned fourteen. Unable to speak, she grew up isolated in her own world. She learned everything about brickmaking from Mun, her stepfather. When the inferno killed eight hundred souls, Chunhui was charged with arson, imprisoned, and tortured. After many long years in prison, she returned to the brickyard. She was twenty-seven.
...
For the first time in a long while, she felt refreshed. Her senses felt sharper and she was alert to what was mixed into the wind—the damp darkness of the valley, the smell of racoons sleeping among the rocks below, the scent of various grasses growing in the fields. She was gradually relaxing from the years she’d spent on edge, and she was glad to have returned to where she belonged.

실로 오랜만에 느껴보는 산뜻한 기분이었다. 이제 그녀의 예민한 감각은 목욕을 통해 새롭게 되살아나 바람 속에 섞여 있는 계곡의 음습한 기운과, 그 계곡 아래 바위틈에 숨어 잠들어 있는 너구리의 누린내와, 벌판을 지나오는 동안 묻혀온 온갖 풀들의 향기를 감지할 수 있었다. 비로소 자신이 의당 돌아올 곳으로 돌아왔다는 안도감에...

The novel then tells us the story of Geumbok and, later Chunhui, that led to that point, one many diversions (This is neither here nor there, but there is a hard-to-believe backstory about the white suit worn by the man with the scar). The following is an example about part of the 'man with the scar''s history, one of a rich cast of characters, all with their own backstories, that Geumbok encountered in her complex life (although typically the narrator will then expand on these stories):

While the man with the scar—the renowned con artist, notorious smuggler, superb butcher, rake, pimp of all the prostitutes on the wharf, and hot-tempered broker—was a taciturn man, he was gregarious with Geumbok, telling her everything about himself. The stories he told her were frightening and cruel, about murder and kidnapping, conspiracy and betrayal—how he was born to an old prostitute who worked along the wharf and was raised by other prostitutes when she died during childbirth, how he grew up without knowing his father, how a smuggler who claimed to be his father appeared in his life, how he stowed away to Japan with this man, how a typhoon came upon them during the journey, how the ship capsized, how the smuggler didn’t know how to swim and flailed in the waves before sinking into the water, how he, who thankfully knew how to swim, drifted onto a beach and lost consciousness, where he was discovered by the yakuza, how he lived with them and learned to use a knife, how he killed for the first time, how he met the geisha who was his first love, how he partedways with her, how he returned home and consolidated power in this city—but she remained enthralled, as though she were watching a movie.

The author in an interview described the stories as a revenge play ("이 모든 이야기가 한 편의 복수극") and it is, like the stories of man with the scar—the renowned con artist, notorious smuggler, superb butcher, rake, pimp of all the prostitutes on the wharf, and hot-tempered broker [he is introduced that way more than once] at times frightening and cruel. But it is also a story rich in bawdy anecdotes and exaggerated, even fantastical, characters - such as Chunhui herself, a supernaturally large baby and monstrously strong woman, unable to speak or even understand language, except when communicating telepathically with an elephant, even after the animal passed away. As the narrator warns us:

By its very nature, a story contains adjustments and embellishments depending on the perspective of the person telling it, depending on the listener’s convenience, depending on the storyteller’s skills. Reader, you will believe what you want to believe.

But the shaggy-dog magic-realist nature of the story disguises a penetrating commentary on Korean story over the period (roughly from the end of the Japanese occupation to the late 1980s), with the impacts of the Korean war, the resulting persecution of anyone expected of being a communist, the military dictatorship (here personified by the General) and the capitalist-fuelled rapid economic growth, in which the entreprenurial Geumbok enthusiastically participates.

One of the narrator's favourite refrains after an instructive passage is "That was the law of ..." and the list of Laws quoted gives a good flavour of the novel:

Nature
The world
Reflexes
Rumours
Inertia
Servants
Genetics
Love
Their world
Gravity
The world she has entered
Reproduction
Employment
Pleasure quarters
Acceleration
Stupidity
Paranoid delusion
The streets
Geumbok
The Man with the Scar
Westerns
Courtship
Obesity
Fate
The subconscious
Habit
Action and reaction
Ideology
Harpoons
Beggars
Show business
Exaggeration
Government agencies
Being overly confident
Wild rumours
Slogans
Recklessness
Capitalism
Tithing
Management
Alcohol
Plot, which catered to crass commercialism
Prison cells
Beliefs
Discussion
Ennui
Intellectuals
Dictatorship
Ratings and mass appeal

And on the last of these, a 4.5 star Rating for me, and this certainly has mass appeal.


Translation comparison (a passage describing the pivotal fire)

Previous translation (possibly unpublished - source https://muse.jhu.edu/article/694223):


She can't breathe. Her eyes sting. Flames. Acrid smoke sears her nostrils. Spine-chilling screams. Black clouds blind her. Columns, the ceiling collapsing. Sparks flying, flames attacking her. A moment later, she opens her eyes. Her body is cool. The shadow cast against the wall by the grating is like a solid net. Someone sobs softly in the dark. She can hear the prison guard's boots echoing in the distance. She can hear someone shouting at the person crying. She curls up. The sobbing dies down. She closes her eyes. The footsteps recede. Tomb-like silence falls. Soon Chunhee is fast asleep again.

The conflagration was indeed horrific. Over eight hundred people perished in the fire, and even more in the market where it eventually spread. The damage was massive. It was no exaggeration to say that half of Pyungdae burned to the ground. It was the greatest tragedy since the war.

A few days after the fire, government investigators arrived. They were reminded of the horrendous scenes in the war's immediate aftermath, when entire cities vanished in flames. Pyungdae, once flourishing, was now a city of death. Smoke still rose from ruined heaps of former buildings, and though it had not completely collapsed, the ashen exterior of the theater showed just how horrifyingly intense the fire had been. Pungent smoke blanketed the town and the air quivered with the smell of burnt flesh and rotting corpses. Wails emanated from every house and scorched, unburied bodies were strewn in the streets, each attracting swarms of flies. The investigators covered their eyes and ears, confronted with the most hideous scene they had ever witnessed.

New translation:


She can’t breathe. Her eyes sting. Flames are surging. Toxic smoke fills her nose. She hears horrible screams. Black smoke covers her field of sight. Pillars collapse. Sparks fly. She can’t see. A pillar of fire scorches the sky. The ceiling collapses. Flames overcome her. She opens her eyes. She’s cold. The shadows of iron bars are drawn along the wall, like a net. Someone is crying quietly in the darkness. A guard’s footsteps ring from far away. Someone is threatening the crying person. She curls up. The crying dies down. She closes her eyes. The footsteps go away. A tomb-like quiet comes. A moment later, Chunhui falls back asleep.

What was left behind after the fire raged was truly gruesome. Eight hundred people died in the theater. The market next door caught fire, and the losses were astronomical. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say half of Pyeongdae burned down. It was the worst catastrophe since the war.

A few days after the fire, a government investigation team arrived. So much of the city had burned down. Once booming, Pyeongdae was now a city of death. The smoldering ruins of the buildings and the blackened shell of the theater were proof of how terrible the fire was that day. Thick smoke covered the town, the smell of decomposing bodies hanging heavily in the streets. Wails came from every house and there were burned corpses everywhere, drawing masses of flies. The investigators had to cover their eyes and plug their ears at this terrible scene.

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cheon’s sprawling, fantastical saga focuses on a mother, Geumbok, and her daughter Chunhui, whose experiences combine to form an oblique examination of the development of South Korean society in the years after the Korean War. Geumbok and Chunhui are living through a time of enormous transformations and puzzling contradictions. Geumbok, an ordinary girl from an impoverished village, through a mix of chance and skill, reinvents herself as a successful entrepreneur. She’s almost uncannily capable of grasping the opportunities on offer in an increasingly capitalist environment, while her daughter’s extraordinary size and strength, as well as an inability to speak, marks her out as a victim in South Korea’s increasingly repressive system.

Through mother and daughter, Cheon constructs a portrait of an oppressive, ruthless society in which workers are brutally suppressed and torture becomes almost routine; a place of growing social inequality in which the many will suffer but the few will profit through corruption and opportunism. Even Geumbok, who seems to encapsulate what’s needed to thrive, with her tenacity and skill in exploiting emerging trends, from early café culture to post-war construction booms, is vulnerable to failure simply because she’s a woman. Geumbok and Chunhui are also individuals caught between clashing cultures, in an era where the erosion of rural life and growing influence of American culture mingle uneasily with traditional beliefs and superstitions.

Cheon’s novel’s frequently compared to Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude but Cheon’s narrative’s earthier, more visceral than Marquez’s, with a distinct satirical feel, while his eccentric, larger-than-life, characters display the influence of writers like John Irving. It’s an assured, accomplished piece infused with conventions drawn from oral traditions including specific Korean forms like p’ansori (folk opera). It’s also highly visual in keeping with Cheon’s background in film and screenwriting. But although this was surprisingly absorbing, I didn’t always find it likeable. It could be very funny and, sometimes, deeply moving but even so I often found myself resistant to Cheon’s magical realist approach and his novel’s exaggerated, fairy tale qualities. Although my reaction probably has more to do with personal taste than the book itself. Translated by Chi-young Kim.

Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Archipelago Books for an ARC

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023
German: Der Wal
This book is full of contradictions, and I'm here for it: I HATE meandering novels, and this one meanders quite a bit - but I was still intrigued, because the over-the-top characters and storytelling are captivating. It's also both brutal and hilarious, and it employs magical elements to better illustrate reality, so all in all: ambitious stuff, and that's what the International Booker should highlight. Cheon Myeong-kwan's debut novel was first published in 2003, so it's 20 years old and already considered a contemporary classic in South Korea. Tackling the topic of societal transformation (in this case from pre- to post-modern capitalist society), it has been compared to Great Expectations as well as One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The tale focuses on three women and how they navigate changing circumstances while one aspect remains the same: Sexism. Protagonist Geumbok flees her bleak live in a rural area and enters relationships with men who help her survive and then rise in the social ranks. The business-savvy, matter-of-fact woman adapts to the expanding capitalist system by starting several enterprises, the most ambitious one being the cinema in the form of the title-giving whale. Geumbok tortures and neglects the second protagonist, her mute daughter, who gets a storyline of her own. Then, we have a one-eyed woman who directs an army of bees, born into another female line of family trauma. These three narrative strands are intertwined with minor stories about other characters (the most important one being a gangster with a scar), and it's fascinating how the author maintains control of this sprawling concept.

Cheon Myeong-kwan anchors his story with historical references that illustrate political turmoil and the changing social climate during the Fifth and Sixth Republic, but juxtaposes this with (intentionally) implausible twists and turns as well as magical elements that still serve to illustrate the social criticism the text intends to deliver. The language is rather plain, which helps to keep track of the multi-layered action that keeps coming back to the question how women survive in an antagonistic, merciless climate, how society judges them, and how they punish each other for their experiences.

An intriguing read, and a good choice for the International Booker.

[Flo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shortlisted for International Booker Prize 2023 - This is my winner. An epic novel full of violent stories and magical moments, 'Whale' is a dream come true for the fans of Fernanda Melchor and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I can understand the mixed reactions, especially because the beginning seems designed to turn off the prudish, but I believe it manages to be the ode to life it aims to be.

[endrju · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really patient with this book. So much so that I actually read the whole thing instead of dropping it immediately as I should have. I (sort of) forgave that old tired "joke" of how lesbians have sex when they don't have penis (ha-ha), the transfobia, rapes upon rapes, but what finally did it for me are the final few dozen pages when I (finally) grasped (and gasped in shock) that the novel, even if it was ironizing and satirizing all sorts of stuff, actually still naturalizes violent masculinist structures that oppress cishet women (let alone everyone else). It's no surprise it's "much beloved novel", or however it is described, in South Korea. Of course it'd be loved by the cishet majority given the romanticization of the acceptance of utterly unacceptable for becoming a part of the much beloved cishet coupledom.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

38th book of 2023.

2.5. Another Man Booker International longlister down, and another surrounding a mother and her daughter (among other things). This also qualifies as #10 of my 2023 Challenge with Alan (Read a book by an Asian writer, excluding Japanese).

Whale has been called Korea's answer to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Naturally, that being one of my favourite books ever, I was excited. I suppose I expected that the main similarity was going to be magic realism, and even that felt different. Myeong-Kwan's style in this novel feels closer to a fairy-tale than to the magic realism of Marquez. There's talking elephants, super-strong girls, magical sex-changing, etc. The fairy-tale tone doesn't save the books darkness. I haven't read this much rape in a single novel for a little while; there's a lot. And worse yet, it's all reported with utter indifference. It felt slightly less satirical than promised, though the chapters on communism around the brick-making were certainly playful. It's just too long, and the fairy-tale tone is unceasing for all it's 400 ish pages. I read the first quarter in one go, then started to get bored, a little restless of the tone, and slowed down. The magical realism never felt wholly convincing (in the world of the novel), or maybe it felt as if Myeong-Kwan hasn't committed enough to it. Maybe just too much plot. I'm glad I read it though, certainly something different and for that reason, worthwhile in its own way but I wouldn't jump to necessarily recommend it, especially with the amount of violence and sexual assault. A shame, because whales are my favourite animal.

[Odette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes you don’t finish a book because there is too much abuse of female characters and it doesn’t sit well that it is written by a man regardless of the word ‘satire’ slapped on the back cover. That is the law of literature.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The whale plays an important part in the arts. At the moment two examples are coming to mind. One is Darren Aronofsky’s 2022 film, The Whale (which itself is based on a play) and Herman Melville’s mighty Moby-Dick. In each case the whale represents a way of escape, of conquering and of exposing our insecurities. In Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s case, the titular whale as these elements as whale.

The book consists of four intersecting storylines and each focus on four women: one called The Old Crone, her one eyed daughter, Geumbok and her daughter Chunhui. Through many surreal instances ranging from mind reading elephants to biblical floods, these four characters lives overlap and shape their destinies. The whale itself is a cinema which Geumbok builds after feeling emancipated by seeing a real life whale.

The book is a history of Korea: from it’s humble beginnings to a land of progress then one divided by political strife. This could be represented by the whale itself but the events which happen in the book also mirror ones which have happened throughout Korea’s history. Due to the grotesque characters and overtly sexual situations, the book is a satire. Think of it as a modern day Candide or Terry Southern’s Candy ,both of which also used sex to point out the failings of the philosophies, government and social circles of their time,

Whale is a brilliant novel which, not only has a readable and playful structure but also manages to focus on a myriad of topics which are still discussed today: gender politics, communism, capitalism and ecology, just to name a few, Considering that this book was written in 2004 and still feels ultra contemporary means that it is, at least to me, an important book

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The low frequencies of a whale's song are barely audible to the human ear. This is why it is often manipulated in recordings to make it audible. The same applies to Myeong-Kwan's novel, in which the modern history of Southkorea is presented as a fairy-tale parable in which reality gains a haunting contour through numerous elements of magical realism. 

In the novel, the dead return, prophecies are spoken and fulfilled, gender dimensions are presented in the style of Tiresias and exposed to ridicule, a taxidermied elephant speaks and comforts an oversized child of incredible strength. It is teeming with fairy-tale characters and universal types: there is the evil witch with rotten teeth, a one-eyed bee whisperer, the pimp, the prostitute, indistinguishable twins, an insatiable giant, misanthropic sadists, simple-minded victims. And it is about all the human feelings and curses: greed, envy, jealousy, love, loyalty, ambition, faith, hope, hatred, revenge, forgiveness, torture, rape.

The exuberant storyline is held together by a narrator who knows the past and the future and guides the reader through the fateful confusions with quiet irony. The construction of the plot is that of a creative architect who is also indirectly responsible for the design of a cinema in the shape of a whale, thus mirroring the fictional level in a postmodern game of shifting meanings.

However, there are depths in the sea that even a whale cannot penetrate. If it does, its song turns into silence. That is the law of failure. Fortunately, the book does not fall silent after reading.

[Tala🦈 (mrs.skywalker.reads) · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF jakoś w połowie
może całościowo nie jest to 1, ale poziom mizoginii przebił skalę, do tego fatfobia i ogólnie paskudne pisanie o ludziach (kobietach, niepełnosprawnych, grubych, etc)

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Small, humble things are embarrassing.”

I agree here with author Cheon Meong-Kwan: it’s better to aim high and be daring, even if it’s just your debut novel.
Think Big! Think of the biggest thing on the planet, and turn it into an epic story of enormous proportions and scope and you will get this whale of a novel.

’Whale’ is ambitious in concept, it aims to emulate the magic realism of the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie in order to capture the essence of a world [Korea] in the turbulent life of a larger than life character: Geumbok, the young girl who once saw a blue whale by the shore of a southern town, and decided to live her life on a grand scale.

She wasn’t obsessed with the whale just because of its size. When she saw the blue whale from the beach, she had glimpsed what eternal life looked like, life that had triumphed against death. That was the moment the fearful small-town girl became enraptured by enormous things.

The encounter takes place midway through the novel. In order to get there, the author takes us on a journey through geography and through family history, following Geumbok in the lives of her parents and neighbours and in the interlocking stories of the other people that will intersect with her destiny.
A sense of wonder and a sense of doom pervades the text through the use of supernatural events and magical creatures. Black humour tempers the hard knocks Geumbok receives along the road, and the most admirable feature of her character is her [later, his] ability to raise from the dust and try again to make something of her destiny from scratch.

We become ourselves according to our behaviour

From illiteracy to business tycoon, Geumbok thrills us with her candid vision of a changing world, mirroring in a way the progress of her home country and its cultural changes in the 20th century. I am writing this review a few weeks after finishing the lecture, so the plot progression has become a little mixed up in my memory. Nevertheless, I can state that this was truly the highlight of my summer vacation reading: provocative and original despite the early comparisons I made to Marquez and Rushdie. Cheon Meong-Kwan is a skilled writer who can play with the reader’s emotions in playful, tense or lyrical prose.
The symbol of the whale is joined in the economy of the novel by similar powerful metaphors such as the modest yet beautiful and sturdy weed known as daisy fleabane, by the honey producing yet deadly bees, by an elephant who can talk to an autistic child, by the red clay bricks that are needed to build a world and by the illusory yet mesmerizing attraction of the silver screen, where larger than life actors play at stories more coherent and more hopeful than the destinies of Geumbok and her peers. [The cover presents a cinema in the form of a whale that Geumbok builds and operates in her new town]

The moment the screen burned and disappeared, so too did the brash passion and emotions, foolish confusion and ignorance, unbelievable luck and misunderstandings, horrible murder and years of wandering, lowly desire and hate, odd transformation and contradictions, and the breathless rollercoaster of glory and shame. They vanished instantly, like a soap bubble being popped, along with his, or maybe her, enormous life that had been filled with inexplicable complexity and irony.

The story of Geumbok will eventually end up in flames and in a big pile of ashes, but are we to draw the conclusion that her journey was pointless? The novel continues with the story of her daughter Chunhui, a sturdy giant of a woman who is unable to speak [except telepathically with her friend the elephant], yet is able to leave behind a legacy of hard work and poetry in the bricks she has made with her own hands.

She left only bricks behind. And she left everlasting drawings on those bricks. In the drawings, we can glimpse her hope that the bricks would go out into the world and convey her feelings.

I look forward to the next story written by this talented author.

[Karen·]

An astonishing novel: so full of cruelty, violence, blood, injuries, ordeals, hardships, and yet with a sprightly and playful narrative voice that drives ever forward, ever onward, for that is the law of storytelling. (There, you've got me doing it now).

My reading experience was not ideal: a particularly busy week meant that I had to put this book down and pick it up again: the story of fruity smelling Geumbok and her massive daughter Chunhui were still vivid and loud when I took it up again. However, when the old crone and her one-eyed daughter re-appeared I have to admit that I needed to go back to the beginning to remind myself who they were. Which, of course, I did. All fine.
This is how the story begins. Lightly, like the wind that wafted through the valleys of Pyeongdae long ago.
The old crone and her one-eyed daughter have but one chapter dedicated to each early on in the novel, but they will return, like ghosts to haunt the forgetful reader. And now that I have gone through, and round, and back, I know that they will stay with me for a long, long time.

Magical.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may not have understood everything that this novel was trying to satirize, but I thoroughly enjoyed the bonkers story that was presented to me. I didn’t want to put it down; I just had to know where it was going.

At times the tone felt like a dark fairytale, other times whimsical or magical realism or even a cautionary tale (this was the law of…). Throughout, the tone is pitch perfect, never losing its way: it is reminiscent of oral history, and really feels like the story is being gossiped about, with the narrator interjecting quite often giving their two cents. Themes include: class, status, power, politics, capitalism, greed, sexual freedom, gender power dynamics. Note: there are several instances of violence against women (a lot!!!). And this author seems to have his idiosyncrasies and quirks: a huge obsession with descriptions of women’s bodies…. and penises, so many penises.

I enjoyed my time with this wildly wicked book. So much attitude.

[Lidian · Rating 1 out of 5]

This sucked. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined

[Helen | readwithneleh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oof, this book has gotten me so twisted. I’ve been writing and thinking and rewriting and rethinking and just sitting with my emotions with this one. And I’m still grappling with all that is in here. There is a lot to unpack so let’s just dive in. (Get it?)

WHALE is a saga that opens with Chunhee, a young, mysterious and very large brickmaker, as she returns home from prison. As we are introduced to Chunhee, we learn how she came to be through her mother, Geumbok. And from there, we learn a lot about this mother-daughter duo and all those they encounter.

The detached tone, magical realism, and animals that communicate all give this novel a very fable/folklore-like feel. I loved that. As readers, we all love storytelling and I especially love the old-fashioned kind, the ones my mom would read to me at bedtime. And this felt exactly like that. And often times with fairytales, there are dark and sinister themes brewing underneath. This one was no different. Ranging from comedic satire to the downright offensive, this book has commentary on so much. The political landscape of a post-war Korea, the onset of capitalism and entrepreneurship, the stigma towards obesity, and the deeply patriarchal society that is Korea.

There is a lot of violence in this book and mostly towards women. And it is delivered with an indifference that can only be attributed to a distant narrator, a characteristic of storytelling that I personally love. The nonchalant delivery of violence, especially when it’s repeated over and over again, can and will be problematic and triggering for some. For me, the violence wasn’t a big issue since I chalked it up to the setting and time of the book. But I was left with questions.

Why didn’t the violence bother me as much? Was it my internalized sexism? Was it my affinity for romanticizing Korea’s history and culture? Was I truly comfortable with the way the women were written? By a man?

The truth of the matter is that I absolutely loved this book. I loved it while reading it and loved it after. BUT, as a reader who wants to read critically, I have to and want to examine the author’s intent even if that means confronting my own biases.

The author said in an interview that this novel was inspired by an image of a very large woman and was “drawn to the tragedy of her physical corporeality”. This “tragedy”, I can only assume, is rooted in Korea’s weight-biased culture that breeds toxicity and discrimination towards obese and fat people. Chunhee, our very large brickmaker who is the “size of water buffalo”, endures a lot of emotional and physical trauma throughout the book. Is this a satirical take on Korea’s sentiment and treatment towards overweight people?

As I am unfamiliar with the author, I can only take his work at face value and how it felt to me. To me, the violence was a head-on critique of Korea’s misogyny and obesity stigma. And as this book spans generations, the violence against women stood out even more when set against the modernization of Korea’s society. The world was progressing, but why weren’t the people?

The author describes the book as a revenge play, but I would describe it as a story about the life and role of women in Korea’s history. The violence, harm, and utter indifference for their lives is alarming but absolutely real. And that is why understanding the intent of the author is important. Even if this was written almost 20 years ago and also set in a post-war Korea, the reprinting of modern classics, as this is considered, should be viewed with a critical lens, at the very least for the sake of discourse. A lot has changed in the 19 years since the original publication of this novel, and with the rise of the #MeToo movement in South Korea, I think it’s important that we talk about this. And I don’t have the answers. I only have more questions.

This review isn’t a “I loved it, go read it” type of review. It’s a “I loved it, but it’s complicated so please read it so I can discuss with you” review. Because, I did love it. I thought the translation was phenomenal. It truly did not feel like a translated piece of literature. It felt like this was exactly how this story was supposed to be written and told. Highly visual and plot-driven with a full cast of characters, I was completely drawn into the story.

So, the takeaway? Read it. And call me when you’re done.

Thank you to the publisher for the copy. All opinions are my own.

[Japan Connect (Fabienne) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Platt, misogyn und ekelhaft Das Buch wurde von der Kritik zwar als „spannendster Roman Koreas seit der Jahrtausendwende“ gepriesen, aber wenn die koreanische Literatur nur Anhäufungen aus Obszönitäten, Gewalt und Plattitüden von überspitzt grässlich gezeichneten Figuren zu präsentieren hat, ist sehr schlecht um sie bestellt.

Zum Glück habe ich seit der Jahrtausendwende koreanische Romane gelesen, die dieser Beschreibung nicht entsprechen. Somit konnte meine Hoffnung in die koreanische Literatur nicht zerstört werden, auch wenn für ersten 30 Seiten dieses Romans viel kaputt zu machen drohten.

Gute Literatur soll aufrütteln, vielleicht auch verstören aber schockieren um der voyeuristischen Lust zu fröhnen, oft für mich definitiv etwas völlig anderes.

Leider kann ich nichts Gutes zu diesem Text sagen. Ihr könnt Euch auf eine saftige Kritik im Lesemonat September auf meinem YouTube Kanal „Japan Connect“ freuen.

https://youtu.be/RUIV9T74ST8?si=moXvE...

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never read anything like this book. It’s like new folklore, though it sounds like it could’ve been a story that was passed down many generations. It was tragic and poignant, haunting and beautiful. It broke a part of me and built me back up and then did it over and over again with every chapter.

[nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

READING VLOG

if Moshfegh wrote 𝘗𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘰..

From start to finish, plot builds on plot builds on plot builds on plot. So much happens on a single page that you are swept with such history, you wonder how much of it is being made daily. Myeong-Kwan is relentless in tracking every motion, every verb, every piece of information that propels Geumbok in spellbinding #girlboss energy in old Korea. Don't fuck with her!!! Because she will fuck you up! We get bits of 𝘖𝘳𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰 and 𝘔𝘰𝘣𝘺 𝘋𝘪𝘤𝘬, making you question how far a life can go with so much hurt and resilience, so much life and love.

There hasn't been a book that has kept me up reading all night, but I spent some waking hours in finishing this one, leaving me so full of awe and hurt. Ahhh! Which all surprises me given this book was released in 2004 in Korea, which is momentous given how conservative it was then (and still is) during that time.

A tremendous read for anyone who needs to get out of their reading slump. Whale it up, bb!

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

When/if they make a movie of this novel, there should be warnings about Gratuitous Nudity and Gratuitous Violence. Like when the residents of a whole town are running with mainly farm implements at one of the two female protagonists, chanting their various purposes (disembowel/rape/hang), she dramatically removes her upper clothing. This stops the horde and allows her to offer a monologue. Stuff like that happens only every couple of pages. The horde is not always stopped. But sometimes the horde is done in. There was so much of it (the aforementioned nudity and violence) that it probably wasn't gratuitous at all.

The eponymous WHALE probably means something too. A whale appears; a movie theater is built to look like a whale; and there are at least two humans who kinda look like whales. We all know whales in literature have to mean something but, I have to say, the symbolism here was less obvious than that in M. Dick.

There's a talking elephant, but in fairness, the talking elephant only talks to the mute, autistic-y, whale-looking, other female protagonist. Jumbo talks to her while alive and even when he's been killed and stuffed.

Actually, not a few of the characters who are offed (almost everybody) return to spout some wisdom, such as: "This world is better than the other, even if you find yourself rolling around in dog shit." Not a few of characters find themselves rolling around in dog shit.

I really liked Geumbok, one of the female protagonists, who had a real entrepreneurial gift. Until, that is, she fell in love with a lovely woman, transitioned to a man, and then transitioned to a drunken load. Geumbok was one shitty mother, too, worse than anything Joy Williams has so far thought up.

Geumbok's daughter is Chunhui. She's the whale-like, autistic-y, mute girl who talks to the dead or alive elephant. We like her. We don't want bad things to happen to her. Bad things happen to her. We don't know what her thoughts were and we don't know what kind of life she desired. She was different, and she lived in isolation because of that.

There are two Epilogues, each mercifully short, each surprisingly hopeful, given what we've read.

And I liked it!

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clever satirical novel that is written in a fable-like way, the interconnected lives of a series of unfortunate women, whose lives go through various highs and lows that depict certain universal laws, a reference that the author makes multiple times in the narrative - there are often points at which the author interjects into the narrative to talk to the reader.

A satire on Korean history and society, and perceived by some as 'magical', I found the relentless abuses and sexism towards the female characters wore me down and slowed me down in the reading, perhaps it was the 'knowing' that things rarely ever come right, that any overcoming of obstacles or even resilience is eventually met with yet another example of tragedy, betrayal, seduction or disappointment.

I did like the novel, and I understand why it might be a bestselling, classic in Korea (published 20 years ago), but it didn't feel contemporary enough for me to be reading in 2023, and had me craving for signs of social justice or improvement or anything that might leave the reader believing in humanity.

I did love the voice of the elephant and the intimate conversations between the mute Chunhui and the elephant.

[A.K. Kulshreshth · Rating 5 out of 5]

One night, Cheon Meong-Kwan was walking in the city, and a young girl asked him the directions to a place. The thing was, she was quite big, built like a giant. He told her the bus route, and she asked him how long it would take to walk. He said it was too far to walk was too far to walk, and he offered her money for a bus ride, but she refused to take it. Though he worried for her, as he puts it, in this very insightful interview (which is best read after reading the book) “All I could do was watch her disappear into the night.”

Luckily, he did more. The image of that girl stayed with him, and he set out to write a book about a giant girl who is pure at heart – and “uncherished”. He doesn’t quite explain how the idea of bricks came to him, but he linked it to the girl. Then, he created the stories of her mother and a woman from one generation earlier.

This story grew into Whale, which was published in Korean in 2003, but translated into English only in 2023. Chunhui is the giant and pure-hearted girl; Geumbok is her beautiful, energetic, and enterprising mother. An unnamed one-eyed woman who magically controls bees with a whistle precedes these two.

This is not the right book for readers who see the depiction of female body parts as proof of misogyny, or who have issues with readers being directly addressed. It is also full of violence, rape, and abuse.

One reviewer pointed to these lines, which appear quite early, as proof of misogyny (Chunhui is bathing after having slogged and got a hand pump to work): She was nearly one hundred eight centimetres tall, and her two thick, strong, oak-like legs supported her wide trunk. She weas truly magnificent to behold. As she had never been pregnant, let alone given birth, her breasts were taut and her pert nipples were placed high on her wide areolas.

Before this, we have Chunhui returning to a desolate, ruined brick kiln, after a hellish stay in prison and a hard journey on foot, and reminiscing about her days as a child, when she was ignored by her mother and found love only with her stepfather. Whale is, remarkably, a book that has foreshadowing at every turn, but is still full of surprises.

In the very next paragraph, there is this: Her stepfather would stand by her by the pump when she was small to bathe her, even though she was already close to a hundred kilos. He would tell her, Chunhui, with your strong legs, you can tread on clay better than anyone else, and with your strong arms, you can pick up more bricks than any one lese. That is your greatest fortune..

This is a book that – in the author’s words – alternates between an age of barbarism and one of civilisation, without being strictly historical. For those who insist on slotting it, “East Asian magic realism” might come closest, but it is not a label that I like.

It is Geumbok who straddles much of the narrative, as she flees a tiny hamlet and an abusive father, enters into a staggering range of relationships (both sexual and asexual) to grow into a successful entrepreneur and innovator, transforms the sleepy town of Pyeongdae, and finally ends up transforming herself, before meeting an unexpected end.

As the story hurtles along, we are treated to aphorisms. For example: Emptiness began to creep into people’s hearts, and Geumbok made money from that phenomenon. This was the law of capitalism. There are “laws” interspersed every few pages; the writer says that he meant these as a kind of inside joke.

Life is sweeping away the dust that keeps piling up, Chunhui is told at one point. Death is nothing more than dust piling up.

Was (Chunhui’s) body merely the root of all pain, a uniform of divine punishment she could never take off? What was her soul like, trapped inside her large body? To what extent did she understand discrimination and indifference, or the hostility and disgust that came her way? If any of you, dear readers, are curious about these aspects of her life, it means you have the talent to become a storyteller, because stories are an explanation into a life filled with injustice… Only those with illegitimate intentions attempt to explain the world in simple terms, aiming to define everything in a line or two, such as:
All persons are equal in the eyes of the law.

There are wry comments about a General in the North and one in the South. This is a discussion between politician and Geumbok:
“We have to kill all the reds.”
“Do we have to be so extreme?”
“Yes, because if you keep a Red alive, he’ll kill ten people. So killing one red is the same as saving nine people’s lives.”
“I thought you said ten people.”
“Well, we have to kill that one red.”

Chunhui does find love – from her stepfather, and from another friend of hers, with whom the book ends.

There is really a lot to like in this unique work, for readers who can set aside hard-boiled notions about the male gaze. Ironically, as the author says in his interview, his main characters are women, while the men (with one exception) are weak and unimportant.

[Sarah ~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whale - Cheon Myeong-Kwan


تدور أحداث هذه الرواية في قرية صغيرة في كوريا الجنوبية- وننتقل لأجزاء أخرى من البلد لكن أغلب الأحداث تقع في القرية، وعلى امتداد سنوات طويلة وتحكي قصة ثلاث شخصيات مرتبطة المصائر: غومبوك؛ امرأة يقودها طموح وشغف لا مثيل له مذ رأت حوتًا عملاقًا في المحيط. وتشونهوي؛ ابنتها الصامتة. وإمرأة ذات عين واحدة يمكنها التحكم بالنحل.

الرواية من نوع الواقعية السحرية يشبهها البعض برائعة ماركيز؛ مئة عام من العزلة، ويمكن اعتبارها فانتازيا تاريخية من بعض النواحي، وصدرت في كوريا الجنوبية عام 2004، والمؤكد أنها عمل لافت ومختلف وطويل ويمتد لسنوات طويلة وقصصه متعددة الطبقات وحكاياته فاتنة والسرد رائع .

مأخذي الوحيد على العمل هو إضافة الكثير من التفاصيل والأوصاف الجنسية للعمل وبشكل مبالغ فيه وفجّ؛ أظن أن العديد من هذه المشاهد و والأوصاف كانت بلا داعي.

~



فجر يوم الثلاثاء، التاسع من رمضان - 1445 هـ,

[Yahaira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Through fairy tale like writing and the grotesque* Cheon traces the history of Korea; from Japanese occupation to all the way in the 80s or 90s. We see Korea go through drastic changes, with the Korean War (the spirit of General MacArthur even makes a cameo), the post war building boom, and the oppressive General Park regime that held power for decades.

The story is mostly about Geumbok, an enterprising mountain girl who had a scent that drove men crazy. Through luck and smarts she’s able to start a series of successful businesses. During the Korean War she has a daughter, Chunhui, who is unable to speak or understand language (besides telepathically talking to an elephant). Eventually they end up in the small village of Pyeongdae, just in time for the economic growth and modernization of the countryside. Geumbok is able to predict cafe culture and the need for bricks. The bricks are expertly made at the kilns she has built. Chunhui spends most of her time there learning the art of brickmaking.

We eventually see the building of a whale shaped movie theater (Geumbok’s dream), a curse in the village, and Chunhui wrongfully sent to prison. Most of the plot is revealed in the first chapter so these aren’t spoilers. What you don’t realize is how much rape or abuse you’re going to read about in this book, and it’s not just directed at women. I keep being told that they have a place, that they are about how the lower classes get violated in the class struggle. I can see that once or twice, but after the fifth or tenth time doesn’t it lose its meaning or affect? We see the class struggle when the workers aren’t paid for all the bricks they made. We see injustice when protesters are rounded up and jailed for supposedly being communist. So did we really need so much sexual abuse to make a point? Towards the end of the book we are bombarded with Chunhui’s never-ending abuse in prison. At this point, the violence reached such absurd levels that I felt both sick and nothing towards it.

This is one of those books that I can admire from afar, but not enjoy the reading experience. I wish I had found the humor and quirkiness so many other readers experienced. The breezy writing does carry you along (this feels like a great translation), but the narrator breaking the fourth wall so many times quickly became grating (no, I didn’t forget about that character or event. Now what?). Cheon is playing with storytelling and he has his narrator keep everything at the surface level- we never learn any character’s interiority. Did I mention all the abuse and the descriptions of women’s bodies? I eventually found myself not caring about anyone or anything that was happening and it became a tedious and repetitive read.

I was excited for this book and was hooked by the first chapter. I can admit there were moments I found humorous or engrossing and the social criticism was interesting, but for the most part the ‘satire’ didn’t land for me. I think this will work better for you if you like fables or folklores.

*I refuse to refer to children getting raped as ‘bawdy’

[James]

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023

“He would sip coffee and change the subject, saying something like, ‘But don’t you think the judges for the most recent literary award made such a conservative choice? I of course concede that the author is wonderful.’”

Majestic. Now this is pure joy, pure alchemical wonder cast without the spell breaking even once, not one jot of boredom in this absolute triumph of Korean magical realism from Cheon Myeong-Kwan, the exhilaration of whose Baumian imagination has set the gold standard for subsequent fantastic literature in every sense of the term, such enchantment and escapism bolstered by Chi-Young Kim’s bewitching translation. I wish this were exaggeration. You should see those immediate impressions I wrote down after finishing this one midnight: indecipherable scribblings, superlatives, exclamation marks. Some time has passed since, so one would think cooler heads would now prevail, my feelings settled into some semblance of objectivity, and yet? Hindsight, far from dampening it, has only intensified my squealing excitement for this ambitious intergenerational epic about bricklayers, beekeepers, telepathic elephants; about laws, love, self-determination, the magic of cinema.

“Whale" is not so much to be read as seen, has forever seared my mind with scenes projected in brilliant colours of the attacking bees, the runaway logs, someone collapsing in the snow. Inspired by cinema, from his screenwriting skill, Cheon grants his words the same magical vividness, animating into stupefying life an epic Rabelaisian fairytale about powerful women and perseverence, from Geumbok’s boundless entrepreneurial power to Chunhui’s elephantine spirit, surrounded by a rich array of characters: drowned blind lovers, psychotic prison wardens, murderous nurses, body-swapping elderly twins, scarred mob bosses, creepy old crones, possibly immortal dogs, daisy fleasbanes blooming across the novel. Cheon’s Tolstoyan narrator is likewise omniscient, cheeky, and digressive, burrowing into the background of almost every secondary character, each life a whole transporting world unto itself. Ferally, I would throw that coffee instead of sipping it if “Whale” loses.

[Smriti · Rating 4 out of 5]

did this book have a lot of objectionable stuff in it? yes. but did i lap up this book like it was freaking ice cream? also yes.

what a wild ride this book is. i definitely would recommend this whole heartedly as just a fun book which is basically a bunch of connected short stories as a novel. we see various people and how actions affect others - either in the long run or in the moment. i thought it was brilliantly done. but definitely check the trigger warnings if you are triggered by anything at all.

you can check out all my thoughts about this book & the other international booker shortlisted books here: https://youtu.be/RJcYZ6Chcsw

[Brandon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I should know better than to read anything that is considered magical realism. This was just so, so dumb.

This is what is called the Law of over-rated literature.

and so much unnecessary sexual content.

This is what is called the Law of compensating for something.