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More copies of this ISBN:Secondhand Worldby Katherine Min
Review-a-Day (What is Review-a-Day?)"With this absorbing tale, Min recreates the atonal and uncomfortably familiar rhythms of a postwar suburban American home....Through the eyes of Isa, an upstate New York teenager racked by self-doubt, Min captures the adolescent's sense of awe and idealism, uncertainty and excitement, as she teeters toward finding her own truth....Min leaves the reader breathless with questions about one's own capacity to forgive." Helen Zia, Ms. Magazine (read the entire Ms. Magazine review) Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:A brilliant novel from an exciting new writer. Isadora Myung Hee Sohn — Isa — worships her mother, an exceptional beauty, born in Seoul and sheltered in a harem of sisters inside the wealthy family's compound. Isa's father, a scientist and professor, an orphan, is haunted by the war in which he served as a South Korean soldier and by a painful secret that he keeps from his wife. Still mourning the death of Isa's younger brother, Stephen, her parents are traditional enough to prize their dead son over their living daughter; to them, Isa only half exists. But unlike many Asian American daughters, Isa is neither meek nor a quiet victim of tradition. Despite her parents' success and sophistication — they've achieved the American dream — she repudiates their values, embarks on her own sexual education, and runs away with an albino boy, Hero. At the same time, Isa suspects that despite her mother's strict adherence to Korean traditional values, she is involved with another man, and Isa determines to make the affair known. What begins as a child's unthinking fury at her mother soon leads to more deadly consequences. A daring, haunting, inspired debut. Review:"Isolation pervades Min's haunting debut, a depiction of a tragedy-beset Korean-American family living in upstate New York during the aftermath of the Korean War. As the book opens, Isadora (Isa) Myung Hee Sohn, 18, has just spent 95 days on a pediatric burn unit in Albany, N.Y., following a fire that destroyed her house and killed her parents. The backstory — a swirling, textured and beautifully detailed web of perception that records a divided life — comprises the rest of the novel. Isa's mother is a beauty from a wealthy family in Seoul; her father is a former South Korean soldier, now a rigid science professor. Brother Stephen died in an accident as a toddler; her parents' extreme grief and subsequent neglect leave Isa herself feeling 'insubstantial, a transparency that hung like a scrim between them and the child they had lost.' The teenage Isa — angst-ridden, disaffected and subject to racial prejudice at school — escapes into the arms of an albino outsider named 'Hero' in a sequence that doesn't fit. But when Isa finds out that her mother is having an affair, her ensuing actions destroy her parents' carefully constructed semblance of happily married life. The plot lurches and meanders, but Min's rendering of an outsider family's tight-knit alienation is spot-on." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"Raw, emotionally urgent and peppered with acute detail, Secondhand World feels like a childhood memoir, but it's crafted with the seasoned hand of an older author who writes with insight and polish." Los Angeles Times Review:"Touching and bittersweet, this novel is filled with universal themes presented through Isa's eyes and should resonate with teen readers of both today and yesterday." Library Journal Review:"Min evokes period and place as well as characters with stringent attention and honesty." Kirkus Reviews Review:"Min poignantly captures the dilemma of second-generation Americans as they try to find a place in their universe, but she also tells of a quest for self-discovery, which is universal." School Library Journal Review:"Symbolism is the primary force here, occasionally overwhelming the plot. Still, the writing is exquisite and exacting." New Yorker Review:"In Secondhand World Katherine Min depicts with wonderful eloquence the coming of age of an unusually spirited heroine...as she struggles to negotiate between her family's Korean past and their American present. A fiercely compelling and immensely intelligent debut." Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona Review:"What makes this novel so memorable...is the realness and urgency of its emotion. It's a force that commands the reader from one aching and beautifully concise chapter to the next." John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake Synopsis:In this haunting, inspired debut, a Korean-American girl suspects that despite her mother's strict adherence to traditional values, she is involved with another man, and Isa determines to make the affair known. What begins as a child's unthinking fury at her mother soon leads to more deadly consequences.
About the AuthorKatherine Min was born in Champaign, Illinois, and was raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Clifton Park, New York. She attended Amherst College and the Columbia School of Journalism. She has been the recipient of writing grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire Arts Council. She lives with her husband and children in New Hampshire. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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