Jeong, You-Jeong
WORK TITLE: The Good Son
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Yoo-jung, Jung; Jeon, Jeong You
BIRTHDATE: 8/15/1966
WEBSITE:
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: Korean
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2002068009 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2002068009 |
| HEADING: | Chŏng, Yu-jŏng, 1966- |
| 000 | 01659cz a2200289n 450 |
| 001 | 5716432 |
| 005 | 20180509103226.0 |
| 008 | 020730n| azannaabn |b aaa c |
| 010 | __ |a no2002068009 |z n 2018022723 |
| 035 | __ |a (OCoLC)oca05824468 |
| 040 | __ |a NJQ |b eng |c NJQ |d OCoLC |d DLC |e rda |d InU |d DLC |
| 046 | __ |f 1966 |2 edtf |
| 053 | _0 |a PL994.2.Y84 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Chŏng, Yu-jŏng, |d 1966- |
| 370 | __ |a Hamp’yŏng-gun (Korea) |2 naf |
| 374 | __ |a Novelists |2 lcsh |
| 375 | __ |a female |
| 377 | __ |a kor |
| 400 | 1_ |a 정 유정, |d 1966- |
| 400 | 1_ |a Jeong, You-Jeong, |d 1966- |
| 400 | 1_ |a Jung, Yoo-jung, |d 1966- |
| 667 | __ |a Machine-derived non-Latin script reference project. |
| 667 | __ |a Non-Latin script reference not evaluated. |
| 670 | __ |a Ibyŏl poda sŭlp’ŭn yaksok, 2002: |b t.p. (Chŏng Yu-jŏng) cover flap (b. 1966; grad., Kwangju Kidok Kanhodae; author of Yol han sal Chŏngini) |
| 670 | __ |a Nae simjang ŭl sswara, 2009: |b t.p. (정 유정 = Chŏng Yu-jŏng) front flap (b. in Chŏnnam Hamp’yŏng; grad., Kwangju Kidok Kanho Taehak; w., kanhosa & Kŏn’gang Pohŏm Simsa P’yŏngkawŏn simsajik; sosŏlga; che 1-hoe Segye Ch’ŏngsonyŏn Munhaksang, “Nae insaeng ŭi sŭp’ŭring k’aemp’ŭ”) |
| 670 | __ |a The good son, 2018: |b ecip t.p. (You-Jeong Jeong) publisher’s summary (“novelist known as “Korea’s Stephen King”) |
| 670 | __ |a Wikipedia WWW Home Page, May 9, 2018 |b (정 유정 = Chŏng Yu-jŏng; Jeong You Jeong [in rom.]; Jung Yoo-jung [in rom.]; South Korean writer; author of “Shoot Me in the Heart (= Nae simjang ŭl sswara)”, “Seven years of night (= 7-yŏn ŭi pam)”, “The Good Son (= Chong ŭi kiwŏn)”, etc.) |
PERSONAL
Born August 15, 1966, in South Korea.
ADDRESS
- Home - Los Angeles, CA.
CAREER
Writer.
AWARDS:Die Zeit, Germany newspaper, top ten crime novels of 2015, for Seven Years of Darkness.
WRITINGS
- The Good Son, translated by Chi-Young Kim, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2018
Author of books in Korean: Shoot Me in the Heart and Seven Years of Darkness.
SIDELIGHTS
Known alternatingly as South Korea’s Stephen King and the Queen of Crime, You-Jeong Jeong writes psychological thrillers and crime fiction. She is the award-winning author of four novels in Korean, including Seven Years of Darkness, which was named one of the top ten crime novels of 2015 by German newspaper Die Zeit. Her books have been translated into seven languages.
In 2018, Jeong’s The Good Son was her first book translated into English, by Man Asian Literary Prize winning translator Chi-Young Kim. In the story, twenty-six-year-old Han Yu-jin has applied to law school and is anxiously awaiting to learn if he has been accepted. One night he wakes up to a call from his foster brother Hae-jin wondering where their mother is after he missed a call from her. Yu-jin then notices blood all over his affluent duplex in Incheon, a waterfront suburb of Seoul, and goes downstairs to find his mother dead and covered in blood with his father’s straight razor nearby. Suffering from seizures all his life that affect his memory, Yu-jin can’t recall anything that happened last night, except going for a run at midnight and seeing a woman get off a bus. Yu-jin struggles to learn what happened, and if it’s possible that he brutally killed his own mother. As he investigates, he learns the truth about himself and his family. That truth includes his mother’s adoption of and favoritism for Hae-jin, her constant nagging, and Yu-jin’s penchant for stalking young women. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the book a “superlative thriller” for “readers who enjoy grappling with the issue of a narrator’s reliability.”
The Good Son was named a Must-Read Book of the Summer by Elle, and recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, and CrimeReads. “Jeong slowly winds readers up with taut, high-tension wire, slowly letting it play out as the police inevitably come calling and Yu-jin begins to uncover shocking secrets about himself, his mother, and his past,” according to a Kirkus Reviews critic. “Incorporating chilling prose, unpredictable characters, and blood by the gallons, Jeong has crafted an ominous and haunting experience” perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson, according to Tyler Hixson in a Xpress Reviews. A reviewer online at Crime Fiction Love said that Jeong’s slow piecing together of Yu-jin’s psychopathic mind is where the book excels, and she implies that there are no simple answers when it comes to mental illness. The reviewer added: “There are moments when it seems as if a character is stating the obvious, but these may be due to the nature of Korean to English translation. Even so, the translation really allows the story to pull you in, and the twists and turns keep you going.”
Calling the book a “precise, meticulously plotted thriller that is occasionally too precise and meticulous for its own good,” J. David Osborne observed in World Literature Today that the story’s constant questioning of what happened and what does this mean can be tedious. Ultimately, Osborne concluded that the book “is a perfect read for an airplane ride: it sucks you in with precision and holds your attention, leaving you with a satisfying resolution.” Paul Burke commented on the Nudge website: “This study in psychopathy feels very much more real than the usual serial killer thriller. The narrative is littered with clues and revelations that make reading this scary take fun too. A real winner.” In his review online at London Korean Links, Philip Gowman said he liked a book in which the investigator is the prime suspect and “This is an entertaining read which is sufficiently international in outlook for a reader not to require a Korean cultural primer to read.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2018, review of The Good Son.
Publishers Weekly, April 2, 2018, review of The Good Son, p. 46.
World Literature Today, July-August, 2018, J. David Osborne, review of The Good Son, p. 72.
Xpress Reviews, April 27, 2018, Tyler Hixson, review of The Good Son.
ONLINE
Crime Fiction Love, https://crimefictionlover.com/ (May 4, 2018), review of The Good Son.
London Korean Links, https://londonkoreanlinks.net/ (June 14, 2018), Philip Gowman, review of The Good Son.
Nudge, https://nudge-book.com/ (April 25, 2018), Paul Burke, review of The Good Son.
- The Good Son Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2018
- Penguin Random House - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2155969/you-jeong-jeong
You-Jeong Jeong
Photo of You-Jeong Jeong
About the AuthorSouth Korea’s leading writer of psychological thrillers and crime fiction, You-Jeong Jeong is the award-winning author of four novels including Seven Years of Darkness, which was named one of the top ten crime novels of 2015 by Die Zeit (Germany). Her work has been translated into seven languages. A #1 bestseller in Korea, The Good Son is the first of her books to appear in English.
Chi-Young Kim is the award-winning translator of the Man Asian Literary Prize-winning and bestselling novel Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim, and works of fiction by Sun-Mi Hwang, J.M. Lee, and Young-Ha Kim, among others. She lives in Los Angeles.
Jeong, You-Jeong: THE GOOD SON
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Jeong, You-Jeong THE GOOD SON Penguin (Adult Fiction) $16.00 6, 5 ISBN: 978-0-14-313195-3
A young man desperately tries to fill in gaps in his memory when he realizes he may have brutally murdered his own mother.
Twenty-five-year-old Yu-jin lives in a sparkling modern apartment with his mother, has an adopted brother with whom he's close, and he's waiting to hear if he's been accepted into law school. One morning, he wakes covered in blood, "clots of the stuff" hanging off his clothes. He follows the trail of gore to find his mother lying at the bottom of the stairs with her throat cut. He explores the house, hoping for more clues as to what happened, and is surprised to find his late father's straight razor covered in blood in his room. Could he have killed his own mother? It sure seems that way, even if he can't remember doing it, and the fact that he hasn't been taking his anti-seizure medication doesn't help. Yu-jin narrates, telling a compelling, disturbing tale as he tries to piece together the events that might have led to his mother's death. Yu-jin's mom may not have had his best interests at heart. She made his stop swimming competitively--the only thing he really loved--because she claimed to fear he'd have a seizure in the water, and she nags him incessantly, always insisting she know his whereabouts. After his brother and father died 16 years ago, she adopted Hae-jin and has favored him over Yu-jin since. Yu-jin even confesses to following young women around at night, noting that frightening them is an addiction that he must feed. When a woman's body washes up nearby, one can't help but suspect Yu-jin. He doesn't help his case by admitting that he lies often. Pressure steadily mounts as Yu-jin's world, and mind, unravels. Bestselling Korean author Jeong slowly winds readers up with taut, high-tension wire, slowly letting it play out as the police inevitably come calling and Yu-jin begins to uncover shocking secrets about himself, his mother, and his past.
A creepy, insidious, blood-drenched tale in which nothing is quite what it seems.
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Jeong, You-Jeong: THE GOOD SON." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532700558/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=087dcfbb. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532700558
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The Good Son
Barbara Zitwer
Publishers Weekly.
265.14 (Apr. 2, 2018): p46. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Good Son
You-Jeong Jeong, trans, from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim. Penguin, $16 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-14-313195-3
"The smell of blood woke me." So says Han Yu-jin, a would-be law student with a history of seizures who lives in Incheon, at the start of South Korean author Jeong's superlative thriller, her first to be translated into English. After he regains consciousness, Yu-jin follows an increasingly ominous trail of bloody handprints and footprints to the kitchen, where he finds his mother's body. Her throat has been slit and her hands posed, clasped, on her chest. All Yu-jin can recall about the previous night is that he went out for a run around midnight in the rain to relieve his restlessness and saw a girl get off a bus. Did he kill his mother? His desperate efforts to sort out exactly what happened are intensified when his stepbrother and his aunt call to ask after his mother. Readers who enjoy grappling with the issue of a narrator's reliability will relish Yu-jin, who believes that "being true to life wasn't the only way to tell a story." Agent: Barbara Zitwer, Barbara J. Zitwer Agency. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zitwer, Barbara. "The Good Son." Publishers Weekly, 2 Apr. 2018, p. 46. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533555600/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=008080ee. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533555600
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You-Jeong Jeong: The Good Son
J. David Osborne
World Literature Today.
92.4 (July-August 2018): p72. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 University of Oklahoma http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Full Text:
You-Jeong Jeong
The Good Son
Trans. Chi-Young Kim. New York. Penguin
Random House. 2018. 320 pages.
You-Jeong Jeong's The Good Son is a precise, meticulously plotted thriller that is occasionally too precise and meticulous for its own good.
The novel begins with its protagonist, Yu-jin, waking up in his room covered in blood. He suffers from seizures. He has vague memories of the night before. When he goes downstairs, he finds his mother dead, and soon he convinces himself that the two of them had fought earlier, her in a rage, him defending himself. Soon, his adopted brother shows up. Then his aunt. Then the police. Those encounters are each fraught with tension, and the tension comes from Jeong's prose, which spares not a single word.
This is a book of questions. It's a book of mystery, too, but a good portion of it consists of Yu-jin talking to himself, trying to figure out what's going on. For example: "Was that it? Did she witness the young woman being killed? Where could that have been? The docks? The sea wall?" Or: "Auntie's words didn't leave my head even when I went to the shower, toothbrush in my mouth. Something special. How did she know that when even I hadn't known it until just now? Did she medicate me to suppress my nature, which craved that special something?"
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Throughout the book, this technique can at times become tedious, but it's worth noting that the line between tedium and tension can be extremely thin. For the most part, the twisty, questioning nature of the thriller works. Jeong tells when the thing needs telling and shows when the thing needs showing. At times, when Yu-jin finds himself lost in the different threads of possibility, we even get a handy, numbered list.
The mystery element of the novel, while expertly crafted, plays second to the flashback sequences, integrated seamlessly into the text. They serve to give the reader hints of "the truth" or at least Yu-jin's understanding of it. Of particular note is a conversation late in the novel, in which Hae-jin (the adopted brother) and Yu-jin discuss the nature of death after watching the classic 2007 Morgan Freeman-Jack Nicholson vehicle The Bucket List .
The conclusion features well-choreographed action, though readers might find themselves a bit disappointed when a novel that up to a certain point had been so twisty and psychological resolves in such a comparatively straightforward fashion.
To an extent, The Good Son felt like reading a film. Doors to bedrooms containing secrets are locked "just as [the character] turns the knob." Characters eyeball each other suspiciously. The Good Son is a perfect read for an airplane ride: it sucks you in with precision and holds your attention, leaving you with a satisfying resolution.
J. David Osborne
El Paso, Texas
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Osborne, J. David. "You-Jeong Jeong: The Good Son." World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 4,
2018, p. 72. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A543779237 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=29580b2d. Accessed 15 July 2018.
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Jeong, You-Jeong. The Good Son
Tyler Hixson
Xpress Reviews.
(Apr. 27, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews- first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
Jeong, You-Jeong. The Good Son. Penguin. Jun. 2018. 320p. tr. from Korean by ChiYoung Kim. ISBN 9780143131953. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9780525503743. F
Twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin has struggled with seizures for most of his life, and now he lives at home with his mother, studying for law school under her watchful, oppressive gaze. Yu-jin's medication makes him drowsy, dopey, and not present, so once in a while he'll skip the drugs, and the world becomes a new place, full of color and possibilities. One morning, Yu-jin is awakened by the overpowering smell of blood and a phone call from his adopted brother Hae-jin, wondering if their mother was okay. Yu-jin stumbles downstairs and finds his mother's body, covered in blood and stab wounds. One of the side effects of his seizures is short-term memory loss. All he can remember from the night before is his mother screaming his name. Was she calling for help? Or was she screaming for her life? As Yu-jin investigates what happened, a young woman is found murdered not far from his house, and Yu-jin uncovers an unnerving and quietly sinister secret concerning his whole existence. Jeong has been called "Korea's Stephen King," and she lives up to the billing with this taut psychological thriller. Yu-jin is an intriguing protagonist, and the many twists and turns Jeong takes with this story are set the reader up for quite a thrill ride.
Verdict Incorporating chilling prose, unpredictable characters, and blood by the gallons, Jeong has crafted an ominous and haunting experience. Hand to readers of Stephen King and Shirley Jackson. [See Prepub Alert, 1/22/18.]--Tyler Hixson, Brooklyn P.L.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hixson, Tyler. "Jeong, You-Jeong. The Good Son." Xpress Reviews, 27 Apr. 2018. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537404942/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=b138a2ea. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537404942
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- World Literature Today
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2018/july/good-son-you-jeong-jeong
Word count: 514The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong
FICTION
Author:
You-Jeong Jeong
Translator:
Chi-Young KimThe cover to The Good Son by You-Jeong JeongNew York. Penguin Random House. 2018. 320 pages.
You-Jeong Jeong’s The Good Son is a precise, meticulously plotted thriller that is occasionally too precise and meticulous for its own good.
The novel begins with its protagonist, Yu-jin, waking up in his room covered in blood. He suffers from seizures. He has vague memories of the night before. When he goes downstairs, he finds his mother dead, and soon he convinces himself that the two of them had fought earlier, her in a rage, him defending himself. Soon, his adopted brother shows up. Then his aunt. Then the police. Those encounters are each fraught with tension, and the tension comes from Jeong’s prose, which spares not a single word.
This is a book of questions. It’s a book of mystery, too, but a good portion of it consists of Yu-jin talking to himself, trying to figure out what’s going on. For example: “Was that it? Did she witness the young woman being killed? Where could that have been? The docks? The sea wall?” Or: “Auntie’s words didn’t leave my head even when I went to the shower, toothbrush in my mouth. Something special. How did she know that when even I hadn’t known it until just now? Did she medicate me to suppress my nature, which craved that special something?”
Throughout the book, this technique can at times become tedious, but it’s worth noting that the line between tedium and tension can be extremely thin. For the most part, the twisty, questioning nature of the thriller works. Jeong tells when the thing needs telling and shows when the thing needs showing. At times, when Yu-jin finds himself lost in the different threads of possibility, we even get a handy, numbered list.
The mystery element of the novel, while expertly crafted, plays second to the flashback sequences, integrated seamlessly into the text. They serve to give the reader hints of “the truth” or at least Yu-jin’s understanding of it. Of particular note is a conversation late in the novel, in which Hae-jin (the adopted brother) and Yu-jin discuss the nature of death after watching the classic 2007 Morgan Freeman–Jack Nicholson vehicle The Bucket List.
The conclusion features well-choreographed action, though readers might find themselves a bit disappointed when a novel that up to a certain point had been so twisty and psychological resolves in such a comparatively straightforward fashion.
To an extent, The Good Son felt like reading a film. Doors to bedrooms containing secrets are locked “just as [the character] turns the knob.” Characters eyeball each other suspiciously. The Good Son is a perfect read for an airplane ride: it sucks you in with precision and holds your attention, leaving you with a satisfying resolution.
J. David Osborne
El Paso, Texas - Crime Fiction Love
https://crimefictionlover.com/2018/05/the-good-son/
Word count: 761The Good Son
May 4, 2018
Written by nagaisayonara
Published in iBook, Kindle, Print, Reviews
0
PermalinkWritten by You-Jeong Jeong, translated by Chi-Young Kim — South Korean fiction is something of a sleeping giant, both within and outside the crime genre, but it’s a giant that is slowly awakening with a number of compelling reads coming out of the southern half of the Korean Peninsula in recent years. You-Jeong Jeong’s The Good Son is the latest addition to our growing bookshelf of Korean crime fiction, and it’s one that has been creating a lot of buzz ahead of its publication in English on 3 May.
Yu-Jin is the eponymous good son and he wakes up one morning in an empty apartment, covered in blood. As he struggles to piece together the events of the night before he makes his way around his family’s home in Incheon, a bedroom city and transportation hub on the waterfront near Seoul. When he finds his mother’s body downstairs, slashed by the razor Yu-Jin inherited from his father, he still can’t work out what happened the night before, but knows what it looks like. If he tells the police, they’ll suspect him of the murder and it seems there’s enough evidence to charge and convict him. But what Yu-Jin doesn’t know for sure is whether he commited the murder.
Yu-Jin starts the arduous process of cleaning up after his mother’s death, knowing he won’t be able to hide her disappearance for long. His adopted brother, Hae-Jin, is on his way back from work, filming a movie on an island off Busan, while his aunt keeps calling to see where Yu-Jin’s mother is. For most of the novel she is just referred to as ‘Auntie’ and she’s a child psychologist specialising in personality disorders, who Yu-Jin blames for ruining his own life. Once a promising swimmer on the cusp of qualifying to represent his country, Yu-Jin was forced to stop swimming at 15 due to side effects of medication he took under Auntie’s instruction to treat an illness that was never explained to him. Yu-Jin’s mother and Auntie allow him to believe that what he suffers from is epilepsy, and any fit during a race could have led to him drowning. So Yu-Jin lives a slacker’s life, going for runs on the waterfront, sleeping in and bottling up his anger and resentment.
Much of this detail is buried late in the novel, coming out slowly, seen through Yu-Jin’s flawed perspective. The fate of his father and younger brother only come out very late, and even then you can’t really be sure what happened. All we have to go on is Yu-Jin’s first person retelling, and his mother’s journal, in which she recounts her worries and the daily minutiae of his mysterious illness: his disappearances, his changes in mood, his reluctance to take his medication. Both perspectives can seem a bit heavy-handed, but this starts to make sense as you begin to piece together Yu-Jin’s mental state.
It is this slow piecing together of the mind of a psychopath where The Good Son excels. We know from a couple of pages in that Yu-Jin has killed at least once, but what we don’t know is what caused him to be this way, and what he’ll do in his desperate attempt to get away with murder. There are no simple answers when it comes to mental illness, and The Good Son manages to avoid simplification as it reaches towards its conclusion.
There are moments when it seems as if a character is stating the obvious, but these may be due to the nature of Korean to English translation. Even so, the translation really allows the story to pull you in, and the twists and turns keep you going. When news about see-sawing tensions between North and South are almost all we hear from Korea, it’s refreshing to see some top-quality psychological crime fiction out in English from one of South Korea’s biggest authors. She’s written three other novels before this, and I’d love to see a couple of them out in English too.
For more Korean crime fiction check out The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee, a recommended book on our site.
Little, Brown
Print/Kindle/iBook
£7.99CFL Rating: 4 Stars
- Nudge
https://nudge-book.com/blog/2018/04/the-good-son-by-you-jeong-jeong/
Word count: 555The Good Son by You-jeong Jeong
Review published on April 25, 2018.I’m always looking for the new and exotic in crime fiction and I keep an eye what is being published in translation from around the world. We are going to see more novels from Asia in the future, Korea is a largely untapped source of crime fiction as yet, but this exceptional novel will help to change that.
This is a psychological thriller that grips like a vice as it takes you into the dark territory of a damaged mind. Although we have an insight that the narrator, Yu-jin, does not, and can interpret what is happening with more acuity than he can, we are still groping for the truth. The clever unpeeling of the story creates a powerful tension and a menacing mood in the tale. If there is the one caveat I have its that some readers may not take to the prose style of the novel. You-jeong Jeong has inventively overlapped timeframes in the narration. The effect is to highlight the confusion in Yu-jin’s mind as he tells his story. It means you have to work to master the rhythms within the prose. When you do this is an original and rewarding read. In short, this new Korean sensation really does live up to the pre-publication hype.
The Good Son has been compared to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and there are similarities, but the focus on one character in this novel makes it a more intense read. It is solely Yu-jin’s story whereas Lisabeth Salander is only a part of the story in the Millennium trilogy novels. The Good Son is far more psychologically complex, and the disturbing mystery is better written. The Good Son is a claustrophobic story not a panorama.
Yu-jin wakes up in his own bed caked in blood but with no memory of what happened the night before. His mother’s body is lying at the foot of the stairs, her throat has been slit. The opening pages are almost filmic, reminiscent of a policeman or investigator slowly entering a crime scene, wary of the criminal still being around. We get a sense of distance between Yu-jin and what has occurred. He is alone in the house, he has to process the information before his eyes, and his thoughts are confused because he is off his epilepsy meds. The last thing he remembers is seeing the girl in sunglasses getting off the late night bus. Yu-jin decides to figure out what has happened for himself and so, to buy time, he cleans up the crime scene. Did an intruder break in or is the answer closer to home?
Yu-jin uncovers details from the past in flashes of memory, his mother’s diary and limited contact with other people. The mystery surrounding the deaths of his brother and father will be revealed. You-jeong Jeong knows how to create an atmosphere. This study in psychopathy feels very much more real than the usual serial killer thriller. The narrative is littered with clues and revelations that make reading this scary take fun too. A real winner.
Paul Burke 5/4
The Good Son by You-jeong Jeong
Little, Brown 9781408711231 hbk May 2018 - London Korean Links
https://londonkoreanlinks.net/2018/06/14/brief-review-jeong-you-jeong-the-good-son/
Word count: 504Brief review: Jeong You-jeong – The Good Son
by Philip Gowman on 14 June, 2018
in Book Reviews | Korean literature in translation
Good Son coverJeong You-jeong: The Good Son
Translated by Kim Chi-young
Little, Brown Book Group, 2018, 322pp
Originally published as 종의 기원, Eunhaengnamu, 2016
SterneSterneSterneSterneSterneA Good Son is one of the books being hailed as the new Scandi Noir, while Amazon is billing it as “The bestselling Korean thriller of the year” – though in a Korean genre that is at best emerging, in translation at any rate, that probably doesn’t take much doing. According to the Guardian, Jeong You-jeong herself admits that “there aren’t very many writers in Korea who write the kinds of books I do.” But with Jeong described as “Korea’s Stephen King” and “Queen of crime” there’s a certain level of anticipation that has built up around this title. How does it measure up?
Very well, as it happens. And if you like your thrillers gory, The Good Son will please you from the start. Han Yu-jin wakes up one morning to find himself caked in blood, and there is an unfeasibly large amount of the stuff in splatters and puddles all over the duplex apartment in which he lives with his mother and adoptive brother Hae-jin. The blood belongs to his recently butchered mother. And the evidence seems to point to Yu-jin as the butcher.
But Yu-jin is on strong medication and has black-outs and seizures. Initially he has no memory of what happened in the early hours of that morning, but gradually the jigsaw starts coming together in his mind.
Good Son - Korean CoverThe Korean cover – literally, the Origin of the Species
What follows is an exciting narrative as we watch Yu-jin trying to reconstruct the gaps in his memories; and, looking further back into the past, we examine his complex psychology and ask the questions which constantly present themselves: what is the condition that has required Yu-jin’s medication? What happened to his father and elder brother? What are the motivations which drive his mother and his aunt to keep him on medication and away from the swimming pool which he loved so much?
It’s a detective story with a twist: one where the detective is the chief suspect. If he is guilty, what are the mitigating circumstances? Will anyone believe him? Can he piece together the facts and the motivations before the police or other family members catch up with him? This is an entertaining read which is sufficiently international in outlook for a reader not to require a Korean cultural primer to read. It’s the sort of novel that’s ideal for reading on holiday, when you need a book which doesn’t ask you to try too hard.
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Authors: Jeong You-jeong (정유정)