Review by Booklist Review
Town was once a fish-farm village, but it's now internationally known for the corporation that aggressively expanded it into a bustling city-state. Here, class stratification is impermeable. Su is a Citizen. Do-kyung is a Saha, an inconsequential resident of the crumbling Saha Estates who "wasn't anyone or anything deserving of a category." Now Su is dead in an abandoned car. Su and Do-kyung were lovers, living together in Unit 714. Do-kyung, of course, will be hunted by an unforgiving government. His fate is linked to the Sahas, their connections intricately, brilliantly revealed: Do-kyung's sister Jin-kyung in Unit 701, bartender Sara in 214, a father and daughter in 205, Ia and his mother in 201, orphan-turned-caregiver Eunjin in 305, Granny Konnim and Woomi in 311, the old man in the custodian's office, the old lady at the temp agency. Korean writer Cho and lauded Seoul-based translator Chang reunite following Cho's global bestseller, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award. Originally published in Korea in 2019, Cho's sophomore import feels especially, eerily urgent, with prescient references to a fatal pandemic. An established scriptwriter before she became a bestselling author, Cho presents a chilling, dystopic fable of corporate greed, climate destruction, and haves and have-nots revelations that seems perfectly poised for film adaptation.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
National Book Award finalist Cho (Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982) explores the implications of a corporation with unlimited power in this nuanced dystopian tale. An unnamed company buys a fishing village, and as the narrative progresses into the near future, the village becomes a city-state known simply as Town. The inhabitants are divided into three classes: Citizens; L2s, who possess visas and are on a path to citizenship; and outcasts dubbed "Saha" for the run-down apartment complex they live at, Saha Estates. The Saha work menial jobs and live in substandard conditions, and they're scapegoated in the media for all of Town's problems. Su, a doctor, treats the Saha and then moves in with Do-Kyung, a Saha who becomes a portrait painter at her encouragement. Woomi, a Saha child born during a pandemic, is experimented on by doctors. Yonhwa, an L2, leaves an abusive marriage of convenience with a citizen to live with the Saha. All the while, mysterious custodians, whose salaries are paid by the Saha, watch over them. In one chilling scene, the cops come to the Saha complex looking for someone to blame for arson. Though the big picture remains elusive, Cho's close-ups consistently captivate, and the author has an easy hand capturing her characters' spirit. Fans of Squid Game will be drawn to the author's grim vision. Agent: Markus Hoffman, Regal, Hoffmann & Assoc. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Cho follows up her international phenomenon, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, with the story of a tumbledown housing complex--once a fishing village--on the border of Town. Town is prosperous for those with the right skillsets, which doesn't include the residents of squalid Saha Estates. But they're ready to rise.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
What is it called again when dystopian fiction seems too uncomfortably plausible: Horror? Speculative fiction? A wake-up call? Treading in territories visited over time by Dickens, Orwell, Atwood, Ishiguro, Squid Game, and Parasite, Cho recounts--in specific and painstaking detail--the miserable lives endured by the many residents of the Saha housing complex. Saha Estates is located in Town, a mysterious island city-state entirely under the auspices of a corporation that has grown into a Hydra-headed monster (but not the benevolent kind!). There are none of the pesky ethical and constituent-interest constraints faced by a representative government. Cut off from electricity and access to conventional gas and water sources, the residents of the ill-begotten apartment complex deal with those privations as well as an even more stigmatizing condition: the lack of coveted Citizen status, marking those who rightfully "belong" in Town and may reap benefits such as employment, health care, and education. Generation after generation of Saha residents have tolerated the awful conditions visited upon them by circumstance or accident of birth. A long-forgotten revolt--referred to as the Butterfly Riot--provides no impetus for most of the development's residents to rebel against the hideous conditions of their diminished lives. When Jin-kyung, a resident, is faced with the disappearances of her brother and another beloved resident of the complex, she is prompted to seek out answers not only about their whereabouts, but about who runs Town and how. ("Why" may be too gruesome to contemplate.) Sadly, Jin-kyung is not the only victim in Cho's litany of suffering. This successor to Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (2020), Cho's chronicle of the misogynistic forces behind South Korea's #MeToo movement--a finalist for the National Book Award--addresses another equally corrosive social horror. Read. Weep. Learn. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
