The Book Report: American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee
Synopsis of American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee
In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children?Bo, DH, and Mido?find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California?where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security.
Category
Literary Fiction
Content Warnings
Infidelity, Death of a parent, Cancer
What I Really Thought
I took a lot of notes when Istarted reading this. Mainly to keep up with the cast of characters and what was happening with each one. Because there is a lot going on. It’s an epic famly saga that starts with the parents and ends with the children.
Its a study on how the obsession with education shapes a Korean child’s life.
It is how family sticks together, a study on marriage, on siblings. On finding yourself and what you want to do in life vs what you are supposed to do.
It was a long family saga lasting decades with many many many characters to keep up with. It was also 650 pages.
Those are the facts. But my review is based on how I felt while reading it and at the end. I never wanted to put this book down. This was a beautifully crafted book full of layers that I wanted to peel back. It was slow and winding and just maybe a little tedius at some parts. But just when you are asking yourself: what is this really about, Min Jin Lee manages to bring it all together materfully leaving you in love with all the characters, invested in their lives and wondering why is this the end?.
It was just epic. I loved every minute of it. It might be on my best book of the year list.
My rating
5/5 Stars ( see my rating here)
