Nora Okja Keller, the acclaimed author of Comfort Woman, tells the shocking story of a group of young people abandoned after the Korean War. At the center of the tale are two teenage girls-Hyun Jin and Sookie, a teenage prostitute kept by an American soldier-who form a makeshift family with Lobetto, a lost boy who scrapes together a living running errands and pimping for neighborhood girls. Both horrifying and moving, Fox Girl at once reveals another layer of war's human detritus and the fierce love between a mother and daughter.

A tough read.
Posted to my birthday partner. 17/6/11

Parcel returned to me after 3 months. Available.

On its way to msjoanna.

Looks interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Heartbreaking, gut wrenching, and impossible to look away. This novel gripped me by the throat and wouldn't let go even during the moments that the characters were all highly unlikable, the occasional moments when the timeline seemed to get confused, and the ultimately unsatisfying ending.

The book tells, in harsh and unrelenting detail, the story of Korean girls and women living as prostitutes in America Town, a GI camp toward the end of the Korean War. The book doesn't shy from the segregation and racism existed within the G.I. camp nor does it let the reader escape the uncomfortable and often harsh realities of life for the children chronicled here.

The beginning of the book explains that the chapters are written as letters that perhaps one character will one day deliver to the other. This allows the chapters to be related but somewhat disjointed, a mechanism that the author couldn't always control completely.

I liked this book enough to want to seek out the author's other work.

Sent to Wisconsin via paperbackswap.com.