The Hive and the Honey

May 1, 2023

From a boy's search for his prison-guard father on Sakhalin Island to a man once imprisoned trying to start a family in upstate New York to a woman in Barcelona tracking a prize fighter who could be her estranged son, NYPL Young Lion Yoon investigates shifting identities and cultures. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2023
Widows, orphans, and refugees from Korea make their ways across alien landscapes in seven new stories. Yoon's work, whether in novels or short fiction, tends to create miniature mysteries, but his latest is all unanswered questions and old regrets. In the opener, "Bosun," a life of crime leads to one of life's crossroads for an ex-con working at a Canadian casino. Cold war politics provide the backdrop but not the drama in "Komarov," which finds a North Korean maid who's lived in Europe for years traveling to Russia circa 1980 to reunite with the son she left behind, now a professional fighter. Yoon's interest in history also extends further back in two stories. The first, "At the Post Station," is set in 1608 and follows a feudal samurai on a diplomatic mission, while "The Hive and the Honey" is an epistolary ghost story in the form of a letter from a solider to his uncle written on the steppes of Eastern Russia in 1881. Most of the stories are little more than fleeting moments in the lives of the Korean diaspora, such as "Cromer," in which the children of North Korean defectors find their domestic happiness in London interrupted by a strange boy. There's a pervasive atmosphere of loneliness and forced solitude as reunions go awry and destinies lay unfulfilled, but there's also the steely stubbornness of people who have no choice but to keep going. These feelings are palpable in the final two stories, starting with "Person of Korea," in which a 16-year-old boy is orphaned by the death of his uncle and sets off for a remote island where he hopes to be reunited with his father, a guard who works at the prison where the boy's grandfather was once confined. Finally, "Valley of the Moon" chronicles the life of a man whose trespasses against others eventually translate into violence against his children. Stories that echo with the loss, regret, and hope of migrants and nomads.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 7, 2023
Yoon (Run Me to the Earth) delivers a lean collection of stories featuring restless, complex characters driven by their need for connection and forgiveness. Throughout, themes of displacement and loss are juxtaposed with simple moments of love and understanding. In “Bosun,” an ex-con wrestles with how to relate to others, considering all that he’s already lost. “Komarov” finds Lee Jooyun, who fled North Korea and eventually wound up in Barcelona, agreeing to wear a wire to gain information on a Russian boxer for her birth country, in exchange for learning about the family she left behind. In the title story, 22-year-old Andrei Bulavin composes a letter to his uncle back in Russia, recounting a disturbing supernatural event at the Korean settlement he’s been sent to police. Yoon carefully mingles the extraordinary with the everyday, evoking the natural world with simple yet striking language: “We come upon a tree that has flowered early. It stands alone amid the endless row of cedars that line the road, its bright red color so sudden and distracting—like the appearance of a door among the evergreens.” This is an elegant exploration of life’s brutal and beautiful moments.

Starred review from September 1, 2023
Yoon's (Run Me to Earth, 2020) new shortstory collection is another spare, controlled masterpiece, comprising seven exquisite stories highlighting the Korean diaspora scattered across time and oceans. In "At the Post Station," arguably the collection's finest, two seventeenth-century Japanese samurai are tasked with delivering a stolen Korean orphan to Korean officials. In Russia, a young policeman is assigned to report on a Korean settlement in the title story but has no jurisdiction over its violence. A motherless teen is "A Person of Korea" who, after his uncle's death, goes in search of his absent father, a prison guard on infamous Sakhalin Island. A Korean immigrant released from jail heads to Maine in search of work. The cleaving of the Korean peninsula haunts "Komarov" as a North Korean defector living in Spain is about to meet a famous Russian fighter believed to be the son she left behind. "Cromer" features a married couple who are each the only child of two friends who fled the north together and settled in southwest London. "Valley of the Moon," about a war survivor returning to his family's ruined, remote farmhouse, is the only story set in Korea, albeit post-partition; it's become a different country. The last pages (again) come too soon.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from December 22, 2023

NYPL Young Lion Yoon (Snow Hunters) ranges far as he investigates shifting identities and cultures in this new collection. A boy searches for his prison-guard father on chilly Sakhalin Island. A New York City denizen freshly out of prison tries to rebuild his life and start a family in upstate New York, with unsteady results. In a story that reads almost like a thriller, a woman travels to Barcelona to seek out a prize fighter who could be her long-lost son. Civil servants in Edo-era Japan guard a Korean orphan, tasked with turning him over to his countrymen even as they grow close. A married couple whose fathers both came from North Korea find that they still face pervasive prejudice about their backgrounds. The crisp, low-key writing is just right, the better to see the stories' ribs; there's clear craft here, as well as a generous imagination. VERDICT Yoon takes readers around the world for a satisfying, insightful read.--Barbara Hoffert

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.