I found this wonderful collection of short stories on the “New Fiction” table of the Cambride Public Library’s Main Branch, a tribute to the value of just looking around libraries or bookstores.  One never knows what one will come across.

I had never heard of Yoon, a Korean-American writer whose earlier books had received awards from the New York Public Library, NPR, and Time Magazine, but the title, the cover, and the blurb on the back from a favorite author, Yiyun Li sealed the deal.

And, I’m pleased they did, for this was a wonderful collection.  The seven stories all have Korean characters, but the settings and the time settings for the stories are quite remarkably different.  One story takes place in New York where a young Korean immigrant is sent to prison for driving a truck with stolen goods, finishes his sentence and finds lodging and work in the small upstate town near the prison.  Another is told from the standpoint of a Japanese samurai warrior in the 17th C who is returning a 10 year old Korean boy who he has raised since bringing him back from a war in Korea to his guardian,  Another takes place on Sakhalin island where a teen ager goes to find his father who works at a Russian prison.

All the stories have this sense of weird time and place, and all end with an unresolved and haunting sense of dislocation. Yoon writes with grace and style in short clipped sentences that felt Hemingwayesque.  There are no wasted words and the style moves the stories along even when there is little action.

In reading the Wikipedia blurb on Yoon, I discovered he is my neighbor in Cambridge while he is the Briggs-Copland lecturer at Harvard.  I’ll have to keep my eyes open for him as I walk around.  If you like short stories with an emphasis on setting, time, and mood, I think you’ll enjoy this collection.