Jung Yun

There is a lot to unpack in this book. Elinor is a journalist who is going back home to North Dakota for an assignment given to her by a former professor who used to be her lover. She was a mature student after a successful career as a model and she struggles with her own identity and the way she perceives herself and how others see her.

North Dakota turns out a lot different than what she remembers. The area is booming because of fracking, many people got rich overnight. Some things never change and from the start, we are dealing with harassment, but then Elinor slowly unveils deeper layers of misogyny and racism that make her change the course of her mission there.

This book was a hard read. It is in its essence a very angry and visceral piece of work. I just felt that the main character was disconnected from the setting a tad too much. She was also annoyingly self-destructive. I feel like I wanted to root for her more but the book never really let me do it. That kind of ruined it for me. Also, all men are depicted extremely negatively which made the whole book feel less real and authentic.… (mehr)

There are so many layers to this story of a Korean-American former model turned journalist who returns to North Dakota to write an article about socio-economic changes in small town, Avery, brought about by the oil boom in the Bakken Formation. Elinor grew up on an Air Force base in North Dakota and left as soon as she could, having suffered from racist treatment throughout her youth. Her personal struggles continue throughout the book.
On another level, she owes her assignment to write a challenging article to her former professor (and lover) who is a controlling figure in her life. She wants to take the focus in a different direction from his outline of events. Her conflicted feelings about her former relationship and present resentment of his treatment cause her to take erratic actions and decisions.
In the course of conducting her research she encounters racism and mysogynistic attitudes/behaviors from men and women, both locals and "newcomers" in the area. At the same time she feels like she has made friends for the first time in her life with people from the area. Anyone who has lived in that part of the country knows that those contrasts exist.
Because of her familiarity with the area, Elinor is struck by the destructive changes to the natural beauty and resources. Her interviews reveal environmental and health issues brought about by the fracking process in oil production. All of this adds to the realism and drama of the story.… (mehr)

Strangely frustrating book. The main theme is of a 2nd generation immigrant dealing with distant, strict and traditional parents, but there are a lot of trauma and crises to push those themes to breaking point. The main character is dislikable and somewhat annoying, but I was able to have some sympathy due to the difficulty of his upbringing. I thought the tension and frustration felt when a strict parent becomes an indulgent and doting grandparent was interesting and well described. But unfortunately some of the characterizations and dialogue were just so badly done. A few, slightly spoilerish, examples (all paraphrased) — the wife of the protagonist, training to be a councillor (with a course book on her lap) responds to a difficult statement of the protagonist's feelings with "how can you say that? That's terrible". Maybe counseling isn't her calling. A policeman, seconds after the family discover the theorised suicide of one character the night after an argument with another says to the family "it's not entirely his fault". Also, in that possible suicide another character was deliberately killed — and no-one in the book seems bothered in the slightest that this person was apparently murdered. It's basically not mentioned. Things like that were really jarring, and for me totally undermined an interesting book.… (mehr)