Jimin Han, A Small Revolution

A Small Revolution was one of Amazon's Kindle First selections a few months ago. I grabbed it because it was free, although I probably wouldn't have otherwise. The book's description had things that appealed and things that didn't. On the plus side, a "tense standoff" with an unhinged gunman. But that was weighed down in my view by "abusive household" and "political protests."

Ultimately, my first reaction to the book's description pretty much mirrored my reaction to the book itself. The story is about Korean-American student Yoona Lee, who's a freshman at college back when I was a freshman at college, 1985.

The story alternates between the present—that tense standoff I mentioned—and the recent past, the summer that Yoona and her kidnapper spent in South Korea, when Yoona fell in love with Jaesung, another American student on tour there, against a backdrop of violent political protests.

But something happened to Jaesung after she left. We find out about that in dribs and drabs as the story jumps back and forth in time, part of it addressed by Yoona to Jaesung as if in a letter. It's difficult to know exactly what happened.

Finding out the truth is complicated for Yoona by the questionable evidence hinted at by her captor and by the difficulties inherent in international communication in the 1980s. It all feels very uncertain, in a nightmarish sort of way, as Yoona tries to piece things together in frustratingly small steps. I was frustrated reading it.

The story was, to an extent, gripping, at least gripping enough for me to keep reading, bent as I was on reaching some clarity. But I finished the book just as frustrated, without finding any real answers—or at least not satisfying ones.