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Blowfish: An award-winning and movingly introspective exploration of life, art and love from South Korea
Kyung-Ran Jo
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'If you wanted to end your life instantly, perfectly, you needed practice and preparation.'
A sculptor and architect cross paths once in Seoul, and they meet again in Tokyo.
The sculptor has decided she is going to die. She is learning to prepare a fatal serving of blowfish. This was how her grandmother killed herself, in front of her husband and child. Delicate, artful but with a sense of guaranteed finality.
The architect's life has been marred by death. His elder brother leapt to his death from the fifth floor of an apartment building. He too is pondering his own exit from this life.
For the woman, the man is a pitstop on the road to her own suicide. For the man, the woman is a way to forestall his death and offer him an exit. Through the impressions they leave on each other, they reflect on their own lives.
Taking readers through various urban spaces of Seoul and Tokyo, Blowfish delves into the inner lives of two people contemplating their failures in love and art. What truly makes life worth living?
Read MorePraise for Blowfish: An award-winning and movingly introspective exploration of life, art and love from South Korea
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A subtle, searing masterpiece. - Chicago ReaderPostmodernism is alive and well in Kyung-Ran Jo's latest . . . Blowfish is a book to chew on and savour, a deft delve into the intricacies of love and art. - Chicago Review of BooksWhen I see a novel described as 'atmospheric' and 'melancholic' I'm immediately foaming at the mouth to read it . . . [a] strange, dark, lovely novel. - Lit HubLanguid and moody, this novel explores art, life, love and loss in elegant and deliberate prose. - Ms. MagazineRemarkably lyrical . . . Blowfish is composed with a simmering desperation Jo manages with impressive control; Kim is again a splendid translator . . . Jo's complex exploration of living and dying becomes a mindful journey toward possibilities. - Shelf AwarenessThis novel invites the readers into a special experience. It follows a woman who, once consumed by thoughts of death, gradually turns toward life, a journey that becomes the author's profound meditation on the nature of art itself. Amid the turbulence of crisis, the narrative scatters the quiet beauty of human connection like constellations across the story. The writer speaks, with urgent tenderness, to the belief that these glimmering moments of relation are in themselves the essence of art.Jo's atmospheric writing distills the novel's mood from its settings (Seoul is "the color of oxidized blood"; a Tokyo fish market is "slick and slimy with water and blood and discarded guts"), while details about the sculptor's family history inform her chilling determination to die. It's a memorable existential tale. - Publishers WeeklyA story about death paradoxically inspires the strong vitality of life. With piercing insight on memory and family, lyrical meditation about love and art, Blowfish is a tenacious and delicate work of fiction.
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