Whale : Cheon Myeong-Kwan
Cheon' Whale is one of the finest novels I have read in decades. It will be classics in everywhere everytime. Even readers from the Bronze age would be delighted to have it inscribed on stones to read. At the first few pages, Chunhui’s narrative rose up rapidly like her heavyweight. I have a distaste when the narrative flows like a super cyclone. Readers take a long leap from plot A to B without having a breathing space. But it turns surprisingly into the opposite direction to pull my attention when Cyanide enters with her ‘sweeping’ life and ‘piling’ death and I sails with admirable prose, salacious imagery and narrative styles of Korean Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s Whale [2023]. I haven't read novels for many years, with the narrative style of folk tales where rumors, myths, legends, superstition, prophecy and dissimilarity rule over the characters and the stories. Like the thugs and one-eyed woman, I felt a heavy urge to know where did the old crone hide her fortunes? I felt the ne...