Secondhand World - Katherine Min

Why woudn't I think this would be a hard book to get through? All I had to do was read the back cover and see words like "just spent 95 days in a pediatric burn unit" and "fire that killed her parents" and "Isa is bullied by American classmates." The cover was deceiving - I thought it would be a lighter read. Boy, was I wrong.

This is the latest book the Korean book club is reading and discussing tonight. I almost didn't finish because I really had a hard time getting into it and was finding it painful to read even. Case in point, on page forty, Isa's four year old brother dies getting run over by the delivery van delivering the dishwasher her mother coveted. I was devastated and couldn't read on for days. I did pick it up again on Saturday night, determined to get as far as I could before book club.

This book is about a lot of sadness and tragedy, hurt and pain that the main character, a teenaged girl, Isa (Myung Hee) endured in the short 17 years of her life. Tough to read - but once I got back into it, I was drawn in. Katherine Min has an engaging style of writing. The many very short chapters were encouraging - I'd get to the end of one and say to myself read just one more to see what happens, but then I kept going, repeating this pattern.

Min's writing was beautiful in places and I often stopped to reread the words to let them sink in. I was really struck by the words near the end of the book, "It's a secondhand world we are born into. What is novel to us is only because we are newborn and what we cannot see, that has come before--what our parents have seen and been and done--are the hand me downs we begin to wear as swaddling clothes, even as we ourselves are naked." (pp. 272). I want to think about this sentiment and place myself into it's depths.

This was a haunting book for me and one that will stay with me for a while. Not many of the books we have read for the Korean book club have had this effect on me. It was interesting to learn that School Library Journal put this book on it's 2006 Best Adult Books for High School Readers List.

Katherine Min's website is interesting and sheds some light into the book here.