Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Isadora Myung Hee Sohn, known as Isa, worships her mother, an exceptional beauty. Isa’s father, a scientist and professor, and an orphan, is haunted by the war in which he served as a South Korean soldier and by a painful secret that he keeps from his wife. Still mourning the death of Isa’s younger brother her parents are traditional enough to prize their dead son over their living daughter; to them, Isa only half exists. Recommended for older teens and adults.
A brilliant novel from an exciting new writer.
Isadora Myung Hee Sohn—Isa—worships her mother, an exceptional beauty, born in Seoul and sheltered in a harem of sisters inside the wealthy family’s compound. Isa’s father, a scientist and professor, an orphan, is haunted by the war in which he served as a South Korean soldier and by a painful secret that he keeps from his wife. Still mourning the death of Isa’s younger brother, Stephen, her parents are traditional enough to prize their dead son over their living daughter; to them, Isa only half exists.
But unlike many Asian American daughters, Isa is neither meek nor a quiet victim of tradition. Despite her parents’ success and sophistication—they’ve achieved the American dream—she repudiates their values, embarks on her own sexual education, and runs away with an albino boy, Hero. At the same time, Isa suspects that despite her mother’s strict adherence to Korean traditional values, she is involved with another man, and Isa determines to make the affair known. What begins as a child’s unthinking fury at her mother soon leads to more deadly consequences.
A daring, haunting, inspired debut.
Min also illuminates a universal truth - that all of us are to an extent "second-generation" children, because we're all born into a secondhand world, "what is novel to us is only so because we're newborn"; and each of us must find our own place in this hand-me-down society...continued
Full Review
(397 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Katherine Min was born in
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and
graduated from Amherst College and the
Columbia School of Journalism. She
currently teaches at Plymouth State
University and the Iowa Summer Writing
Festival.
Her short stories have appeared in many
publications and have been anthologized,
most recently in The Pushcart Book of
Stories: The Best Short Stories from a
Quarter-Century of The Pushcart Prize.
"Eyelids" was listed as one of 100
distinguished stories in The Best
American Short Stories of 1997. "The
Brick" was read on National Public
...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Secondhand World, try these:
by Myla Goldberg
Published 2020
The first novel in nearly a decade from Myla Goldberg, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Bee Season - a compelling and wholly original story about a female photographer grappling with ambition and motherhood, a balancing act familiar to women of every generation.
by Deborah Ellis
Published 2011
No Safe Place is a novel of high adventure and heart-stopping suspense by a writer at the height of her powers.
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!