The Book: It’s kind of hard to say what Flashlight is about. The summary makes it sound almost like a mystery: Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach, and hours later, she is found soaking wet and half-drowned, and he is nowhere to be found and presumed drowned. But most of the book is less concerned with this mystery than with the complicated family dynamics at play between the four main characters. Louisa’s father, Serk, is Korean, although he was born in Japan after World War II. When he’s a teen, his parents decide to return to the newly formed DPRK. Serk, rather than joining them, gets a student visa to the United States, where he meets and marries Anne and they have Louisa. Anne also has a child from a previous relationship, the endearingly odd Tobias, who was raised by his father. Flashlight jumps backward and forward in time, exploring the relationships between the characters and often returning to the night on the beach that Serk disappears. When you finally find out what happened to Serk, it is viscerally horrifying, and even if you guessed it beforehand (or had it spoiled, like I did), it’s no less affecting.
Why I read it: As a rule, I avoid literary fiction. It makes me feel bad, sometimes to the point of feeling gross. I don’t know why it has to be so aggressively depressing. From that perspective, Flashlight is an odd choice for me (particularly since “aggressively depressing” sums it up perfectly). On the other hand, it’s about modern Korean history, which is one of my favorite things to read about.
What I thought about it: I am surprised at how much I liked this book. I couldn’t put it down. Sometimes the writing got too flowery for me and I would skip entire paragraphs of description. Sometimes I got confused by the jumps in time, or by characters remembering something that had happened long ago, but I still loved it. There are a few standout chapters that will stick with me, like Louisa’s summer in Europe during college. The ending made me incredibly emotional. I was fascinated by Anne and Louisa’s relationship and surprised by the extent to which I empathized with each of them in turn since both of them have their share of unlikeable moments. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone–I don’t know who I would recommend it to, actually–but something about it was exactly what I needed to read right now.
Rating: 4.5 stars