The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun

The Hole
by Hye-Young Pyun
translated by Sora Kim-Russell

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads

Published: 2018
Publisher: Arcade; Reprint edition
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Korea
Paperback: 208
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
Oghi slowly opened his eyes.

In this tense, gripping novel by a star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.

A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. As Oghi desperately searches for a way to escape, he discovers the difficult truth about his wife and the toll their life together took on her.

My two-bits:

Although this did not feel too much like a mystery, I enjoyed this as one of those slow burn horror stories.

Come to think of it, maybe the mystery was what was to become of Oghi.

~*~
* part of Books, Inc. Foreign Intrigue Book Club (here)

Lovely Books and Things - 3.30.19

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update
Linking up with:
Stacking the Shelves (details)
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

~*~
HAPPY THINGS:

1. The kid home for spring break :-)

2. Variety of work at work and volunteer locations

3. Monthly chocolate happy hour at Fog City News!

February picks:
magazines - frankie and Little White Lies, cover story on film Roma directed by Alfonso Cuarón
chocolate - Mirzam Dark Chocolate Dates & Fennel 62% from Dubai

March picks (here)


~*~

Library: part of this year's Tournament of Books (here)

There There
by Tommy Orange
-Literary | Goodreads

Washington Black
by Esi Edugyan
-Historical, Canada | Goodreads

Bought:

The Hole
by Hye-Young Pyun
-Mystery, Horror, Korea | Goodreads
FOR my face-to-face group, Foreign Mystery Book Club.


Freebies: from free box at Green Apple Books

The Dinner List
by Rebecca Serle
-Magical Realism, Chick-lit | Goodreads

The Propsal
by Jasmine Guillory
-Romance, Chick-lit | Goodreads

The Age of Light
by Whitney Scharer
-Historical fiction | Goodreads
~*~
* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Foreign Intrigue Book Club 2019

Foreign Intrigue Book Club
face-to-face (details)
Books, Inc. Laurel Village
Do you like to travel? Experience a country through the eyes of a local? Try the food of another country?

2019

December & January pick:

Six Four
by Hideo Yokoyama
translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies
-Mystery, Thriller, Japan
Goodreads | my review | my rating: 4
February pick:

The Master Key
by Masako Togawa
translated by Simon Grove
-Mystery, Thriller, Japan
Goodreads | my review | my rating: 5

March pick:

The Widows of Malabar Hill
by Sujata Massey
-Mystery, Historical, India | Goodreads | my review | my rating: 5
April pick:

The Hole
by Hye-Young Pyun
-Mystery, Horror, Korea | Goodreads | my review | my rating: 5
May pick:

Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions
by Mario Giordano
-Mystery, Italy, Sicily | Goodreads | my review | my rating: 5
June pick:

Shadows on the Lake
(Commissario Stefania Valenti #1)
by Giovanni Cocco, Amneris Magella
-Mystery, Historical, Italy, Lake Como | Goodreads | my review | my rating: 4
July pick:

Death in Brittany
by Jean-Luc Bannalec
-Mystery, France | Goodreads | my review | my rating: 3
August pick:

The Bookseller
(Hugo Marston #1)
by Mark Pryor
-Mystery, France, Paris | Goodreads | my review | my rating: 5
September pick:

Winter in the Madrid
by C.J. Sansom
-Mystery, Historical, Spain, Madrid | Goodreads | my review | my rating: 4
October pick:

Swiss Vendetta
(Agnes Luthi Mysteries #1)
by Tracee de Hahn
-Mystery, Switzerland | Goodreads | my review| my rating: 4
November pick:

The Execution of Justice
by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
-Mystery, Germany | Goodreads | my review: DNF

Happy Horror Release: Korean Psychological Thrillers

The Hole: A Novel
by Hye-young Pyun
translated by Sora Kim-Russell
-Horror, Thriller, Korea
Release date: October 2, 2018
Amazon | Goodreads
In this tense, gripping novel by a star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.

A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. As Oghi desperately searches for a way to escape, he discovers the difficult truth about his wife and the toll their life together took on her.

* Winner of the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award

~*~

City of Ash and Red
by Hye-Young Pyun
-Horror, Thriller, Korea
Release date: November 6, 2018
Amazon | Goodreads
Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun's City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease, and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark than he is whisked away by quarantine officials and detained overnight. Isolated and forgotten, he realizes that he is stranded with no means of contacting the outside world. Still worse, when he finally manages to reach an old friend, he is told that his ex-wife's body was found in his apartment and he is the prime suspect. Barely managing to escape arrest, he must struggle to survive in the streets of this foreign city gripped with fear of contamination and reestablish contact with his company and friends in order to clear his reputation.

But as the man's former life slips further and further from his grasp, and he looks back on his time with his wife, it becomes clear that he may not quite be who he seems. From the bestselling author of The Hole, City of Ash and Red is an apocalyptic account of the destructive impact of fear and paranoia on people's lives as well as a haunting novel about a man’s loss of himself and his humanity.