Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Desapin

This book, short as it is, has a lot of subtext below the text. The author herself is of mixed Korean and French heritage, as is her lead character, and the book has that as a focus and an undercurrent. The book is set in an out-of-season South Korean resort on the border between North and South Korea. Sokcho ia a city so close to South Korea’s impenetrable northern counterpart that it is possible to take a day trip over the border. The main characters are a mysterious foreign visitor and a young woman whose dual nationality and anguished diffidence mark her out as an anomaly among her community. The narrator has returned to her home town from university in Seoul with a bit of a sense of being adreift. She is working as a live-in receptionist and cook at a dead-end guesthouse run by the grumpy boss, and she has resisted opportunities for further study abroad as obstinately as she holds out against an anticipated engagement to her vacuous model boyfriend. The unexpected arrival at the hotel of a guest from France, a comic-book artist called Kerrand, stirs a frenzy in the young woman, in whom he takes a sporadic but intense interest. Kerrand is old enough to be her unknown French father, and the book centers on their time together. The story telling is hauntingly beautiful, and I found myself swaying through it to a satisfying ending.