What does it all add up to? That’s up to the reader, says the author, adding later:Īnyway, then as now, it must be human nature to want to say this or that about something that has already happened. (And the third part of the novel is brutal with its descriptions of cruel prison life.) This way, current events can be used as needed to propel the story, but do not control it until the end, when they play a crucial role. But in many ways, the village in which most of the story is set is isolated. The story takes place during the era of the Korean conflict, and that warfare and trauma are there in the background concerning the ways people move around the countryside.

The magic realism ebbs and flows, and there is an Orlando twist to the story. That's just the first of three parts to this epic. And mesmerized by the sight of a whale the first time she sees the ocean. This is after Guembok has created her first fortune for an old fishmonger, fallen in love with a strong, simple man and been enchanted by a gangster who owns a movie theater. Guembok as a teenager returns to the narrative forefront, from the time she ran away from her mournful, alcoholic father to the time Chinhui was a youngster and her best friend was an old circus elephant. She was sold by her mother for two jars of honey and now is surrounded by bees wherever she goes. When she is at the end of her life, her one-eyed daughter returns. The author then goes back in time to the story of an old crone who lived there once, too, and her wild, hardscrabble life. That theater is gone, and when it was destroyed, the town died too. She recalls her mother, who built a movie theater in the same of a whale. No human beings are there when she arrives, after nine days of walking since her release from prison.

Although he wasn't around when she was conceived. She is resembles the great love of her mother's life.

She also weighted 15 pounds at birth, and has been strong and sturdy ever since. The multi-generational story begins with Chunhui making her way back to the brickworks where she grew up with her mother, Geumbok, and her stepfather, who taught her how to make bricks.

Wild magic book