I have just finished two rather different novels, both published by Virago. The first is Nami Mun's debut, Miles From Nowhere. A pdf of the first chapter is available here. I decided it would be good for my digestion of novels to write a blurb for them. So here is by backcoverbrowsing effort for Miles from Nowhere:
"When Joon's father finally leaves her mother, rendering her catatonic, Joon, a 13 year old Korean immigrant, leaves too, and sets out to survive on the streets of New York. we travel with her through prostitution, addiction and viloence, to a moment of equilibrium, where the possibility of redemption glimmers.
A glimpse of the underbelly of the society of the dispossessed, this stark debut novel is shot through with an optimism that the flame of humanity can light even the darkest corners."
An obvious point of comparison is Jon McGregor's Even the Dogs, which unaccountably I don't seem to have mentioned yet (one more for the catch-up list!) Both novels are bleak, but toughed with insight into how humans see in each other something which spurs them to battle on.
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The second of today's novels was Home by Marilynne Robinson. This is a beautiful novel about family, forgiveness and salvation. I fell, having read the novel once, relatively briskly, as though I have dipped my little finger into its large, cool pond, up to the first knuckle. It is deep with scriptural allusion; it is the companion-piece to Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead, which i haven't read; and without either of those considerations it would be a novel dense with the nuance of familial relationships.
So this is one of that rare breed: a novel which is enjoyable, beautiful and touching, which will almost certainly reward a second visit. I will try to get hold of a copy of Gilead and then return [to] Home once again.
