Flashlight
by Susan Choi
Where to Purchase : Bookshop.org. |. Amazon. | Libro.fm.
Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2025
What It's About
So this one starts with a dad and his ten year old daughter walking a beach in Japan at dusk. He's got a flashlight with him. He can't swim. They don't come back the way they left. Louisa gets found near the water, barely alive, and barely remembers any of it. Her dad Serk is just gone, presumed drowned.
Serk is Korean but grew up in Japan, one of the Zainichi Koreans whose families stayed behind after the war while a lot of his own relatives got pulled toward North Korea by promises that were nothing like what was actually waiting for them. His wife Anne is American, with her own history she doesn't talk about, including a son named Tobias she gave up as a teenager and has kept tabs on from a distance ever since. Louisa grows up right in the middle of all of it, with no real memory of that night and a mom managing a serious chronic illness on top of everything else.
It's a disappearance story. It's a family story. It's historical fiction.
What Stuck With Me
The Zainichi Korean history in this one is so interesting to me. So many Korean families in Japan kept their Japanese names just to try and pass, and that's another piece of Asian history I learned through my reading.
I kept thinking about Serk and Anne's marriage. In the US, Anne is the reason he gets to feel normal in other people's eyes. In Japan, she's the opposite, she's the reminder that he's never actually going to belong there either. He's a hard man and not always easy to love, but he adores Louisa, and in his own complicated way he adores Anne too. He's just always working out his place in the world through the two of them instead of on his own.
And Louisa. Holy cow. Her anger as she gets older makes so much sense once you see everything underneath it. A mixed kid moving between countries during this stretch of history was never going to fully fit anywhere, whether she had the words for that yet or not. I also have a complicated relationship with my own mother, so a lot of Louisa and Anne's dynamic landed for me on a pretty personal level too.
I'm staying vague on purpose here, but the North Korea sections were so interesting to me. I'd heard about some of this before, just never in this kind of detail, and it was heartbreaking.
I read this one as a buddy read with @anotherhorrorgirl and I'm so glad I did. Talking through it chapter by chapter, especially toward the end, made it even better.
My Takeaway
This is exactly the kind of multigenerational historical novel I love, the kind that hands you pieces of history and secrets we should all know about. These are real atrocities that shouldn't be forgotten, and that's honestly what reading like this is all about for me. Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, and I get why. Just read it.
Where to Purchase
Bookshop.org. |. Amazon. | Libro.fm.
If You Liked This
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, for the multigenerational Zainichi Korean history
Go by Kazuki Kaneshiro, another strong one on the Zainichi Korean experience
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, for more on North Korea, this time nonfiction
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, a nonfiction companion of sorts on grief and identity, and the artist behind this review's soundtrack pick
