The Disaster Tourist

Before she left for Alaska, Natalie had checked out a bunch of books from the library, including the The Disaster Tourist, a contemporary novel by a young Korean woman named Yun Ko-Eun.  I'm not sure I had ever read a Korean novel, and it has seemed like a good thing to refresh my reading stream by pulling things off of Natalie's shelves and reading her recommendations, so I read this one. As always, I should preface my remarks by noting that this was better than any novel, nay, any book that I have ever published, since I've published none.

This book was, however, not great. For the most part, it read like a lesser Don Delillo from the age of White Noise or The Names, but less digested and thought through. It was fairly formulaic, geometric and angular in its make up, riffing on pretty rote Baudrillardian themes, making it hard to care for any of the characters, whose actions were generally undermotivated. In Forster's terms, the characters were largely flat. There was one big surprise at the end, but it was hard to care. I finished it primarily because I had started it and because, since Korean literary tradition is foreign to me, I need to start learning about it somewhere.  

But what do you expect from a novelist in her 20s, after all? The young novelist who has descended far enough into her soul to create broadly resonating characters is more that exception than the rule. More often debut novels are pastiches of styles and statements about the writer's vision of what's wrong with the world. Which is what makes Ocean Vuong's attainment in On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous all the more impressive. I might read Yun Ko-Eun's next book if I saw it.