Flashlight by Susan Choi: REVIEW

Synopsis

Goodreads summary: “A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise.”

My Review

At the risk of my blog’s SEO plug-in yelling at me, I’m going to keep this review short and simple. My dog is sick, so he’s my top priority right now, but I wanted to get this review out while the book is fresh in my mind.

My overall impression is that this is very nearly an absolute masterpiece. The writing is gorgeous, the information about the turbulent history between Korea and Japan taught me a lot, and the symbolism of the flashlight from beginning to end made me wish I could have written an in-depth paper on this book in university. I came close to giving it 5 stars, and I really enjoyed the reading experience.

I only hesitate to give it full masterpiece marks for two reasons: first, because I feel like it should have been shorter. I love me a massive tome, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t big-book-phobia talking. And 447 isn’t all that big anyway. But the driving event, or inciting incident, of the story is Serk’s disappearance, and yet almost half the book is spent on each character’s lifelong backstory, offering complexities to their lives that are fully laid out for us but never seem to offer the story momentum. I often found myself wondering what was actually important and why we were spending so much time on things that seemed not to be.

Secondly, I really hated spending time with Louisa, Serk’s daughter. I love flawed characters, but they should have a redeeming quality here or there. She was simply insufferable, and I wanted to shake her at every age and phase of her life. Actually, I wanted to shake all the characters more than once. They’re beautifully written, complex, and explored in great depth, but I really didn’t enjoy their company.

Maybe it was just my headspace while reading it. This is probably a book that’s worth a second read at a time when I can focus on it better. I appreciated learning so much about 20th-century events I’d never heard about before, and for that plus the gorgeous writing, I highly recommend this book. I predict it’ll make it to award shortlists.

Flashlight is available here on Bookshop.org*
*As an affiliate, I’ll receive a small commission from any purchase made through this link.