Over two decades since it was first published in Korea, Kyung-sook Shin’s sixth novel Violets is seducing a fresh legion of admirers thanks to a splendid new English translation by Anton Hur, who previously translated Shin’s The Court Dancer.

      The book chronicles the lyrical and tragic story of Oh San, a woman born in the countryside in the 1970s. Marked by her status as an outsider during her youth and molded by a conservative society, she evolves from the “little girl” that Shin describes in the novel’s very first line, into a circumspect and diffident young woman working in a flower shop in central Seoul.

       Like many of Shin’s books, such as The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness, the protagonist takes after the author in several ways. Shin and San both hail from the countryside and moved to the big city alone at a young age to pursue a dream of writing. Shin first found work in Seoul in a factory, but San, after failing to find a position at a publishing house, takes on a job at a flower shop in a small corner of Gwanghwamun, a vast boulevard, steeped in history and spewing out from the city’s grandest palace.

       There, she befriends co-worker Lee Su-ae, who has her own demons but subsumes them in a lively and forthright personality. Her green fingers guide San’s green hands through the store’s endless array of colorful flora. The pair begin to room together and while they mostly keep to themselves, a few men begin to intrude on San’s life, including a playboy photographer who arrives at the store to take some shots of violets.

       Recent Korean female protagonists tend to be in charge of their own destinies while San is a character who lacks agency. This can make her frustrating to follow, as a few words here and there might have saved her from some of her predicaments. However, that frustration morphs into understanding by the narrative’s close when it becomes clear that San is a symbol of generations of Korean women—she fails to talk her way out of problems for the simple reason that she doesn’t have a voice.

       This 2001 novel transports us to the Korean media landscape of that time, thanks to its pensive protagonists and clear-sighted metaphors. San is the kind of character we don’t see or read about much anymore these days. She is outwardly beautiful but lives her life on the inside, unable to share her thoughts with those around her ever since a crushing disappointment at a young age set her on a lonely path.

       At first, Shin’s descriptive prowess holds the tendrils of society's violence and oppression which spiral around San at bay. She limns her protagonist’s path with rich and evocative descriptions of flora, which masks the gently widening gap between this woman and the society she unconsciously begins to break away from. As the curve grows exponentially sharper, it veers too far away from the status quo. Strife and violence begin to erupt around her. She is assaulted from all sides—sounds of domestic violence from the landlord’s family below her; a fire across the hall. Unable to escape, the violence is eventually directed toward her. Shin relays the ravages of this loneliness with unsentimental prose, turning the sensitive symbols introduced earlier on into the cruel allegories of the book’s climax.

       Shin’s similes vividly imprint themselves on our imagination throughout the novel. There are the “soft bumps of vertebrae” on Su-ae’s back sweetly expressed as “tree roots” or the image of the thirsty summer pavement which keeps sucking up water no matter how often San douses it. That last image appears frequently, each time more foreboding than the last, until we realize that it is the very city itself sucking San dry. San must be careful not to overwater flowers but the pavement’s thirst is unquenchable.

       The root of that loneliness is a patch of wild minari, the hardy edible plant now known to western audiences thanks to Lee Isaac Chung’s Oscar-nominated film Minari—one wonders if Chung’s 2020 film was inspired by Shin’s book. Seemingly growing of its own accord, the minari patch brings the villagers of San’s past together, and on one fateful spring’s day, it binds San and her childhood friend Namae together in a forbidden kiss. Confused, the latter immediately recoils in shame from the spontaneous act of intimacy and abandons the confused San, who will never be able to express herself properly again.

       Of all the symbols in the book, the violets are those which are the most distinctly described. This includes the Greek mythology behind their “Eyes of Io” nickname, but the most salient point is that they grow like weeds rather than flowers. One is prized and nurtured while the other is plucked and cast away. Which one is San?

       Shin’s views on what it meant to be a woman in Korean society in the early 2000s are made vividly clear as the story edges toward a harrowing climax that sees society trample on these fragile flowers.

 

 

Pierce Conran

Film/Drama Critic and Producer