Author: Min Jin Lee
# of Pages: 640 (hardback)
Genre: Adult, Contemporary
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (GR: 3.25 stars)
Synopsis: In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children—Bo, DH, and Mido—find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California—where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security. In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice—for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers—is a kind of prayer.
Review: This book could have been so much better.
It's been a long time since I read Pachinko, but I remember being emotional invested despite how much the book took on (spanning multiple generations, multiple third person POVs, time skips, historical accuracy). American Hagwon is similar; it focuses primarily on the Kohs (John, Helen, and their three kids) but also includes some tangentially related characters like Danbi (John's coworker), Yun (Mido's friend), Sonya (Helen's sister), Peter (DH's friend), etc.
Unfortunately unlike Pachinko, American Hagwon doesn't achieve the same beauty and richness in its story. The start was slow (as to be expected to build up a large cast of characters). However, the story only had a few compelling moments but otherwise stayed flat in pacing. There were a lot of slice of life moments where is usually okay for an in-depth drama, but MJL would reiterate key events or character traits as if the reader would've already forgetten something that happened a few chapters ago.
This book read like a Jodi Picoult book; it's clear MJL wanted to tackle the topic of education/learning and its societal expectations being bad for children. It was blatant when MJL used a character to deliver an argument on this topic, which came off as preachy and read like a fantasy (unrealistic). I wish these points were better woven into the story rather than having the characters (especially Peter and Lion) tell other characters (and therefore the reader) over and over again.
The best chapters were the ones that focused on Danbi (love to hate her) and Sonya (juggled more interesting relationship dynamics than other characters like Mido). The characters would have benefitted from being more nuanced; the morally good characters are too good that they're boring, and the morally questionable characters lean into the "villain" role a bit too much.
Overall, didn't meet my expectations unfortunately. This book was very put-downable, and the story would have been much better if it were more focused, concise, and immersive since I wasn't too attached to the most of the characters.
