Counsel Culture - by Kim Hye-Jin (Paperback)

About the Book

"Haesoo is a successful therapist and regular guest on a popular TV program. But when she makes a scripted negative comment about a public figure who later commits suicide, she finds herself ostracized by friends, fired from her job, and her marriage begins to unravel. These details come to the reader gradually, in meditative prose, through bits and pieces of letters that Haesoo writes and finally abandons as she walks alone through her city. One day she has an unexpected encounter with Sei, a 10-year-old girl attempting to feed an orange cat. Stray cats seem to be everywhere; they have the concern of one other neighborhood woman and the ire of everyone else. Like Haesoo and Sei, the cats endure various insults and recover slowly. Haesoo, who would not otherwise care about animals or form relationships with children, now finds herself pulled back by degrees into the larger world"--

Book Synopsis

From prize-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin comes the contemplative, superbly-crafted story of a woman scapegoated by sudden tragedy, and the unexpected paths she must wander in search of redemption.

Haesoo is a successful therapist and regular guest on a popular TV program. But when she makes a scripted negative comment about a public figure who later commits suicide, she finds herself ostracized by friends, fired from her job, and her marriage begins to unravel. These details come to the reader gradually, in meditative prose, through bits and pieces of letters that Haesoo writes and finally abandons as she walks alone through her city.

One day she has an unexpected encounter with Sei, a 10-year-old girl attempting to feed an orange cat. Stray cats seem to be everywhere; they have the concern of one other neighborhood woman and the ire of everyone else. Like Haesoo and Sei, the cats endure various insults and recover slowly. Haesoo, who would not otherwise care about animals or form relationships with children, now finds herself pulled back by degrees into the larger world.

Review Quotes

"Melancholy and ruminative yet possessed of a quiet energy, Kim's tale leads Haesoo toward the realization that, more often than not, what we yearn to be is who we already are, that life is less a matter of becoming than of revealing . . . .A simple, moving story of outcasts coming together." --Kirkus Reviews

"Kim does not offer pat solutions or mawkish sentimentality; rather, Haesoo's attempts to care for Sei and Turnip provide a framework for her defensiveness and self-pity to give way to atonement and healing. The result is an appealing meditation on personal and professional ethics." -- Publisher's Weekly

"Award-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin's sublime sophomore title-in-translation, Counsel Culture, is the spare, intense study of a woman in crisis, a subject Kim so strikingly presented in her 2022 Anglophone debut, Concerning My Daughter. She reunites with translator Jamie Chang, who again skillfully mirrors Kim's clean, affecting prose." -- Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness

"Kim's beautifully introspective novel thoughtfully explores the time it takes to process difficult experiences and the restoration that can happen when people open up to each other without expectation." --Booklist

"A heartwarming story of a middle-aged woman who rescues a sick cat and comforts a child through difficult times, set in the chilling tale of a man who takes his own life because of her. The two veins entwine and cling relentlessly, staying with the reader beyond the covers." --Cho Nam-joo, author of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

"What do a midlife counselor, a 10-year-old girl and a couple of feral cats have in common? This unique, gritty and heartfelt story of loss, friendship and redemption, of course!" --Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine

"An admirably nuanced portrait of prejudice. . . . one that boldly takes on the daunting task of humanizing someone whose prejudice has made her cruel." --Imogen West Knights, The New York Times

"The novel raises questions about autonomy, justice and freedom--and the duty we owe to our loved ones." --The New York Times

"Kim skillfully depicts the vulnerability and fear underlying her protagonist's anxiety and anger, laying bare the ways in which family dynamics are fluid and full of paradoxes .... Kim's compassionate portrayal of the narrator's contradictions and ever-changing feelings makes her project captivating and moving. Readers will be grateful to discover this new author." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Kim is unsparing in her depictions of the indignities of old age, the corrosiveness of homophobia, and the piercing loneliness that comes from living in a culture of silence. A heavy but tentatively hopeful look at the struggle for intergenerational understanding through one mother's eyes." --Kirkus Reviews

"Already a prestigious best-seller in Korea, Kim's impassioned novel about the meaning of family--by blood, by choice--marks her English-language debut, seamlessly translated by National Book Award longlister Chang.... Kim's confessional first-person narration expresses the sense of urgency to unburden one's most vulnerable thoughts and longings and readers willing to become intimate witnesses will be rewarded with a resonating and empathic tale." -- Terry Hong, Booklist, Starred Review

"Award-winning Korean novelist Kim Hye-jin's Concerning My Daughter is a clear-eyed character study of the fraught relations among biological and found families alike.... Kim's keen attention to character reveals the nuance of her narrator's pragmatic brand of empathy.... Concerning My Daughter manages to capture a societal need for both accepting collective complicity and practicing enduring empathy." --Alice Martin, Shelf Awareness

"Concerning My Daughter is a work that is unafraid of the human body in all its contradictions, at once philosophical and practical in its treatment of the aging body, the gendered body, the body's capacity for acts of caretaking, protest, and love. Urgent, timely, tender." --Yoon Choi, author of Skinship

"I couldn't help but be moved by a story about women meeting, fighting, helping each other, looking after one another, and raising their voices against the prejudice and criticism they are subject to." --Cho Nam-joo, author of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

"Concerning My Daughter ably portrays the desperate narratives of its female characters. It's the story of a mother and daughter, but it goes beyond this relationship and is also ahead of our time. In accompanying the women's journey as they overcome pain and suffering in their lives, we see our stereotypes broken in the end. A powerful smashing of our fixed old ideas! This book is filled with such energy." --Kyung-sook Shin, author of Please Look After Mom and Violets

"Concerning My Daughter is one of the best character studies I've read in years--thoughtful, complicated, and surprisingly kind, it raises important questions about aging, family, and both the cost and the value of change." --Jessie Greengrass, author of An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk and Sight

About the Author

Kim Hye-jin is an award-winning author from Daegu, South Korea. She won the JoongAng Literature Award in 2013 for Joongang Station, the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature in 2018 for Concerning My Daughter, and the Daesan Literary Award in 2020 for The Work of No.9. She was also the Special Award Laureate of the 4th Lee Hochul Literary Prize for Peace in 2020.

Jamie Chang is a literary translator. Her translation of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 was longlisted for National Book Awards 2020 Translated Literature. She is the recipient of the Daesan Foundation Translation Grant and a three-time recipient of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea Grant.