"Forgotten Country" by Catherine Chung

Over the summer I have read quite a few books, some that are in the more paranormal fiction, others in the dramatic, the non-fiction and of course the realistic fiction.

One of these books was the "Forgotten Country" by Catherine Chung.
To begin with the author was born in Evanston, Illinois. She has been in love with writing ever since she was small, and would always write, it was her "life-long passion". She was a promising student in the University of Chicago. Catherine Chung then moved to Santa Monica, where she would write by the sea on the constantly sunny days. She not only wrote stories, she wrote poems, and then attended the Creative Writing program at Cornell University. She then spent the following years as a teacher, working on her first and very much loved novel "Forgotten Country". She now lives in New York City as assistant editor for fiction of Guernica Magazine.

The book is a 'darkly luminous' debut to Catherine Chung, and presents the struggle of a young Korean American woman that finds herself in constantly competing roles as a daughter, a scholar and a sister. When her sister Hannah drops out of college and moves to California, she cuts off all communication to her family, causing a massive tension throughout the family. The father is diagnosed with a form of cancer that can only be treated in Korea, ironically. The father had left Korea due to his being a mathematician and not respecting the authoritarian government at the time. The parents send Janie to search for her sister, she is found in Los Angeles, and therefore this leads to a series of fights between the sisters, causing Janie to leave Hannah behind and follow her parents to Korea.

The story follows with Janie's stay in the new Korean house, visited by extremely devoted family and friends, making Janie appreciate her parents' history, more precisely her father's. Throughout this time his health improves but suddenly deteriorates. Hannah travels to Korea after receiving a call from their mother. The family accepts her back as if she never left. As their father's condition worsens Janie's and Hannah's sibling rivalry grows, however brings them together.

The book starts gloomily with "The year that Hannah disappeared, the first frost came early, killing everything in the garden." This gives a very sad beginning to the story, enrapturing the reader on how it jumps from the disappearance of the sister, Hannah, to the death of the garden. The writer compares the leaving of the younger sister a factor in the recklessness of the family, not taking care of the garden because the daughter left.

The author uses a series of cold words, they all describe the cold, abandoning, death and a lost memory. Personally it gave the story a very serious yet dark beginning. The author seems to create a mirror character of herself in the main character of Janie. They both attend the university of Chicago as a graduate student in mathematics, accepting the ways of their family.

Throughout the entire novel Catherine Chung challenges and delves with utter and painful honesty the grand questions of "What are the strengths and limits of family? What is the definition of home? Are there or are there no boundaries between duty and love? If there are what are they?" She challenges and rummages through such questions based on an entire Korean experience.

Personally the book was touching, and showed an entirely different side of family, it shows the struggles and the imperfectness of siblings. The novel shows how fully the boundaries of love and family can be pushed and bent. It presents the author's emotional intelligence and the true depth of the writer's appreciation and devotion to the topic.