Nami Mun: Miles from Nowhere

Nami Mun: Miles From Nowhere

So it came in the mail today, three hundred pages of amazing. I knew from the start this was going to be one of those 'can't stop reading it' books, and I was not disappointed. As I started reading it before my anthropology class started, I was immediately swept into the story of Joon-Mee, a young Korean teenager whose mother's mental instability and father's marital infidelity drive her to run away from her home in the Bronx. Over the course of the next six years, Joon lives in various homeless shelters, develops several unstable love interests, and engages in a wealth of nefarious activities. Somehow, though, Nami Mun's understated and lyrical prose manage to convey a level of indescribable emotion. Several parts of the book had me on the verge of tears because of their sheer poignancy--I'll spare you the details, but there is one scene in particular that drove me to pieces.

I read this book in an hour and a half--a record even for the notoriously-good-at-speedreading me. It's not that it's an easy read--more that it's the hardest easy read I've ever found. The plot is a little ambiguous, and the chronology jumps around a lot, which makes it difficult to follow, but overall it is one of those books that slips under your skin so quietly you don't even notice it until you find it's planted its magic in your heart. Characters weave in and out, their futures unresolved. It is definitely a modern picaresque--I've heard it compared to Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son on several occasions, and I feel the comparisons are justified. Mun also reminds me of another author, Haruki Murakami [After Dark; Kafka On the Shore; Sputnik Sweetheart] for some reason. True, Murakami is a Japanese author writing in Japanese and Mun is a Korean-American author writing in English, but there's something very simple and beautiful about both their writing styles. They say so much by saying so little.

I am so happy I read this book. It's truly one of the most unique pieces of fiction I have ever read, and I eagerly anticipate Nami Mun's next novel.

Always,
Amber [the Rogue Intellect]