Bluebeard's First Wife

Menace often comes from ordinary situations in the stories found in Bluebeard's First Wife by Ha Seong-nan (Flowers of Mold). How well do people know each other, and what can happen when they are carried away by obsessions? Couples who decide to marry while still strangers to each other figure in several selections, such as "Joy to the World" and the title story. In some cases, the engagement is quick, in others after the relationship "started to feel a little boring," but always one person's secrets intrude to overturn the other's world, raising the question of how well two people can ever know each other.

In stories such as "Pinky Finger," a quotidian risk like taking a taxi alone at night proves dangerous in ways beyond the expected. Lives end or are merely upended. A sense of unease pervades every story, whether it traces the slow breakdown of a relationship or abruptly startles readers with an opening line such as, "The fisherman is trying to drag me to the riverbank."

In stark, unflinching prose, Seong-nan plumbs feelings of isolation in a modern world in which characters often find themselves bent under the force of traditional expectations, with new dangers looming every day. This is a uniformly captivating collection of stories that could be incidents from a local paper, but which are no less haunting for it. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

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