Eunice Hong's exquisite debut Memento Mori won the 2021 Red Hen Press Fiction Award, chosen by judge Aimee Liu. Hong's simple, well-worn opening line, "Once upon a time," belies an intricate narrative that combines ancient storytelling, epistolary revelations, historical family saga, and contemporary bildungsroman.
"I write to remember. I write to forget," a young Korean American woman insists. She's been telling her younger brother, M., stories for years. Now, on M.'s behalf, she's recording these stories about their paternal grandmother, who escaped North Korea at the cost of separation from her family; about their maternal grandmother, who once sewed for and dressed Beyoncé; and about their parents, who moved from Seoul to New Jersey and back to Seoul. She also struggles to reveal what "was a bit too awkward to say out loud to you, my little brother," an understatement that initially obscures horrific violence and attempted suicide. Somehow she survives to bear witness to loss--and living.
Hong is an elliptical writer with impeccable timing, infusing her sparse prose with layered insights about grief, empathy, resilience, and, most intriguingly, the power of choice. When the aching intimacy threatens to become unbearable, Hong cleverly dovetails familiar Greek myths--Persephone and Hades, Eurydice and Orpheus--"stories about the underworld and the afterlife to try to understand" sexual assault, wrongful death, and desperate reconciliations. At the novel's end, final notes explicate Hong's chapter titles, such as " '15. Leaving Elba," "Bed 31," and "73rd and Broadway," which brilliantly, delightfully contain both numerical order and narrative clues. Hong's debut proves utterly remarkable. --Terry Hong