Known for highlighting the experiences of the marginalized, Korean novelist Cho Haejin deftly navigates the complex emotions surrounding identity and place through Nana, adopted by French parents after being found on the tracks at a railway station in Seoul. Translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, Simple Heart is confident and clear, employing a direct, almost detached, tone that belies its deeply felt core.
A respected playwright, Nana is forced to reconcile her ambivalence about motherhood with the fact of her unplanned pregnancy. Back in Korea to film a documentary about her experience as a foreign adoptee, Nana allows herself to probe her earliest wounds and the feelings of abandonment that resurface. The film's director, Seoyeong, drew Nana in by referring to the name she was given by the train conductor who rescued her from the tracks and fostered her for a short while: Munju. Seoyoung explains that "our names are a kind of house where our identity or sense of self reside... I truly believe that remembering a name is how we pay our respects to the forgotten worlds."
It is this invitation to remember that Nana/Munju responds to, a promise that is fulfilled as she meets people who help her see herself and her possible future as a mother in a new light. Readers will grieve and hope with Nana as pieces of her past and a new understanding of what it means to love and be loved are revealed to her. Perfect for anyone who has ever wondered what their life might have been like under different circumstances, Simple Heart is full of heart and anything but simple. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian