Bluebeard's First Wife

Starred review from April 27, 2020
Ha’s outstanding collection (after Flowers of Mold) delivers heavy doses of guilt, hope, and pain. The opener, “The Star-Shaped Stain,” follows a young mother a year after her kindergartner daughter died in a fire along with her 21 classmates while on a school trip. When the woman visits the site two months later with other grieving parents, their wounds are made raw by a drunk storekeeper who claims to have seen a child running away from the burning building. In straightforward prose, Ha’s simple, devastating tale sets the mood for what’s to come. The title story brilliantly explores the secrets and silence inside the microcosm of an opportunistic marriage, as Ha flips the switch from ordinary domestic descriptions to harrowing violence, the tone perfectly measured in Hong’s translation. Other highlights include “Joy to the World,” in which a mysterious pregnancy devastates a couple on the verge of marriage; “On That Green, Green Grass,” an exploration of obsession wrapped in the enigmatic theft of a family’s dog; and “A Quiet Night,” in which a couple deals with noisy upstairs neighbors until the woman starts suspecting her husband is behind the neighbors’ run of misfortune. Dark, strange, and simultaneously cohesive and diverse, these stories show a superb writer in full force.

Starred review from May 15, 2020
Best-selling Korean author Ha and award-winning Canadian translator Hong are two-for-two at spectacular pairing, repeating the successful partnership of Ha's collection, Flowers of Mold (2019), with another sensational, 11-story collaboration. The titular Bluebeard's First Wife features a 31-year-old woman who marries a younger man (under pressure) and follows him to New Zealand to live more alone than not?until she can't. Deception repeats in other standouts: a Seoul policeman's transfer to a remote post gets him trapped in a relationship that never happened in Flies; a favorite daughter discovers her father's other family in O Father; a woman meets longtime friends she never knew her fianc� had and learns of their disturbing shared past in Joy to the World. Violence looms in The Star-Shaped Stain, Night Poaching is about what's really being hunted in dark woods, Dress Shirt involves a mysterious suicide, Pinky Finger dramatizes the perils of taking late-night taxis alone, and in Daisy Fleabane, a teen narrates her own death. City escapes prove disastrous in On That Green, Green Grass when a dognapping begets a kidnapping, and A Quiet Night reveals calamities that befall loud upstairs neighbors. Despite a significant body count, Ha's provocative narratives never devolve into the maudlin, showcasing instead sly moments of macabre fascination and startling dark comedy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)