Chesil

'My past is always chasing me. It's a past I can't escape.'

The story of 17-year old Pak Jinhee - Westernised as Ginny Park - a troubled schoolgirl, Zainichi Korean and with huge family issues. Now living with an adopted mother in Oregon, the book looks back on Ginny's troubled past - from Japan to Hawaii to mainland US - as she faces expulsion from her American school.

It's primary target, I guess, is the YA market, and it was a huge sensation in Japan when it was originally published, but this is a rewarding and important book for a wider market. In an introduction, the translator Takami Nieda notes the book's theme of a sense of 'inbetweenness', of somehow never quite fitting in, something that will strike a chord with many.

A moving and ultimately uplifting book, the ending of which some may find a little too neat, but nonetheless a worthy and brave approach to an important subject.… (mais)