There’s something about people—and characters—who insist that their way is the best way that absolutely put my back up. They’re usually traditional. They see things in black and white. They will roll right over you if you get in their way. The main character of Jimin Han’s discomforting novel, The Apology, is the epitome of this kind of character. Even though I would consider someone like Jeonga a person to be avoided for the sake of my mental health, I was able to be drawn into the story because Han shows us the fear that drives Jeonga every day of her life.
Jeogna is a very old woman when we meet her at the beginning of The Apology. We also meet her on the day that everything she desperately wanted to keep secret comes out into the open. And, unfortunately, for Jeogna, it’s also the day she dies in an accident. From this surprising opening, Han whisks us back, to show us how Jeogna came to be on an American street in front of a bus. A little over a week prior, Jeonga was in South Korea, in her apartment. She is scooped out of her home by her two older sisters (all of them are over 100 years old) to attend their father’s grave on the anniversary of his death. It’s a tradition Jeonga loathes but skipping out on the commemoration and the obligatory lunch afterwards is just not the done thing. The catalyst for everything that happens to Jeonga in the remaining days of her life arrives in the form of a letter from Jeonga’s great-grand-niece, Joyce, asking for help to pay for Joyce’s son’s medical bills. The three sisters immediately offer to arrange for money to be sent but there is something else in the letter that sets Jeonga’s heart racing. There is a name in the letter, one she thought she was the only one in the family who knew. And that name turns out to be engaged to the possibly-dying scion of the family.
It will take almost the rest of the book—plus a trip to the afterlife—for us to learn why that name makes Jeonga feel like she’s about to faint or have a heart attack and why she is so insistent on going to America herself to deliver the family funds. Jeonga’s journey to Ohio (with her older sisters and assistant in tow, much to Jeonga’s annoyance) is punctuated with scenes that take us even further back in time, to her childhood and middle age. All of these chapters richly portray a family that cannot escape its past, a past that Jeonga is fiercely keeping secret from everyone. Unless she learns to give up her secrets and atone to the living, Jeonga might be stuck as a ghost for the rest of her existence, with her family and loved ones out of reach forever.
The Apology was a fascinating psychological study. Han has a gift for placing readers into the shoes of a character who would, if we met them in real life, drive us completely bonkers with their persnickety insistence on keeping tradition and on maintaining an impenetrable respectability. Because we’re riding along in Jeonga’s head, it’s so much easier to sympathize with her once we see just how afraid she is all the time of being caught in her mistakes. Readers who like family drama will enjoy this one.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.