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Title details for Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim - Available

Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost

by David Hoon Kim
Joji Otani-Hansen
Audiobook
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When Fumiko emerges after one month of being locked in her dorm room, she's already dead, leaving behind a half-smoked Marlboro Light and a cupboard of petrified food. For her boyfriend, Henrik Blatand, an aspiring translator, these
remnants are clues, propelling him forward in a search for meaning. Meanwhile, Fumiko, or perhaps her doppelgänger, reappears—in line at the Louvre, on street corners and subway platforms, and on the dissection table of a group of medical students.
Henrik's inquiry expands beyond Fumiko's seclusion and death, across the absurd, entropic streets of Paris and the figures who wander them, from a jaded group of Korean expats, to an eccentric French widow, to the indelible woman whom
Henrik finds sitting in his seat on a train. It drives him into the shadowy corners of his past, where his adoptive Danish parents raised him in a house without mirrors. And it mounts to a charged intimacy shared with his best friend's precocious daughter, who may be haunted herself.
David Hoon Kim's debut is a transgressive, darkly comic novel about becoming lost and found in translation. With each successive, echoic chapter, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost plunges us more deeply beneath the surface of things, to the displacement, exile, grief, and desire that hide in plain sight.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 3, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781705030349
      • File size: 182528 KB
      • Duration: 06:20:15

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 28, 2021
      Kim’s splendid if scattered debut centers on a Paris university student who is left reeling after his girlfriend’s death. Henrik Blatand has long struggled with his identity as a Japanese man adopted by Danish parents
      . After his Japanese girlfriend, Fumiko, dies by suicide, he feels consumed by guilt, believing he could have helped her. Here, Kim introduces a confusing break in the narrative. Fumiko’s body was donated to science, and the medical student who is dissecting Fumiko’s body in the lab meets Henrik, who has joined the lab as an arts student after learning her body would be there. Later, Henrik trains to be a translator and befriends charismatic Swiss translator René, whose seven-year-old daughter, Gém, reminds Henrik of Fumiko, even though she’s not Japanese, and who takes to claiming Henrik is her father when they’re in public, leading him to see himself as a father figure to her. Throughout, Henrik describes his various encounters with women and girls who remind him in some way of Fumiko. While there are many beautiful passages of longing (Henrik remembers falling in love with Fumiko’s “strangeness”), the incurably woebegone narrator lacks a clear motive, which will leave readers feeling puzzled. Kim sets a captivating mood, but not enough is done with it. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Joji Otani-Hansen's soft and heavily modulated voice makes listening to this opaque novel a genuine challenge. Henrik Blatand, Japanese by birth and adopted by a Danish family, now lives in Paris, where he works as a translator. Otani-Hansen's unique and unidentifiable accent lends itself well to this portrait of Henrik's state of mind. His girlfriend has just committed suicide, leaving him behind, without human connections. He begins to reach out to people--acquaintances, a goddaughter, and even strangers, trolling them through the global yet anonymous world that is Paris. Although brief, this is a dense book with many narrative meanderings, some of which are difficult for the listener to follow. This book might lend itself better to print. D.G.P. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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