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by Yoojin Grace Wuertz
Two young women of vastly different means each struggle to find her own way during the darkest hours of South Korea's "economic miracle" in a striking debut novel for readers of Anthony Marra and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie.
Seoul, 1978. At South Korea's top university, the nation's best and brightest compete to join the professional elite of an authoritarian regime. Success could lead to a life of rarefied privilege and wealth; failure means being left irrevocably behind.
For childhood friends Jisun and Namin, the stakes couldn't be more different. Jisun, the daughter of a powerful business mogul, grew up on a mountainside estate with lush gardens and a dedicated chauffeur. Namin's parents run a tented food cart from dawn to curfew; her sister works in a shoe factory. Now Jisun wants as little to do with her father's world as possible, abandoning her schoolwork in favor of the underground activist movement, while Namin studies tirelessly in the service of one goal: to launch herself and her family out of poverty.
But everything changes when Jisun and Namin meet an ambitious, charming student named Sunam, whose need to please his family has led him to a prestigious club: the Circle. Under the influence of his mentor, Juno, a manipulative social climber, Sunam becomes entangled with both women, as they all make choices that will change their lives forever.
In this sweeping yet intimate debut, Yoojin Grace Wuertz details four intertwining lives that are rife with turmoil and desire, private anxieties and public betrayals, dashed hopes and broken dreams - while a nation moves toward prosperity at any cost.
BookBrowse Revew
"This engaging debut focuses on a small group of ambitious millennials in South Korea trying to figure out the rules of the game in the struggle for upward mobility. Jisun, the daughter of a rich industrialist doesn't have to worry much about riches but she is torn by guilt and wants to join the workers' rights movement with which her friend, Namin, is more in touch. Added to this set are Sunam and Juno who also navigate complex rules of membership clubs about who's in and out of elite circles. The four primary characters' lives intersect in intriguing ways. While Wuertz certainly gets a lot of credit for shining light on the socio-economic dynamics of a powerful Asian country, the presentation is a little too slick and melodramatic to really stick with the reader for a long time. Much too often the novel feels like a Page 3 gossip nugget—fun to bite into but not too much of substance beneath that shiny veneer."
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Engrossing. Wuertz is an important new voice in American fiction." - Kirkus
"An absorbing debut destined for major lists and nominations." - Booklist
"Wuertz crafts a story with delicious scenes and plot threads, perceptively showing the push and pull of relationships in a strictly mannered society." - Publishers Weekly
"Yoojin Grace Wuertz's fierce and unforgettable characters embody every contradiction as they do everything they can to ensure their own, and their nation's, survival. In Everything Belongs to Us Wuertz has given us a Middlemarch for modern South Korea. She's woven the whole social tapestry, and made us care about every last thread." - Susan Choi, author of My Education
"I found myself engrossed in the difficult choices faced by Wuertz's nuanced, engaging characters as they navigate college politics and romance in 1970s Seoul. I'm thrilled to have experienced their inner lives in these pages - to have celebrated their victories and commiserated in the pain of their mistakes - and would happily have stuck with them for hundreds more." - Emily Barton, author of The Book of Esther
"What a story! Everything belongs to this terrific debut: love, family, friendship, and politics. I especially loved the two strong-willed and passionate heroines. Their ideals, choices, and struggles make this an utterly rapturous literary page-turner." - Samuel Park, author of This Burns My Heart
"Historic in scope yet eerily contemporary, Everything Belongs to Us is a stirring debut that immerses readers in a society where some quietly hope for change and others must demand it. In Yoojin Grace Wuertz's capable hands, characters come alive with desire for a different kind of life, and heartbreak is the price of longing." - Jung Yun, author of Shelter
This information about Everything Belongs to Us was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Yoojin Grace Wuertz was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the United States at age six. She holds a BA in English from Yale University and an MFA in fiction from New York University. She lives in northern New Jersey with her husband and son.
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