I have tried really hard with this book but at 29% I have to admit defeat.

I wanted to DNF this halfway through the first chapter. I tried to drag myself through but reading this book felt like wading through quicksand. Every page felt like a chore. I can't do it to myself anymore.

The main, first person character is emotionally removed and very unlikable. She's fixated on her race and yet stereotypes others by their race and is "disgusted" by her Swedish fkbuddy not pronouncing an English word to her liking. There are passages heavy on physics that just made my eyes glaze over. The "magical realism" is creepy and weird. The writing jumps between time and space in a way that is really disjointed.

I thought this book sounded amazing but unfortunately it was just painful for me.

"You and I--we are descended from women whose lives have been degraded into common folktales. We live by their lives, echoing their stories, but not their greatness--only their stupid tragedies because that is all we remember of them."

Folklorn is a tale of science and mythology, new and ancestral grief, belonging, family, identity all told by a narrator that often seems unreliable. This books is told through unclear memories, passed-down puzzles of folktales, and the perceived ghosts of our narrator as she works to understand herself and a mother she never knew well. Elsa Park is a physicist working as far away from home as possible until the death of her mother. This novel is dense with information and heavy with the issues it tackles.

Not knowing her mother well, Elsa is thrown into a tailspin after her death, that leads her to follow the mystery her mother left behind in Korean folktales and strange remembered lessons from her childhood. As Elsa uncovers more about her mother and her heritage, there's a recurring message about women, cyclical trauma, and identity--specifically being othered in spaces that you perceive as your own.

This was a slow read for me, but only because it felt too important that I take it in as pieces rather than try to race through it. The prose was often biting and funny or tender and stunning and the ending felt magical.

Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon for my ARC!

Unfortunately I had a hard time with this book. I was very intrigued by the concept but ultimately I could not get comfortable with the writing style. It seemed to want to jump back and forth between something very literary/experimental and something very commonplace/everyday events. I found this a little jarring. I think it can be done well but I was too wrong-footed to get into a rhythm with reading the book. I also felt that the dialogue was off. I think the book was strongest when discussing events from the main character's past - seeing her family dynamic and going through events that she experienced as a child. I found the present-day sections very strange and confusing, and not in a way that intrigued me to read more. Sadly it just wasn't for me. All of the concepts were there but the execution was a bit too chaotic for my taste.

I didn't realize until I finished this book that I had been holding my breath.

Our story begins with Elsa Park at the bottom of the world where she encounters her long-forgotten imaginary friend. This lonely, spectral creature brings with her the daunting task of untangling the generational trauma, immigrant hardships, personal demons, sacrifice, and mental illness plaguing a family.

Parts ghost story and family saga, cautionary tale and reimagined mythos; this story is cerebral and haunting (literal and figurative) blurring the real and the fantastical.

At times uneven, this book felt like an excavation.

I was surprised by how deeply I related to Elsa and her story. On the surface, why would I? My family is not Korean. I am not an academic. I've never set foot in Elsa's world… But I am also an immigrant to this country. Not born here, but young enough that my assimilation is so entrenched I have little connection to the country of my birth beyond folktales told to me by my own mother. Maybe they haunt me, like Elsa's haunt her.

Folklorn reflects and refracts themes of trauma, race, family, and grief. It asks how we relate to our family, our histories, our cultures, the stories we tell others, and the ones we tell ourselves.

After closing this book, I released the breath I had been holding and I allowed myself to feel hopeful. Folktales can be rewritten, cycles can be broken, and pain can be healed.

I hope you pick up this book. As they say "come for the ghosts, stay for the heartbreak" (I don't think anyone says but they should)

DNF. I really liked the premise but the writing did not work for me at all. It wouldn't be fair to the book if I finished reading and gave it a low rating.

This book weaves many different themes throughout its pages, and every one is evocative and poetically presented. Themes such as the trauma of being an immigrant, how trauma is passed through generations, the coping mechanisms built to protect the mind in the face of those traumas, and the connections that are built through life's journey of figuring out what it all means. I really loved the writing style, and I'd be happy to read more of this author's works. Thank you so much Erewhon Books and Netgalley for a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book was difficult to finish because of the blatant racist attitudes. However I am glad I finished it because it was truly beautiful. Filled with the love and importance of stories to both individuals and cultures. Elsa is a brilliant physicist who begins a journey of discovery by rereading and researching her mother's folktales. When her mother dies Elsa returns home and takes a closer look at ghosts (real and imaged) family dysfunction and what story she will live.

This genre defying book is incredible. It's part dark academia, part sci-fi. It's a mix of myth, magical realism and generational curses. It's a musing on science, mental illness and family bonds.

Starting in Antarctica we follow Elsa, a physicist working on her PHD, as she moves between Sweden and America. Elsa's also dealing with grief, trying to find meaning in the myths her mother told her as a child.

There was lots of physics that went over my head, a dissection of Korean folklore, and the study of runes. It's hard to know what's real and what's not. I felt the same disorientation that Elsa feels.

Folklorn was a very timely read with the increase in hate crimes against Asian people. Elsa ponders lots on the immigrant experience, and how she experiences race in America vs in Sweden.

Elsa's parents immigrated to America after the Korean war. They speak little English and their trauma and disconnection to both Korean and American culture, created rifts and discontent in their family home.

There's lots of interesting discussion around identity in the Korean diaspora. Elsa very much identifies as Korean, even though it's a country she's never stepped in. Another character, Oskar was adopted from Korea to Swedish parents who largely ignored his race. Together and separately, they try and grapple with their ties to Korea, its myths and their identity.

Folklorn explores the cultural myths and generational trauma we inherit. We see the complicated mother-daughter relationship that defines (and begins to consume) much of Elsa's life.

The book explores how families support and suffocate each other. Elsa changes her opinions on her parents and brother throughout the book. Her feelings deepen with understanding and empathy. Much like how my opinion on Elsa changed . She's often frustrating but you can't help but feel for her.

It's a book that leads to lots of introspection. I'm still thinking about it a week later. There lots of heavy topics but it ends on a hopeful note.

Cover rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Oh my Oskar, you've come back to me."

I’m still reeling from the dreamlike effect of this book. The prose is beautiful and yet quite formal, like the author is writing her very own fairytale.

In its essence, it's a story about storytelling, about how retellings done in unnatural tongues, although the most neutral and academic and safe from emotion, are the most imperfect way to explain who one is, how one came to be.

I find myself getting frustrated, angry, confused, and eventually cont ent with everything the main character, Elsa, has done throughout the book. And when she met Oskar, I find myself falling in love with him before she did.

This is definitely a book I’d recommend over fika!

Many thanks to the publisher and author for this ARC. I loved it!

Date finished: March 26, 2021
Publication date: April 27, 2021

It’s been two weeks since I read Folklorn. I cried, I closed it, I sighed, and then started ruminating how to speak about it. It has accompanied me to the grief of recent events, it has been in the back of my mind when I watched the Spanish trailer of Minari without a trace of a Korean word in it. This novel has opened a lot of bottled emotions that I didn’t know where to put them. That has been Folklorn to me.

As a child of Korean immigrants in Spain, I’ve always have had trouble with the concept of home. An insane obsession, like the portal fantasy trope of voracious reader that finds refuge in fiction, to shield themselves from reality. Now this novel, this hit home. Not the idealistic version in which I would like to be, but the real, gritty and flawed home that my own identity inhabits. Sometimes I see my kid singing to “Let it go”, or “Into the Unknown” to the top of her lungs and feeling it, but to me, the Elsa that adventured herself on the hidden places of my own self is Elsa Park, main character of Folklorn.

We meet Korean American Elsa Park reminiscing her mother and her Korean folktales, giving us her own description and image of a key part of her own self. After that quick glance, we move with Elsa to her present—she’s an experimental physicist looking for neutrinos (ghost particles) in the South Pole station. Loudmouthed, navigating racism with her own prejudices and bias, overt and upfront against sexism, she’s a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure. But the stitches of the wound healed by her excellency are plain to see: “you are like one of us”, they tell her, displacing her from the here and there, forcing her to inhabit those liminal spaces in-between (one of the major themes of the novel, and the big reason it hits home). Sleep deprived and exhausted, Elsa starts hearing a bell. After discarding it as tinnitus, she decides to skip a party to get the rest she needs, but it in that moment, she’s reunited to a childhood imaginary friend that embodies her mother’s Korean folktales. She will then embark in a journey of self-discovery within the darkness of the big shadow cast by those before her.

Folklorn is a beast. Korean folklore is seamlessly interwoven in the story, playing and enhancing the great amount of layers that the story offers. Angela Mi Young Hur uses Elsa’s little microcosmos to unravel, unpack and showcase some of the nuances and experiences of what Korean diaspora means. Her parents generation, with their hustles, the trauma they directly or indirectly caused in search of a better life; her brother Chris, who has some of the scenes that will live freely and forever in my brain, who has to make sense of who he is after being told the lie that A+B will get you to C, but that, after all, he’s incredibly devoted so that her sister can shine; Swedish Korean adoptee Oskar Gantelius (hottest Korean in fiction as of now), who provides the excellent contraposition between the differences in racism between the American experience and the colorblind European experience, while also giving way to describing the particularities of what it means to be othered, to belong, to be oneself in the adoptee experience.

I found really hard to find the metaphor to describe Folklorn, but I feel that the answer is direct and has been in front of me all the time: Taeguk. As Wikipedia says, not to be confused with the Pepsi Globe, a representation of the Taeguk is in the center of the South Korean flag. Red and blue forces interlocking and forming a new entity—and Folklorn is that, a tapestry of dualisms that showcase the Korean diaspora experience. The differences between the good daughter and the good son, the hyonyeo and hyoja, offered both in the form of traditional folktales (like Shim Cheong), and with the translated or derived forms embodied by Chris and Elsa. Mythomania against a harsh reality ridden with trauma, with all the characters trying to make peace with their grief and all the pieces that are part of their own selves… And like the swirl of the Taeguk, Hur is capable of loading the present-story with a lot of symbolism that is from the ‘source material’: the bells, the tinnitus, Shim Cheong’s father and Elsa’s… There are lots of details here and there that move your guts while also fill your brain with awe. It is that good.

Folklorn doesn’t shy away of the violence. Like traditional folktales (and not the exaggeratedly sweetened versions we are force-fed in mainstream media), there’s a history of emotional abuse, inadvertent or overt. All characters are not saint-like heroes or plain victims—they made their choices, they made their mistakes, and sometimes they own them and try their best. There’s hustle, fighting, survival, but not in a preachy-tone. It is just what it is. And like the dualism pointed before, Hur also offers a lot of poignant humor, punching fists to everything in her way, even daring to break the fourth wall just to make a point (and give you the laugh). Yes, she’s in control, and WHAT. A. RIDE.

It’s March but I know that this novel is going to be my favorite of this year. This review is my feeble attempt to give it the sixth star that it deserves.

(I received an advanced reader's copy of Folklorn through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

I finished Folklorn this morning and gave myself all day to think about it, to better write this review. Having had all day, I still don't think I can do this book justice, but I'm going to try my best.

First: the cover is beautiful. Second: I love the title.

Most importantly: Folklorn is beautiful, messy, and complicated. It's about stories- their iterations and variations; the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell other people; stories we tell at one point in our life versus another; folktales and history; translations and into what language and by who and why. It's about family. It's about finding a place in the world. Narrowing the scope a bit, Folklorn is about being a Korean-American child of immigrants, and it's about messy relationships with family, and it's about transracial adoption, and it's about being Korean in Sweden.

Most specifically, Folklorn is about Elsa Park, who is just as messy and complicated and wonderful as the book. I'm sure there's a cool physics concept for a smaller piece reflecting a larger concept and the two mirroring each other. Folklorn does that, as well. There were so many times I winced reading Elsa's reaction to certain statements and certain events- it hurt, it was messy, how was she going to come back from this? The other characters all had a weight about them that was wonderful to read, even if (especially because?) the characters were not wonderful themselves. Their experiences shaped them, and life did not leave anyone unscathed.

I cannot speak to the "authenticness" of the book, and I'm not sure I'd want to anyway, the concept of authenticity often being a double-edged sword. What I can say is that the book felt authentic to itself, which is vital.

Folklorn is beautiful, and I can't wait to read it again when it comes out.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. Unfortunately, I found this book to be very slow. I had to force myself to get through each chapter. Each time I would ask myself, “Where is this going?” I would lose interest halfway through a chapter. I felt no connection to the main character or her family. The book just left me feeling sad that it wasn’t more.

Quand j’ai choisi ce livre, je pensais lire un livre de science-fiction ou de fantasy contemporaine, surtout venant d’une maison d’édition nommée Erewhon. Raté ! Si parfois l’imaginaire se cache dans la littérature blanche, quitte à être primé, Folklorn d’Angela Mi Young Hur prouve que l’inverse est également possible.
Tout commence pourtant comme dans The Thing et moult récits d’horreurs. Sur une base scientifique en Antarctique, Elsa Park, physicienne américaine d’origine coréenne finit son séjour de six mois passés à y chasser les neutrinos. Souffrant d’insomnie en raison de l’absence de nuit véritable, elle revoit son amie d’enfance imaginaire qui lui rappelle les contes de sa mère remplis de filles et de sœurs aux destins tragiques. Et si ce n’était pas que de la fiction ? Et si ces contes étaient d’une certaine façon sa propre histoire familiale répétée depuis des générations de mère en fille ?
Entre l’Antarctique, la Suède et la Californie, Angela Mi Young Hur dresse un portrait de femme torturée cherchant sa place dans le monde en perçant peu à peu les secrets de son passé. Fille de deux immigrants coréens traumatisés dans leurs adolescences par la guerre qui a coupé en deux leur pays, Elsa ne s’est jamais sentie à sa place dans cette famille entre un père abusif, une mère manipulatrice et un grand frère trop rêveur. À tel point qu’elle ne fait que la fuir, d’abord en obtenant une bourse pour une école prestigieuse à l’autre bout du pays, puis pour un doctorat sur deux continents différents. Mais cette amie d’enfance et la mort de sa mère vont la replonger en plein dedans.
J’avoue avoir eu du mal à entrer dans Folklorn pour deux raisons principales. D’une part, parce que je ne m’attendais pas à ce genre de récit où dans un même chapitre l’autrice mêle les époques et où elle entrecoupe la narration de sa protagoniste par des contes folkloriques et des messages qui sont destinés à Elsa. Et d’autre part, parce que, contrairement à la plupart des héroïnes, Elsa n’est pas franchement aimable. Venue d’une famille dysfonctionnelle, elle apparaît froide, arrogante, prompte à se positionner en victime et surtout suprêmement égoïste. À se demander comment Oskar, Jester ou Linnea peuvent supporter aussi facilement ses caprices et ses sautes d’humeur, sans jamais la remettre à sa place…
Pourtant, le style de l’autrice m’a retenu au fil des pages, malgré des pauses fréquentes et en y intercalant d’autres lectures. L’animosité ressentie à la lecture envers Elsa n’est que le reflet de la piètre estime que celle-ci a d’elle-même. Et au fur et à mesure qu’elle dénoue les fils des récits de sa mère, elle fait la paix avec son passé et sa famille, et devient elle-même plus aimable.
Finalement, dans Folklorn, Angela Mi Young Hur donne la parole à ceux qu’on n’entend peu ou presque pas : les « secondes générations » perpétuellement tiraillées entre le pays d’où viennent leurs parents et celui où elles vivent et sont parfois nées comme Elsa. Angela Mi Young Hur y parle également d’une forme de racisme plus insidieux, car n’étant pas forcément composés d’actes malveillants, et des préjugés liés à l’apparence physique. La narratrice y succombe d’ailleurs en rencontrant Oskar, coréen d’apparence comme elle, mais adopté et ayant grandi toute sa vie en Suède et donc bien plus européen de comportement et d’attente que l’Américaine sans filtre qu’elle est. En résumé, Folklorn est un texte bien plus fort que les premières pages ne le laissaient supposer.

I fell in love with the name, cover and description of this book, and when I read the first few pages I thought "wow, this is amazing!", and then... It sort of lost me.

This is a beautiful book. But I would not call it accessible. It's dense and vast and fragmented. I'm pretty sure it took me over a month to finish, even though every time I picked it up I was compelled to keep reading.

It's a story about family trauma passed down through generations, about identity, culture, life as an immigrant, race, patriarchy, love - interwoven with Korean folk tales, scientific and supernatural elements and magical realism. If you're thinking "that sounds awesome", you're not wrong. However, if you're thinking "that sounds like quite a lot to be getting on with for one book" you're also not wrong. And I guess therein lies my problem (such as it is).

I feel perhaps that this book is overly ambitious; it wants too much, wants to be too much, and therefore doesn't quite manage to be any of the things.

Parts of the book were beautiful and moving - I especially loved the folk tales and some of the magical realism elements, but parts of it were also a slog. And I didn't feel like Elsa became a real character for me even though it was told in first person narrative from her POV. There was too much dithering and jumping around, making the narrative structure hard to find.

There are aspects of the book that I cannot properly judge, not being an immigrant myself (actually that's not true, but I'm white, so it's different), but I found it interesting and at times heartbreaking to read about Elsa and Chris's experiences growing up with emotionally scarred immigrant parents. And honestly the abusive, alcoholic, sentimental and pitiable father figure was eerily recognisable for me too.

The ending was beautiful and almost pushed the book back up to 4 stars, but given how much I struggled with it at times I don't think it quite makes it.

This was a mixed bag for me, but I'm glad to have read it.

A mythmakers' treasure trove. I adore Korean mythology, magical realism, and stories rooted in science. This book did not disappoint. I look forward to seeing more by this author.

I feel that I will need longer to mull over this book. It really makes you reflect and I felt drawn into the stories and myths that are dropped in throughout the book. The story follows Elsa, a physicist with a Korean background as she finds he way in life following her mother’s death. She has an imaginary friend and is searching for a potential lost sister. It’s much better than I’m making it sound! You can just read it and get a bit lost in the story telling. Thanks to Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Folklorn is a highly personal, yet universe encompassing tale full of myth, ghosts, physics and family. I truly had no idea after the first couple of chapters just where this story would end up taking me and it ended up being so much more than I expected. It begins with Elsa Park, the daughter of Korean immigrants to America, while she is living in Antarctica conducting her experiment in particle physics. The sudden reappearance of her "imaginary childhood friend", spins Elsa's life in unforeseen directions, back to Sweden and then to family in America. Elsa's coming to grips with her mother's Korean folktales and how they relate to her mental health and her direction in life, are marvelously woven into the story to magical effect. Confronting decades of family dysfunction and a recent death forces Elsa to understand her place in the family secrets and how these myths frame her life today.
I found myself completely engaged in Elsa's story and the tales woven throughout. I loved how they changed and adapted as Elsa learned more and allowed Oskar into her life. The dialogue between Elsa and Oskar about the immigrant experience from two very different points of view was so enlightening and really forces you to think about how you view these historical diasporas. The way that the physics of the neutrino is blended into the story and how it relates to all the myths, plus the challenges that Elsa and Oskar are facing is beautifully done. The female centered folktales were wonderful to read, the stories of these daughters and women are haunting, and tragic, personal and ultimately uplifting and positive. A lovely, moving story.

A beautifully written, genre bending novel. I am so happy I had the pleasure of reading this book early.

Will be looking forward to a potential audiobook for this title, as I’d love to read it again through that medium as well. Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read FOLKLORN ahead of its release date.

This wasn't exactly a page-turner but more of a slow burn. Still, the beautiful use of language made it absolutely worth it. The topic is very ambitious, exploring mental health, cultural identity, family ties, through a lens of magical realism, and the author manages to successfully tie it all together. Overall, I enjoyed this book.

Where do we belong? How do we find out who we truly are? How can we bear the burden of all that has come before us and all that will follow? Well, the long road to find the answers is anything but a straight line. The one thing for certain is you need a lot of help along the way--and you have to be willing to ask for it. FOLKLORN provides an engaging window into a very particular woman in a very particular limbo. I clung to Elsa Park through all the whiplash and boomerang circuitry of her journey to answer these questions and I quite enjoyed myself. I closed the book feeling empowered that by piecing together a fraught and fragmented family past, it is possible to uncover and discover a person who is whole--belonging to herself, no matter where she might be in the world. I give this review freely having received an advanced copy from NetGalley.