Violets

 

Violets / Kyung-Sook Shin
trans. from the Korean by Anton Hur
NY: Feminist Press, 2022, c2001.
218 p.

San is a young woman, 22, estranged from her mother, living in the city and looking for meaning in her life. She's taken a typing course, but can't seem to find the work that she wants with that qualification. One day she sees a Help Wanted sign in the window of a florist shop, and decides to try it out. Luckily she is hired immediately, and begins working in a place that is all hands on, focused on earth and real things. She begins to learn flower names and settles in, despite being introverted and the kind of person who doesn't talk much, going straight home to her apartment each day. 

Her social round is focused on the shop; it's mute owner, the other florist, Su-ae, and varied customers. She has to deal with a businessman who is sexually inappropriate (and he turns up again), and develops a crush - obsession really - with a photographer who shows up one day to take photos of violets for the home magazine he works for. 

This obsession spirals, until San is putting herself in sexually dangerous situations and floundering in her lifestyle, despite having Su-ae (who is much more grounded) staying with her for a while. Her new closeness with the more extroverted Su-ae brings back memories of being rejected by her childhood friend Namae after a burgeoning romantic moment, and the hurt feels fresh again, driving her recklessness. San is full of repression, from her desires, to her voice, and this reflects the misogyny she experiences as a young woman in Korea, especially one who isn't naturally interested in men and their desires. 

It's slightly slow-paced, but with an increasing sense of dread. Many of San's experiences are laden with overpowering and dangerous metaphor as well as reality. The work in the flower shop and at the farm that supplies them gives her sustenance, nature as healer, but even then she focuses not on the gentle and beautiful but an unusual carnivorous plant. This is very much her personality. And the book doesn't give her, or the reader, an easy out. 

I found this a difficult read; there is so much despair in the character and in the story arc. It's very moving, as well as troubling. The writing style is fluid, not reflecting San's isolation or despair structurally, and I found that made it a bit easier to understand the flow of the story, in a really good translation as well.