The Good Son, By Jeong You-Jeong

Translated by Kim Chi-Young

Penguin Books

(Novel, Psychological Thriller)

Miss Jeong is a crime novelist interested in family dynamics, how we construct our identities, and the lengths to which we will go to preserve our understanding of our own identities as well as those who make up our families. The story is set in Gundo, a Seoul neighborhood that is in the midst of massive renovation and reconstruction. The narrator is a twenty-five-year-old man, Yu-Jin who recently completed law school. He lives at home in a posh two-story penthouse that overlooks the coast with his widowed mother. She lost both her husband and Yu-Jin’s brother over ten years ago. Later, when one of her son’s classmate’s last remaining relative dies, she adopts him and raises the two boys as brothers. The boys are close but very different. Yu-Jin excelled at competitive swimming in his teens.  He did well in college but he is currently unemployed and living with his mother. Hae-Jin expressed an early fascination with world cinema and is currently part of a film crew that is shooting on location; he seems much more social than his brother and at ease with female friends. The story begins with Yu-Jin waking up in his apartment experiencing the symptoms he suffers each time he has a seizure: aches and pains, a ringing headache, and memory loss. As he fights to make sense of where he is and what happened, he reveals that he has long been plagued by epileptic seizures, an illness that has cost him dearly, too. His mother, along with his aunt, who is a doctor, have monitored his episodes very carefully and have found, by trial and error, the medications that work best for him. Unfortunately, because of seizures Yu-Jin suffered just before two high-level races, his mother forbade him from pursuing competitive swimming and ended his quest to lead South Korea’s swimming team. Frustrated by this change in course, Yu-Jin has reoriented himself and has been pursuing a degree in law. In fact, he took the bar exam and is scheduled to receive his score today. How terrible then to have awoken to discover that he has no memory of the night before! And where is his mother? Miss Jeong, considered a master of the psychological thriller in South Korea. The macabre, blood-soaked plot is vividly realized, but what resonates after the confrontations and killings are a series of spectacular twists that leave both the reader and the narrator questioning their reality.

“I crawled to the living room table and yanked the phone off the hook. Who should I call? An ambulance? The police? My fingers kept slipping off the buttons. Numbers bounced and danced in front of my eyes. It took me so long to punch them out that I was automatically sent to directory assistance. A grunt leaked out of my throat. I rubbed my palms on my thighs and started over. 1. 1. 2. Carefully, digit by digit, I dialed the emergency number. I went over what I would say. Then I raised my head and froze. I saw in the glass doors leading to the balcony the man I’d caught sight of when I first got out of bed—the man covered in red. The line was ringing. I looked back at mother. I suddenly realized what the police would see. A dead woman with her throat cut, lying in a pool of blood next to her dazed, bloodied son.”