HELLO, it has been a minute. I have nothing fun to banter about up top, so let’s just get right into it.
On the book front: I read a bunch of spooky books in October, for Halloween season—but unfortunately, most of them were pretty “meh” for me. I don’t really love writing extensive reviews of books that I don’t love, so here we are, a month later. I will, however, briefly comment on these books (at the end of this post), in case anyone is interested? Shrug!
FWIW, I did read (for the first time!) and enjoy ‘Salems Lot by Stephen King, but like...do I really need to review Stephen King books that have been around for longer than I’ve been alive? Probs not. Suffice to say, I liked it. It was probably my favorite spooky book I read this season—maybe second only to My Heart is a Chainsaw, which was the last book I enjoyed enough to write a thing about.
SO!! After a pretty lengthy stretch of books that I didn’t love, I finally got my hands on a copy of Crying in H Mart, after sitting on the library waitlist for weeks and weeks. Most bookish people have probably at least heard about this one because it’s been extremely buzzy, and has gotten great reviews in all the usual places, but I’m here to add my voice to the chorus: it was Good.
As it happened, picking up this book from my library coincided with one of my fave book podcasts (Reading Glasses) hosting a virtual Read-a-Thon...which was basically just a day last weekend that a bunch of devoted listeners set aside some hours to sit down and read books “together,” but separately, lol. Reading takes up a lot of my spare time anyway, so having an excuse to push off chores, errands, and silence my phone was kind anice. Anyway, I decided to dig into this book for the Read-a-Thon because it is pretty short (around 250ish pages) and I figured I could get through the whole thing in one day.
I did manage to finish the book in one sitting--but it took me longer than I thought mainly because I was WEEPING for two-thirds of it (having to pause to wipe ones eyeballs and blow ones nose every 10 minutes takes up more time than you’d think).
It was...a doozy.
Crying in H-Mart, by Michelle Zauner
Plot:
This is amemoir about the author’s (Michelle) relationship with (or relationship to?) her mother. Specifically, it is very much a grief memoir, and delves into her mother’s diagnosis of GI cancer, her eventual death, and the aftermath of that loss. It is also about Michelle’s experience of growing up Korean-American, her experience of exploring her cultural identity, and mother-daughter relationships.
Michelle is an only child—the daughter of a Korean mother and a white father. Growing up, she never really felt like she belonged anywhere. In America, she was perceived as Asian, and therefore “different” from her predominantly white peers (growing up in the small town of Eugene, Oregon, where diversity is...lol, near non-existent). On the other hand, when she would visit Seoul with her mother, people there perceived her as white, only recognizing her as Korean when they saw her beside her mother.
As a young child, Michelle was super close to her mom, but the older she got, the more they started to butt heads (relatable lol). Michelle really struggled with her mother’s high expectations of her, and with the lack of understanding her mom showed for Michelle’s passions. Michelle was a budding musician (would later form the v successful band Japanese Breakfast), which her mom didn’t quite understand and indeed discouraged her from pursuing at times, to Michelle’s dismay. She grew jealous of the mother-daughter relationships she saw her friends having—of the types of moms who were warm and supportive in ways that she felt her own mom was not.
The only time that Michelle felt like she was not being scrutinized by her mother was when they would eat Korean foods together—when her mom would praise her for trying all the different foods, and would explain how to eat everything, which dips went with which foods, which flavors compliment each other, and so on. Food became very much their love language, even when everything else between them was difficult.
Eventually, Michelle decided to go to college in Philadelphia, ensuring she was as far from her mom. During those years while she was away at college on the opposite side of the country (and the subsequent years, as Michelle continued to live on the east coast), their relationship started to mend—at least, they spoke more often on the phone without their conversations devolving into fighting. Then, when Michelle is 25, her mom is diagnosed with terminal cancer, prompting Michelle to drop everything and move back to Eugene to help with her mother’s care. It was during this time (and the time that followed) that Michelle began to re-discover her Korean identity (and particularly, Korean food) that she had inherited from her mom.
Tldr: Michelle navigates the pain/grief of her mother’s terminal diagnosis and eventual death by learning how to cook the Korean foods they used to share, as a sort of way to commemorate her mother’s memory and remember happier times from her childhood.
Thoughts:
First of all, I should say that I find it hard to review books like this because they are so gut wrenchingly sad and deeply personal for the author, and it almost feels like...weird to be “judging” someone’s grief/pain/trauma. I felt this way about books like In the Dream House (Carmen Maria Machado) Not that Bad (multiple authors, edited by Roxane Gay), Know My Name (Chanel Miller), etc. To be clear, I loved all those books, but it feels weird to say that because of the subject matter.
That being said: this book was like a gut punch. Michelle is a talented writer, and her grief was palpable on every page. I truly cried for like, two-thirds of the time I spent reading this book.
One thing I really liked was that Michelle was so unflinchingly honest about her experience. Some of the things she talked about felt so personal as to be almost inappropriate—like, I felt guilty reading about it, like I was a creepy voyeur to someone’s most private moments. It felt like I shouldn’t be witnessing what was playing out on the page, you know? I am thinking specifically of things like the feelings of jealousy over her mother’s other caretakers, admitting that she would have rather her dad got sick, and the ways in which she (Michelle) was not always the...best version of herself. She also does not shy away from describing the realities of being a caregiver for somebody who is dying. Some of the scenes were so gruesome and so brutal, it was impossible to read without weeping.
One thing that was interesting was that Michelle also didn’t always paint her mother in the best light, revealing details of their difficult relationship where her mom was at times (in my opinion) unnecessarily cruel and intentionally hurtful towards Michelle. And vice versa, too. As hard painful and awkward as reading those passages was, I appreciated that Michelle didn’t try to paint her mother as a perfect person just because she’s passed away—her mother was flawed and their relationship was imperfect, and I really appreciated the honesty and vulnerability that went into painting a realistic picture of their dynamic.
Indeed, the passages in the book where Michelle talked about their relationship during her teen years (in particular, the fights she had with her mom) were the most relatable to me, as someone who had a similarly fraught experience growing up with my own mother. Whatever your relationship is to your parents, you can’t read this book and not reflect on it. For me, I feel like I am in the stage with my parents now that Michelle was in around the time she found out about her mother’s diagnosis. I’m older, I don’t live with them, and given the time and the distance, I can kind of appreciate that they were only ever doing the best they could, even though it never felt like it at the time.
That’s the thing about this book, though. It makes you think about all the little things we take for granted; the things we don’t appreciate until someone is gone. I thought that it was particularly touching that Michelle turned to Korean food as a way to process her grief. Food was the one area where Michelle and her mother agreed. During the time her mother was sick and then after she died, Michelle started to learn more about Korean food and cooking, as a way to sort of return to memories of her mother before she was sick/dying.
I think one of the most hauntingly sad parts of the book for me was when Michelle describes learning how to cook Korean food via YouTube videos by a woman named Maangchi—a woman who was about the same age as her mom, but who was not her mom, because it was too late to learn from her own mother. Ack ack right in the feels.
While I can’t honestly say that I have any experience eating the foods that Michelle talks about in the book, I can say that it was super cool reading about dishes that I’d never heard of before, and the descriptions of the foods were vivid enough to make me hungry. I did genuinely enjoy reading about all the different foods (in between my waves of sobbing).
Anyway, this book left me very In My Feelings, hollow in the best way. Feels weird to “recommend” a book that kinda broke my heart, but ya know, here we are.
Also worth noting you don’t necessarily need to be familiar with the author’s music to appreciate this book, though I do love Japanese Breakfast and recommend giving them a listen. I did think it was so sad and interesting that Michelle’s music did not get successful until after her mother had passed--indeed, the first JB album (Psychopop) is a compilation of songs about grief, written after (and about) her mother’s death. Listening to that album after reading this book and realizing what all the songs was…ouchie.
Whew.
Overall: This was a really beautifully written book and even though it’s like, soul shatteringly sad, it’s probably one of my faves of the year. I read a lot of books, but most of them do not evoke as much emotion from me as this one did. I finished it about a week ago and I still can’t stop thinking about it.
As promised, here are the brief comments on the books I’ve been reading and not loving, haha:
The October Duds
Razorblade Tears, by SA Cosby: 2 out of 5 stars. I felt bad giving it a low rating because the plot is interesting and I liked the idea of the story, but not the execution. For me it was written like it should have been an action movie screenplay instead of a novel, and I just couldn’t vibe with it. I would definitely watch (and probably enjoy) this as movie, though!
The Once and Future Witches, by Alix E. Harrow: 1 out of 5 stars lmao, I hated this one. Was a book club read (ie: I didn’t technically read it on purpose), but admittedly, it sounds like something I would normally enjoy (witchy, feminist, female protagonists, queer characters, etc). I went into it expecting to enjoy it at least a little bit, but whew, every single moment I spent with this book was punishing. Basically the story bored me to tears and I felt like it was trying too hard to check a lot of “feminist 101” boxes in a way that didn’t help the narrative. A lot of people (including most of my book club) loved this one—it has a fantastic Goodreads rating—so I realize that I am a minority opinion here, but wowee I have not one good thing to say.
Kill River, by Cameron Roubique: 1 outta 5. Read it for my horror bookclub. We picked this one because we thought it would be like cheesy B-movie horror bad,, but it was mostly just….regular bad lmao. Fun to scream about in our meeting, though!
Survive the Night, by Riley Sager: 2.5/5. As with all my experiences with Sager books, this one was addictive and a quick read, but it was...not great, hahaha. Like a bag of potato chips, it scratches an itch and is hard to put down, but when you finish it you’re like “that was maybe not the best choice.” This was definitely my least favorite of Sager’s books...but not the worst thriller I've ever read. As kinda bad as it was, I still couldn't put it down because I love a trashy speed read, so take that for whatever it’s worth.
The House Next Door, by Anne Rivers Siddons: 2 out of 5. I read this because, in my search for Horror books, I saw that apparently Stephen King really liked this one and it promised to be a spooky psychological haunted house book, which I usually love. This one didn’t do it for me though. It was really slow and kind of...boring? Meh.
Wilder Girls, by Rory Power (as an audioboook): Meh, 2.5 outta 5, and only that high because I’m obviously going to low key enjoy a saphic boarding school horror story to a point, no matter what. It is listed as ‘horror’ but I didn’t really feel like it was horror, which is maybe part of what threw me off here. Apart from that though, there was lots of unnecessary (imo) gore/body horror, and so many plot holes that by the end I just gave up trying to make sense of the story.
ANYWAY, I am happy to report that I am currently reading (and so far enjoying) something much lighter—Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation, so be on the lookout for a review of that gem.
-Amy