Miss Kim Knows And Other Stories

By Cho Nam-joo, translated by Jamie Chang
Fiction/Scribner/Paperback/224 pages/$19/Amazon SG (amzn.to/49192nY)
3 stars

The first book of short stories by Cho Nam-joo to appear in English translation sees the South Korean writer return to the stories of everyday women who live under the demands of patriarchy and family. It is, however, a collection with uneven rewards.

Cho is the author of the best-selling novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (2020), which sparked a debate on feminism in South Korea and catapulted the writer to global fame, as the book was longlisted for the United States’ National Book Award.

Miss Kim Knows And Other Stories, translated by Jamie Chang, is composed of eight short stories – many of which see the recurrence of the titular name, a reminder of everyday women in their varied manifestations and a nod to Cho’s earlier novel.

Cho’s strength as a writer is in drawing out the invisible labour of women in the workplace, household and society. Many of her characters labour under lifelong expectations that thwart their ambitions and happiness, although a good number of her characters also manage to find pockets of resistance.

In the titular story, for example, a mysterious and neglected employee quits and an entire department starts to malfunction in her absence. “Miss Kim was… Miss Kim. She had no title, no department, no particular task or client assignments, and yet was the busiest person in the agency. She had no work allocated to her in particular, but she did everything.”

Two of the best stories in this collection, which incidentally feature protagonists in their twilight years, are Under The Plum Tree and Night Of Aurora.

In the opening story, Under The Plum Tree, Dongju visits her eldest sister Geumju at a home for Alzheimer’s patients and wonders if old age is a disease. It is an intimate portrait of sisterhood when both are reckoning with a time past their usefulness and are pondering their likeness as they realise their mortality.

A generation divides the two characters in Night Of Aurora, but Cho likewise delivers a tender scenario where a 60-year-old widow visits Yellowknife, Canada, with her 80-year-old mother-in-law to see the Northern Lights – a strange couple, as fellow South Korean tourists on the trip remark.

Making a wish before the aurora and her mother-in-law, the middle-aged protagonist wails that she does not want to take care of her grandson – in a moving moment with neither judgment nor reprobation as each woman finds a space for understanding.

The weaker stories in this collection are those which offer initially interesting scenarios – such as Dear Hyunnam Oppa, in which a woman rejects a marriage proposal by her boyfriend of 10 years in a long letter – but fail to offer a depth or complexity that Cho’s stronger stories are capable of.

Likewise, in Puppy Love, 2020 – a story of a budding romance between two fourth graders in the time of Covid-19 – the narrative abruptly ends the story and the book, a quality that unfortunately marks many of the stories in Miss Kim Knows.

Overall, the stories are written and translated in a lucid, direct style that charms the reader. Cho knows how to draw her readers into the psychological world of women who have repressed their interests and are learning to undo their own assumptions about their roles in the world.

While some stories may be letdowns, the stronger stories still form an intriguing web of connections that offers a panoramic look at the varied experiences of women – from children to great-grandmothers – in contemporary South Korea.

If you like this, read: Another Person by Kang Hwagil, translated by Clare Richards (Pushkin Press, 2023, $23.85, Amazon SG, go to amzn.to/45Dvot4). The debut novel is a tightly plotted thriller by a young South Korean feminist writer that deals with a case of workplace and intimate violence.