General Fiction
8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster.
By Mirinae Lee.
June 2023. 304p. Harper, $30 (9780063240421).
A narrator, affectionately called “Ms. Writer,” records the story of Ms. Mook, an old woman living her last days in a South Korean hospice. Though no one knows whether Ms. Mook’s stories are the full truth, she tells of dealing with abuse in childhood, surviving the Japanese occupation as a comfort woman, navigating the Pacific War, falling in love in the North, defecting to the South during the Korean War, and changing her name and background to adapt and survive. She becomes a “trickster,” describing her shifting lives as a slave, escape artist, murderer, terrorist, spy, lover, and mother. Though the eight stories that make up Lee’s debut are full of death, loss,…
