Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

“Was this a graveyard, I wondered? Are these gravestones? I walked past the torsos, treetops lopped off, exposed cross-sections stippled with snowflakes that resembled salt crystals.”

This novel is dreamlike throughout, and it appropriately begins with a dream sequence. In it, the protagonist is not sure whether she is encountering trees or bodies. This ambiguity speaks to the novel’s shadowy treatment of reality, but the blurred boundary between trees and human bodies also speaks to the novel’s interest in some of South Korea’s most tragic forgotten history. The trees in Kyungha’s dream resemble a mass grave, and this dream establishes the importance of Grief and Loss to the novel’s thematic project on its very first page.

“In the mornings and evenings I continued to cook meals and sit down with my family. I tried to have as many conversations as I could with my daughter, who had just started middle school and was encountering new situations at every turn. But I felt split in half. Even in those private moments I could feel the shadow of the book lurking.”

This passage speaks to the intense emotional toll that writing about the massacre in G—— took on Kyungha. It consumed her every waking thought and disturbed her family’s daily routine. Kyungha’s deep sense of unease at uncovering and writing about such traumatic history is meant to speak to the nature of historical memory itself: Kyungha cannot forget about the massacre, and although she might not admit it, her pain has begun to shape her daily life, raising the theme of Historical Memory and Collective Trauma. The people of Korea, although they do not always discuss it openly, are similarly shaped by historical trauma even as they try to move on and live their lives normally.