Six Degrees of Separation ~ Flashlight

Susan Choi
"Flashlight" - 2025

#6Degrees of Separation:
from Flashlight (Goodreads) to Things Fall Apart 

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here. 

As most months, I have not read the starter book. It is too new and, therefore, only available in hardback. Here is the description:
"One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old.

Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, is Korean, but was born and raised in Japan; he lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to North Korea. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her Midwestern family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.

But now it is just Anne and Louisa, Louisa and Anne, adrift and facing the challenges of ordinary life in the wake of great loss. United, separated, and also repelled by their mutual grief, they attempt to move on. But they cannot escape the echoes of that night. What really happened to Louisa’s father?

Shifting perspectives across time and character and turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Flashlight chases the shock waves of one family’s catastrophe, even as they are swept up in the invisible currents of history."

The description sounds good but I also have not made the best experiences with Booker prize novels, they often don't keep what they promise and are a lot more shallow and superficial for me to like them. So, I will give this a miss and start with a book I read about.

My first book is, like the starter, about Koreans abroad.
Lee, Min Jin "Pachinko" - 2017

Then, I go with a family who adopts a Korean baby.

Tyler, Anne "Digging to America" - 2006

The adoption reminds me of another story:

Mankell, Henning "Daniel" (SW: Vindens son) - 2000

The Swedish title to this is Vinden's Son, the Son of the Wind which leads me to another book that talks about the differences in cultures.

Buck, Pearl S. "East Wind: West Wind" - 1930

Pearl S. Buck has written many books about the differences between east and west. And this leads me to a story between North and South, black and white, written by another female Nobel Prize winner:

Gordimer, Nadine "Burger's Daughter" - 1979

From here, I go to another African country where we learn about the influence of the colonists.

Achebe, Chinua "Things Fall Apart" - 1958

* * *

We have travelled the world now, from Korea to America, to Sweden, die Africa, back to Asia, then to Africa again. And everywhere we have learned about the difference in cultures and what the influence of one country over the others does. I.e. what we have done to them all. Mostly, nothing good.

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