Nuclear Family, Joseph Han
Nuclear Family, Joseph Han
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Nuclear Family

Author: Joseph Han

Narrator: Keong Sim

Unabridged: 7 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/07/2022

Categories: Fiction, Lgbtq+


Synopsis

Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawai'i seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho's Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales.

No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. and Mrs. Cho fear their son won't ever be able to return home, and Grace gets more and more stoned as she negotiates her family's undoing. Struggling with what they don't know about themselves and one another, the Chos must confront the separations that have endured in their family for decades.

Set in the months leading up to the 2018 false missile alert in Hawai'i, Joseph Han's profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.

About Joseph Han

Joseph Han was born in Korea and raised in Hawai'i. He is an editor for the West region of Joyland magazine, and a recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship in Fiction. His writing has appeared in Nat. Brut, Catapult, Pleiades Magazine, Platypus Press Shorts, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He received a PhD in English and creative writing at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. He is currently living in Honolulu.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David on September 19, 2022

Thanks to the Mayor of Flavortown, Cho's Delicatessens are thriving in Honolulu. Or at least they were. When the Cho's eldest Jacob heads to South Korea to teach English he manages to get himself possessed by the ghost of his dead grandfather who uses his body to faceplant himself trying to run acro......more

Goodreads review by od1_40reads on November 26, 2022

I’m so sorry Joseph Han, but I just couldn’t connect with your book. :( There’s some really good material in here about Korean family life and culture, but the writing just didn’t support the ideas unfortunately. And I did try… I really wanted to like this book. I felt the characters were not nearly......more

Goodreads review by Laurie on May 31, 2022

This unfortunately was a DNF at around 34%. I honestly tried numerous times to listen and truly engage in this and it just didn't evoke anything in me. I was bored and the story inspired nothing emotionally for me to attach to any of these characters. I read a few other reviews looking for something......more

Goodreads review by Gwen on May 17, 2022

If this doesn’t win a shit ton of awards I’d be seriously surprised! This was amazing! Took me forever cause I was so absorbed in it all!!!......more

Goodreads review by Jonathan on April 06, 2022

Joseph Han crashes onto the literary scene with this wildly original magical realist / political satire / family comedy that piles together a stoner gal in Hawaii, her straight arrow brother, cranky deli-owner parents, and the spirit of their dead Korean grandfather on an afterlife mission of cultur......more