WHEN WE FELL APART

Narrators Daniel K. Isaac and Shannon Tyo offer interesting interpretations of Soon Wiley's Pushcart-nominated novel about family, identity, and the pressures of life in contemporary Korea. When Seoul police inform Korean-American Min that his Korean girlfriend, Yu-Jin, has committed suicide, he can't believe that the ambitious college student would do such a thing. While Min tries to discover what really happened, Yu-Jin tells her own story as the only child of parents who demand perfection. Isaac's calm delivery and questing tone grow believably more desperate and ragged as he searches for answers. In the counter narrative, Tyo creates a sweet-voiced, determined girl who sounds increasingly uplifted by the relative freedom of life in Seoul. As the stories intersect, the narrators movingly guide us through the clash of cultures and choices. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2022]