Jo Kyung-ran
Astra House
15 July 2025
304
eBook - PDF
Contemporary Fiction
ARC via Edelweiss
Blowfish is a postmodern novel in four parts, alternating between the respective stories of a female sculptor and a male architect. Death is the motif connecting these parallel lives. The sculptor’s grandmother killed herself by eating poisonous blowfish in front of her husband and child, while the architect’s elder brother leapt to his death from the fifth floor of an apartment building. Now, both protagonists are contemplating their own suicides. The sculptor and architect cross paths once in Seoul, and meet again in Tokyo, while the sculptor is learning to prepare a fatal serving of blowfish.
The narrative loosely approximates a love story, but this is no romance in the normal sense. For the woman, the man is a pitstop on the road to her own suicide. For the man, the woman forestalls death and offers him a final chance. Through the conflicting impressions they have of one another, the characters look back on their lives; it is only the desire to create art that calls them back from death.
Evoking the heterogeneous urban spaces of Seoul and Tokyo, Blowfish delves into the inner life of a woman contemplating her failures in love and art. Jo’s fierce will to write animates the novel; the lethal taste of blowfish, which one cannot help but eat even though one may die in doing so, approximates the inexorable pains of writing a novel.
Blowfish was an intense and thought-provoking read. It was fascinating to follow the psychological studies of the two characters, learning about their backgrounds and the motivations for their thoughts and decisions. The prose was easy reading, but the subject matter could be difficult for some, so consider that before picking it up if you feel the topic could negatively affect you. I won't say too much more on the plot/outcome front to avoid spoilers. The translation seemed to flow very well, and overall it was a pleasing read. I would definitely be keen to read other works by this author in the future. If you are a fan of other Korean writers along the lines of Han Kang, you will probably enjoy this work too. I am giving it 4.5 stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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