rating: 4 of 5 stars
I won Tongue in LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers giveaway, and so I review it:

Tongue is the story of K, a fine-dining chef, learning to live alone after finding her husband, architect Han Seok-jo, cheating on her with her cooking-class student and former model Se-yeon. It is full of the pain that such a betrayal can bring. K’s loneliness is palpable, expressed mainly in the loss of her sense of taste–the first sense to go in those who have lost the will to live, she points out, and a dangerous condition for a professional chef. It is difficult to watch her long for Seok-jo (who is completely in love with Se-yeon, to the point that he builds her his dream house and helps her start a cooking class of her own), to cling to him through their dog (which Se-yeon wouldn’t let him bring into their home), to dream about how to bring him back to her.

There are many books and movies whose cover blurbs and promos tout a surprising twist ending. Few of these deliver; often the surprise is not all that surprising. In Tongue, the surprise smacks you in the face and leaves you gasping. Kyung-Ran Jo’s writing has been compared to that of Haruki Murakami, and I can see that, but the calm gruesomeness of the twist ending is more like Yukio Mishima.

All in all, it is an excellent novel that will resonate with anyone who has been betrayed by a loved one and dreamed of both redemption and revenge.

Tags: Korea, Kyung-Ran Jo