The House of Winds : Mia Yun

                                     Image Credit: Evergreen Review
It's all quiet on the reading front. That's what I should say right now after reading this book. Mia Yun's The House of Winds lulled me into a soporific sense of quiet. Dulled and drowsy, I wonder when it is that I would pass this reading slumber and awaken deadened senses to the life of a wonderful story.

The House of Winds is not a bad book. Not at all. Set in 1960s Korea, it is a gentle coming-of-age tale. A tale of one family. The emotions that bind families together. The ties. The fights. The disappointments. The love that still runs underneath it all. It is a novel that is rich on words - Mia Yun has a way of narrating that can make words appear like the lilting note of a Mozart symphony. If I were to read to just delight in the delicious senses of words creating wonderful meaning, then I would have loved the House of Winds.

Mia Yun's focus is not on Korea - the South Korea of the 1960s was a tumultuous place, but that has no relevance here for her focus is on the family. The narrator (I forget her name), is the youngest child in her family - sharing life with her is her older brother, sister and her mother. Their father is rarely present, only makes fleeting visits to their house and is deemed a failure for his inability to build dreams on foundations. The narrator also has two grandmothers - both different in their own way, one a pious Catholic and the other an almost blind woman on a farm who sits lost in memories of her only son who was missing in action after the Japanese left South Korea.Through a lot of dream imagery, we are taken through a childhood of struggle - they have no stability, moving from one house to another, usually to one in a more rundown locality, and the absence of their father casting an unspoken void in their lives.

Life unravels pretty rapidly towards the end as the children grow up, and the family is split across the seas. But what remains is one mother's love for her children - and that is all that binds the family in the end. How can I not like a book like this? I found the pace a bit too languid. Long passages devoted to undoubtedly beautiful descriptions dragged me from the story, what little there is of it. There is no 'plot' here - reading this novel is a bit like biting into a juicy succulent apple, and rejoicing in the taste of it. The sea of memories here were a bit too hard to swim through all the time, and after you finish the apple, you kind of want the proper lunch too, you know? That never came. So I was hungry...and frustrated...but in a quiet kind of way because that is what the book makes you feel.

Verdict : This may not have been for me, as I lacked the patience to wade through the subtle layers of dreams, memories and other associations, but let that not dissuade you. If you have patience, maybe you stand a better chance with this book than I. 


Rating: 2/5