Tongue [Paperback]

The protagonist of Tongue is Ji-won, a cook who's opened up her own cooking school in the home she shares with her boyfriend, architect Seok-ju. Together they have designed her dream kitchen, where she teaches small groups to make breads and Italian food. When Seok-ju falls for a former model taking cooking lessons, he leaves Won alone with his dog Paulie to close up her kitchen and go back to work at the Italian restaurant where she was trained.

The chapters follow Won month after month through a traumatic, isolating breakup. She thinks constantly of food and Seok-ju, works long days in the restaurant taking on extra duties, and falls with Paulie into an abyss of loneliness in the home they once shared with "him." At first her devastation seems normal, then a bit scary, then a bit sad. And after she finds out that Seok-ju has now built their dream home for Se-yeon, who's opening a new cooking school, we see how unmoored Won really has become.

Food, taste, and sense in general are the centerpiece of the novel, and Jo gives Won a very convincing gourmandism. Ji-won spends plenty of time musing on meals she's served to Seok-ju, meals she could serve to get him back. But the sexual angle on food isn't by any means the only one. There are some highly erotic scenes and fantasies, but Won is interested in sensation more generally. Some of the best food discussions are those of her childhood, of her grandmother using a pear reduction to sweeten everything, or cooking plain, earthy meals. The importance of salt, the taste of loneliness, the close association of love and hunger, "physical symptoms that propel your life."

The novel is set in Seoul, but Won mostly cooks Western food and makes a surprising number of Western cultural references. This is the first Korean novel I've read, but it felt quite homey, and to a large extent the comparisons to Haruki Murakami are apt. There is a certain way reality is tilted for Won that makes everything a bit strange, but she's going through a dark, intimate process that could tilt anyone. I found the food writing very evocative, and the emotional ups and downs as well. Tongue was a bit dark, but I'm hoping to see more of Jo's work translated in the future.

I don't think the storyline is that bad, but it's not an engaging storyline. It's about heartbreak, which we can all relate to at some level. But heartbreak is one of the worst feelings people experience, falling apart at the seams, fumbling to grab a hold of doing daily essentials and trying to heal, and being incredibly vulnerable. This book embodies it, but it's just an awful way to meet a character and feel her empty heart and desperation. So much so, I don't even care how she recovers from this heartbreak -- if she ever does. I'm not even rooting for her.

WARNING: HUGE SPOILER: Very perverse tale of how a chef is grieving the loss of her architect boyfriend of seven years, who left her for one of her former students. The chef closes down her cooking school, returns to work at the Italian restaurant Nove, and in the end, kidnaps the girlfriend, severs and serves her tongue to her ex-boyfriend. The book has these very beautiful, erotic anecdotes about food, spices and gourmands - how a true gourmand does not care about the pain inflicted on an animal as long as it preserves the taste; how you reject everything from a supplier so he will up the ante next time; how basil is sad and saffron is happy; how personal a knife is to every chef - the skill is in handling a knife. This book is in translation. It wasn't a pleasant read, nor was the story always intriguing, but it was an interesting.