Excavations : a novel /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Michell, Hannah, 1983- author.
Edition:	First edition.
Imprint:	New York : One World, [2023]
Description:	x, 302 pages ; 22 cm
Language:	English
Subject:	Missing persons -- Fiction. Married people -- Fiction. Conspiracies -- Fiction. Corruption -- Fiction. Building -- Accidents -- Fiction. Korea (South) -- Fiction.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/13448369

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780593596050 0593596056
Summary:	"At home in Seoul, former journalist Sae, is waiting with two clingy toddlers for her husband to come home from work. He has never been this late before. Her children are crying, and Sae, exhausted and anxious, turns on the TV to distract herself. She clicks to the news, which shows a horrific disaster, the collapse of a massive skyscraper where Jae was an engineer. Minutes, then hours, and then days pass. No one has seen Jae, but things aren't adding up. There are rumors that the foundation was unstable. Jae, who was working on a luxury pool at the top floor, was reported to have been working in the basement. The government was involved, the contractors missing. Sae-who met Jae when they were students at an anti-government protest and has relied on him as her guiding and steadying hand-is troubled, terrified, and...suspicious. Leaving the children with her estranged mother, Sae sets out to uncover the truth of what happened to her husband. Her investigation takes her to an upscale club where the proprietor, Myonghee, is not merely supplying booze and girls but also seeking information, for her own purposes, from every drunken businessman who lets corporate secrets slip. As Sae and Myonghee begin to find what they sought, they must both ask themselves where accusation ends and guilt begins"--

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

A former journalist journeys into the urban underbelly of 1992 South Korea to track down her missing spouse in this knockout standalone thriller from Michell (The Defections). Sae, who long ago quit her job to care for her two young sons, is anxiously waiting for her husband, Jae, to return from work when she learns that Aspiration Tower, the building Jae had been working on as an engineer, has collapsed. Sae rushes to the scene, where the ruins of the tower resemble "a city blown apart by a bomb." Unsuccessful in locating her husband or his missing business partner, Bae, among the dead or wounded, Sae calls on her atrophied skills as an investigative reporter to find out what happened. Her distress intensifies when she visits the offices of her husband's firm, L&S Engineering, only to find it had moved out months earlier. Flashbacks to the couple's first meetings, as university students, in 1986, effectively enhance the emotional stakes of the investigation. This superior variation on a familiar thriller trope isn't easily forgotten. Agent: Sharon Bowers, Folio Literary. (July)

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Excavations : a novel /

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