The Apology by Jimin Han (Little, Brown and Company)

Jeonga Cha is an unlikely heroine.  Not only is she a sprightly 105, within the first few pages of The Apology, she’s dead. But neither of those factors get in her way. Immediately she launches into the story of her life, one that’s both charming and duplicitous.

Jeonga has secrets, ones that she’s never disclosed to her sisters, Mina,the oldest at 110, and Aera who’s 108 but boasts the most beautiful hair in the family. These women have learned to coexist through their “territorial intuition and quest for harmony.” These traits show up primarily in the colors they choose for their clothes, which never clash. Otherwise the sisters often do, with Jeonga usually being the one who prevails.

“An epilogue is what I wanted in my own life,” she tells herself but when one turns up, it isn’t particularly welcome. A letter arrives from the U.S., addressed to Mina. Since Jeonga is the only sister who’s fluent in English, the language used by the letter’s writer, she’s the one who’s given the task of reading it and then relating its contents to her sisters.

As she makes her way through the English words, she uncovers a bombshell, the kind that works well in a Shakespearean comedy but much less so in ordinary life. Two separate branches of the Cha family had emigrated to America several generations ago, branches so separate that they were unaware of each other’s existences. Now through an annoying twist of fate, the great-grandniece of Jeonga’s vanished sister, who had long ago defected from the family home in Seoul to North Korea, and Jeonga’s own great-grandnephew both have chosen to attend Oberlin where they meet, fall in love, and are happily planning their wedding. This, Jeonga decides, is a scandal and she must prevent these cousins from marrying.

The backstory of this problem is rooted in Jeonga’s secrets and she’s damned if she’s going to let her sisters in on any of those hidden details. Still Mina and Aera are as determined as their baby sister. Even with the falsified details of why Jeonga is taking an unexpected flight to the United States., the other two insist on going with her.

The comedy becomes convoluted but quite delicious as the old women bicker their way across the Pacific and into a luxurious hotel in San Francisco. Jeonga’s hidden past unfolds as she casts her memory back upon it and the suspense of how she will solve the family dilemma without involving her sisters heightens and then swiftly dissolves when she has a fatal encounter with a moving bus. 

Now what? 

At this point, the author switches gears so thoroughly that The Apology becomes two separate narratives. Jeonga in a murky version of the bardo state roams through the afterlife, unsure that she will ever be able to forestall the catastrophe that continues to simmer in the world of the living. Unfortunately anyone who’s still reading this novel begins to feel unsure as well and gradually begins not to give a hoot.

A delightful beginning turns into a mass of tangled storylines and none of them lead to a satisfying conclusion. “All’s well that ends well,” Shakespeare insisted but a felicitous ending needs a better underpinning than what’s served up in The Apology. 

With luck, Jimin Han’s next novel will concentrate on these three centenarian sisters because they steal the story when they stand together. They’re far too marvelous to leave stranded as they have been in what becomes an annoying and unsatisfying attempt at fiction.~Janet Brown