Stingray
2006
First Published
3.57
Average Rating
204
Number of Pages
Part of Series
Hailed by critics, "Stingray" has been described by its author as "a critical biography of my loving mother." With his father having abandoned his family for another woman, Se-young and his mother are forced to subsist on their own in the harsh environment of a small Korean farming village in the 1950s. Determined to wait for her husband's return, Se-young's mother hangs a dried stingray on the kitchen doorjamb; to her, it's a reminder of the fact that she still has a husband, and that she must behave as a married woman would, despite all. Also, she claims, when the family is reunited, the fish will be their first, celebratory meal together. But when a beggar girl, Sam-rae, sneaks into their house during a blizzard, the first thing she does is eat the stingray, and what follows is a struggle, at once sentimental and ideological, for the soul of the household.
Avg Rating
3.57
Number of Ratings
129
5 STARS
17%
4 STARS
38%
3 STARS
34%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
4%
goodreads
Author
Kim Joo-Young
Author · 2 books
Kim Joo-Young was born in 1939, and graduated from the Sorabol Art College majoring in creative writing, and made his literary début with Resting Stage, which won the 1971 New Writer’s Award. A leading and popular exponent of “documentary” fiction, set in meticulously researched historical periods, Kim has also served as the director of the Paradise Culture Foundation in Seoul since 2005.
