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    Tongue: A Novel
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    Tongue: A Novel
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    Tongue: A Novel
    Ebook203 pages3 hours

    Tongue: A Novel

    By Kyung-Ran Jo

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Emotionally raw and emphatically sensual, Tongue is the story of the demise of an obsessive romance, and a woman's culinary journey toward self-restoration and revenge. When her boyfriend of seven years leaves her for another woman, the celebrated young chef Jung Ji-won shuts down the cooking school she ran from their home and sinks into deep depression, losing her will to cook, her desire to eat, and even her ability to taste. Returning to the kitchen of the Italian restaurant where her career first began, she slowly rebuilds her life, rediscovering her appreciation of food, both as nourishment and as sensual pleasure. She also starts to devise a plan for a final, vengeful act of culinary seduction.
    Tongue is a voluptuous, intimate story of a gourmet relying on her food-centric worldview to emerge from heartbreak, a mesmerizing, delicately plotted novel at once shocking and profoundly familiar.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateMar 15, 2011
    ISBN9781608197811
    Unavailable
    Tongue: A Novel

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    Reviews for Tongue

    3/5

    53 ratings13 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I bought this for a friend who is moving to South Korea. I found it very difficult to find fiction about South Korea that was either contemporary, or about something other than conflict with North Korea. So when I came across this story, it seemed perfect. The chef protagonist is getting over a recent breakup, and the story explores how she rebuilds her life through food. It sounded almost "like Eat, Pray, Love" except through cooking! And with such a low price, I felt I couldn't go wrong.While the author (and perhaps the translator?) certainly has a gift with words and description, that was one of only two things I enjoyed about the story. The second is the way that the narrator peppers the audience with little facts about the history of food. For example, while making tiramisu, Ji-won explains that it means "pull me up" in Italian, because of the effects of the expresso in it.But sometimes these points went a little too far. I felt uncomfortable reading parts of the story... I didn't understand Ji-won's relationship with her mentor, which included a strange sexual/nonsexual? moment of body contact that came out of nowhere and had something to do with the mentor losing his daughter at a young age. I almost felt like that part could have been a story in itself, were it fleshed out and explained a little more. Ji-won and her Chef mentor aside, there are few other characters. Her ex, the dog they shared, the ex's new girlfriend, Ji-won's uncle, and a friend of Ji-won's are really the only others. While her ex and his new girlfriend were obviously necessary, since this story is about Ji-won's life after the breakup, Ji-won's friend seemed unneeded. The uncle seemed only to be included as another link to family. Her grandmother is often mentioned as being the one who taught her how to cook, though the old woman passed away many years ago. Don't even get me started on the dog. All I'll say is that this is not the book for animal lovers, as the dog is continuously neglected.To end, I have to say that I'm not sure who this book *is* for. Those who appreciate the delicacy and beauty of language may, since the writing is at times simply a pleasure to read. I want to say that those who enjoy food and cooking will enjoy it, especially since such a wide variety of foods and ingredients are mentioned throughout. But then again, sometimes one can take food a little too far, which Kyung Ran Jo's character does. I almost gave up reading it several times, but managed to stick it out and finish the entire book. Of course, now I feel the need to read something completely different--something with snappy dialogue and humor, with adventure or romance or action. All of which would be the opposite of "Tongue."
    • 4/5
      I read it and had to leave it for a while so I could linger over what I had read. I had to give my brain time to process and understand what exactly it was that I had ingested. To digest, so to speak. Excuse the layered pun. Anyway, I know that the author has been accused of plagiarizing the book but since I don’t know much about the issue, I will review the work simply based on what I read and indeed, how I felt about it. Tongue, I might say, is a work of genius. I say this almost unwillingly because, no matter what others say, Kyung Ran-Jo’s style is not (and perhaps never will be) comparable to Haruki Murakami’s. I think both authors have a distinctive style and voice. Tongue is, for the most part, a narrative – a monologue – a soliloquy – in the utter destruction of a person, Ji Won, after she is dumped cruelly by the man she loves more than anything and anyone in the world. Her love is closely tied to and reflective of her passion for food and with the breaking of her heart, Ji Won loses the thing most essential to a chef, her taste. Then she regains it but the novel isn’t too clear on that. The prose is rich with the mention of various personalities and figures in history and their various food preferences. Recipes are sprinkled across the pages, sometimes absently and unconsciously. Reading this book feels like gorging oneself, much like a hedonist, on food. And yet, the lonely voice of the narrator gives the reader first row tickets to her sadness and bewilderment. The flailing relationship the protagonist has with her ex-boyfriend’s dog is reflective of her own struggle to retain her sanity. The book narrates some of the most cruel acts carried out against animals for the sake of gourmandism and the reader flinches at the nonchalant tone in which these acts are described. But the most shocking part is the ending. The ending that is true to the title and leaves the reader with a feeling that is largely disgust but sprinkled liberally with an unwilling admiration. For that, I give it 3.5 stars.
    • 3/5
      Kyung-Ran Jo's novel "Tongue" is a slender volume that provides a glimpse into the pressured lives of 21st Century Koreans. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Korea is still divided. Massive armies on both sides of the border are trapped in a perpetual ceasefire. There is no true peace. Seemingly in response to this existential threat, South Korean popular culture is actively exploring the horror genre.This Korean trend seems to be much like the horror and science fiction films, books, and comics that filled 1950's America as the country dealt with the threat of a nuclear war between antagonistic superpowers. Kyung-Ran Jo's "Tongue" begins innocently with light philosophical ruminations on cuisine and food preparation then eventually leads to a predictable denouement. For me the novel is most interesting as a document of a historical moment. Even so, Kyung-Ran Jo is a writer to watch.
    • 3/5
      I don't like to review books I did not like. I have won several books from early reviewers and have loved all of them...but not this one. However, they keep asking for the review. I did not like the writing or the subject matter. Usually I love books of other cultures...not this one.
    • 2/5
      This book is very very intense. Kudos for the translator for keeping it very tight and beautiful. It isn't an easy book to read since the pain is very visceral.. If you think this is going to be a foodie book, skip it, because that is not really it. There are some beautiful sentences about food but it isn't a look into Korean food, which is what I'd thought it might be. It's not a good book for summer reading; better for fall or winter. I'm not sure I can say that I liked it, but it is possible it is a book I will go back to if I ever feel a need to read about intense pain. I will be curious to see how this book does and whether readers can relate to this kind of theme.
    • 1/5
      this book was unfortunately terrible with a capital 'suck.' it was painful to get through. i tried and tried until about page 90 and then somehow i forced myself to finish it.the main problem with this book was that there was so much promise to the story. but, no. instead of containing interesting writing, there's an abundance of tsurezure.the main character is your typical anti-hero loser who's paralyzed by her pathos and retardation. nobody cares. is this really representative of korean writing? i sure hope not.received this book as part of the early reviewer's club. selling it on amazon. any takers?god, i would take reading a piece of trash like a tom clancy novel over this bullshit any day. can't believe i just typed that.
    • 2/5
      Any other review that tell you this book will whet your appetite is lying and I doubt they have actually read the whole of this aggravating, unsavory book. I can understand why this book would draw comparisons to that of Haruki Murakami. It is by an Asian author, yet the lack of peculiarly Asian details - pagodas, tatami mats, kimchi, etc, would suggest that this book, like those of Murakami's, would have strong translatability to the western world. Nominally, in that respect it's similar. But if there's one thing this book makes clear, it's that there are cultural quirks that are peculiar to certain cultures that will not translate, no matter how you label it. The equivalent of putting a whole fried egg on a bed of rice. Quirks corroborated by Korean movies that I will never get, such as vomit being a natural, everyday emotional outlet as crying. Stylically, the book aphoristic style is exhausting to read. And it's more than the decorous Brillat Savarin quotes at the beginning of some chapters. One of the reasons why I grew out of Murakami was because I got weary of that brand of Asian ennui and pseudo-intellectual open ended questions passing as thoughtful prose: "It's better to dream about onions than not to dream at all. Because dreaming must be proof that you're thinking nonstop about the thing you desire. But why does desire come hand in hand with repression?" "Individual likes and dislikes are important in choosing wine, and the same is true for food." *gee*"You have to be able to cook a chicken according to your mood and intuition, and the side dishes and ingredients to be stuffed into the chicken have to change with the seasons." *no you dont*"It's my fate to love and cook. Loving and cooking are different but also the same""The hours I wait with desire will certainly be mysterious."This book abuses that shortcut, with unintentionally humorous results. One of the delights of the Food Network television show, Iron Chef, is the nutty Jingrish comments made by the english-dubbed guests, such as "Oooh it's like a cat's tongue touching my tongue." This book has that nonsense in droves. If that's your bag, then go get this book now:"Like a horse was slowly walking into my mouth. It filled me up." "Memories are like a windmill with sharp points, spinning in your heart, stabbing it." *mechanically problematic*"If black caviar is the dream of gourmets, foie gras was born from human desire and pleasure.""If loneliness or sadness or happiness could be expressed through food, loneliness would be basil. It's not good for your stomach, dims your eyes, and turns your mind murky. If you pound basil and place a stone over it, scorpions swarm toward it." *what? basil?*And then there's the lines of dubious sensuality."My throat is already lengthening and opening wide, like that of an always-accomodating goose""His tongue rests in my mouthlike a flopping fresh fish. I grip my mouth closed to stop it from escaping. My teeth grab it swiftly and mash it. My muscular tongue wets it with flowing saliva, works it, flips it, moves it deep into my throat....""the most sensual of aromas is the essence of a young raven fed only boiled eggs for forty days, then killed and preserved in myrtle and almond oil""Your legs are so long and gorgeous, like a flamingo's."There are other moments when you can tell the author is trying to be sensual. But really it's just anatomical. As if the mere mention of the word, uvula, is cause enough for erotic gyration. Similarly, sometimes it seemed the author was trying to convey a Michael Pollan-esque engagement with the earth when we eat meat, but instead it is approached again anatomically, uncompassionately, with an uneasy emphasis with whatever parts of food preparation involving knives.This book could have easily been a lean short story. Love and food go hand-in-hand. Short and sweet. This book could have done without the meandering thoughts on the virtue of dog ownership. It could have done without the incessant food namedropping - cursory mentions of caviar, foie gras, pheasant, truffles, ham and emmentaler, melon and parma ham, cinnamon sprinkled ravioli. Every chef knows the value of using a minimum of ingredients. How about lingering on the sweetness and tartness of blueberries before you move on to stuffed Milanese sausages? And despite all this fat, we hardly get to know the object of the main character's obsession and why he's so worth so much trouble.This review was as a member of the Librarything Early Reviewers program.
    • 4/5
      NOTE: SPOILERS BELOW!!!!I fully realize some will be tempted to claim this is a non-review, but I think I'll discuss enough here to raise it to the status of semi-review--even though I haven't actually read the book yet.Here's what happened: I've recently started buying more modern Asian fiction, and I've collected/read a fair amount. But the only book by a Korean author I have is Our twisted hero by Yi Munyol, which I gave 3.5 stars.So when I saw Tongue by Kyung-Ran Jo on the Early Reviewer list, I thought I'd take a chance. But once I got it and read the blurbs and the first couple pages, it started reminding me of another book, The taste of a man by Slavenka Drakulic. That was a pretty good book, but the plot twist there was telegraphed right from the title: spurned lover ends up eating spurner. And a blurb on Tongue talks about a foodee who "starts to devise a plan for a final, vengeful act of culinary seduction." And there was just something about the translation (by Chi-Young Kim) that made the narrative "sound" almost European.So I let my wife read it first (she gives it 3.5 stars), and the first thing I asked her was if it ends with an act of revenge cannibalism. After her positive reply, I put it back on the TBR mountain and started reading the new translation of Amerika by Franz Kafka.
    • 5/5
      As should be apparent to anyone who takes a look at the English cover, Tongue is a novel about desire -- the desire for perfection and beauty, and for what you cannot have, and, disconcertingly, for justice.It is a credit to the author and her translator that the prose so effortlessly elicits desire in the reader. Each sentence is beautiful and thoughtful (although chapters at times seemed tied up a little too neatly for my taste). As the narrator recovers from an unwanted break-up by focusing on foods and tastes, I often found myself salivating over the author's rich, original descriptions of food; even, frighteningly, as the narrator's ingredients became more and more bizarre. This is not your typical food break-up story, however. While other heroines use taste to rediscover the joys of the world, our narrator drowns the outside world in her obsession with taste.She is consumed with winning back her lost love through taste; she is convinced that her ex's new lover knows nothing of taste, and is therefore inadequate. Her progression in this obsession, and its inevitable outcome, is clearly disturbing. It is a credit to Kyung-Ran Jo's writing that the reader feels compelled to see the story through to its macabre end; that the reader might share in a shadow of the desire motivating the story's narrator.And also! How exciting to read a novel that stays in my head for weeks after I've finished it. Truly an excellent work, beautifully translated.
    • 3/5
      It's so rare to read translations of Korean novels that it's hard to tell if the writing is a result of the original Korean or the translation. Regardless, it's an incredibly descriptive account of one woman and the intensity of emotions that she experiences after her boyfriend of many years leaves her.The book is filled with metaphors and analogies, mostly food-related. And again I can't tell if it's a phenomena of the Korean language that makes the book seem so over-laden with descriptors but it definitely makes you hungry. The food references are many.For the most part she seems like a normal woman who's boyfriend has left her but Kyung-Ran Jo intersperses the narrative with some harrowing moments of psychosis on the part of the main character. The ending takes on a surreal departure as the novel moves from normal depression into a form of healing that even the most open minds might balk at. I'm not even sure the ending was real or imagined.
    • 5/5
      This review is based on the ARC edition received via the Early Reviewers program.When Jung Ji-won's boyfriend leaves her for another woman, she sinks into a deep depression and struggles to cope with living her life alone again after a seven year relationship. Re-reading that brief summary, I am reminded that I had serious doubts about requesting this book because it sounded like it might not be able to hold my interest. I think the comparisons to Murakami made me decide to give it a shot. After reading the first chapter I was no longer worried - the book is written and translated in breathtakingly effective language and as the story unfolds, darker places than are suggested in the summary are explored. Make sure you have lots of good food available when you read this book. Her distinctive voice and beautiful prose makes the reading of every sentence a sensual pleasure, and her descriptions of food and taste in particular make your mouth water. Although the story is set in Korea, Jung Ji-won works in an Italian restaurant so most of the foods that are encountered are familiar to Western readers.This is without a doubt the best book I have read this year.
    • 4/5
      Oh, my! That’s what I have to say after reading Kyung-Ran Jo’s first novel to be translated from Korean into English. I’m ready for more. This is the story of a young woman who thinks her life is perfect. She and her boyfriend are living together. He’s an architect; she’s a cooking instructor. Their new home, which he designed, is the home of her cooking school. Only one problem. He leaves her and she does not want to let him go. He leaves his dog with her, though. Several words of warning here. Don’t read this book if you are sensitive to cruelty to animals. Don’t read this book if a preponderance of food and cooking terms and descriptions would bog you down. I happen to like to read about food so this novel was right up my alley. The blurb on the book compares the author’s writing to that of Haruki Murakami. I don’t think that is the case. The author seems more like a cross between the two female Japanese authors, Banana Yoshimoto and Nasuo Kirino.There is something very appealing about this story. It’s great psychological drama which dissects the thoughts and feelings of the loser in a broken love relationship. There is also a feeling that something sinister will happen, but it’s not until the very end that all becomes clear. The only thing I'll say is that I’ve never quite read such an ending as the one presented to me by this novel.
    • 3/5
      I was searching for my own words to sum up the arc of the novel, but I'm not sure that I can put it better than the summar on the back: Tongue is the story of "a woman's culinary journey toward self-restoration and revenge" - though I'd add that the journey starts at almost utter breakdown before we hit the restoration part. The novel is the internal monologue the narrator, Jeong Ji-Won, from the moments after the demise of a long relationship through the six months that follow.

      The book starts in January and finishes in July - the narrator early on promises the important people in her life, obliquely, that healing will take time, and that she needs to work through her grief in her own ways, that, while she might be psychically bleeding in January, by "peak croaker season," she'll be in a better state of mind. And so she is. The trope is a common one - healing takes time, things feel better in the spring - and yet, for all that, the movement of the novel is compelling, and resonant: we feel the urge to bundle up, keep to ourselves, stay in the familiar in the wintertime, and become more adventurous in the spring. It's not a purely linear movement, of course - the narrator spends a lot of time reflecting on the past, and the story of the events leading up to the break are told in pieces through these reflections. Nor are there exactly as many chapters per month as their are weeks, though it is close. But the motion is clear.

      In addition to a movement through the seasons, the novel moves through waves of taste. The narrator, an accomplished cook and thoughtful eater, finds her pleasure in tasting disappears as she deals with the initial aftershock of the end of her relationship. She can recall tastes she loves - but in the present moment, when she's not reminiscing, she isn't interested any longer, and for a time, she stops eating.

      Like other books set in a culinary background, this one focuses deeply on food. The narrator goes to great lengths to associate for us certain emotions with certain tastes - the hopefulness of a crisp, tart vegetable; the sourness of an apple's after-taste; the complacent comfort of a sweet hot drink. In a way, this is good - readers whose own comfort foods diverge from the narrator's can follow the association she intends to call up, if they're paying half attention, and so the focus of the book remains clear. Early in the winter, she gives us basil as the perfect taste of loneliness; she eats some in a pesto in March, and feels it's the perfect taste of spring. We assume the basil hasn't changed, and that this taste instead is standing for the lonely hollow that remains even after some healing has taken place. However, even those who like lingeringly detailed culinary descriptions might find themselves hastily turning pages from time to time - occasionally, the author doesn't spend enough time giving us something in the character to care about, enough context to really feel the richness of the descriptions, and so they can fall a bit flat.

      Because she is a gourmand, the narrator paralells almost everything to food. Food is like sex, of course, this we know from many sources - but she is refreshing about it, and so, while the analogies are familiar, they do not bore. She gets more specific, too - the power of salt is a theme throughout, to flavor a dish, to make it more itself, to heighten the sweet and dull the bitter. Much of her relationship does the same - and while she doesn't say it particularly, saltwater is also tears. Connections like this keep the prose alive in occasional vivid flashes.

      My main criticism here would be the pacing - and I admit, part of that might be due to veracity in the novel. The narrator makes progress towards healing like a real person would - staggering forward one step and back again two. She deludes herself that she is OK, that she's made progress, at times when we can see quite clearly she hasn't. But, over the course of the book, her tastes come back, heightened by other senses - she devotes a chapter, for example, to making foods with incredible scents. She also refers to other people in an internal shorthand: the Chef at the restaurant she returns to after the break-up is known as "Chef", and we don't know her ex's name until it is said by someone else, at which point she mentions that she's taken aback, and it takes her a moment to realize who this is. To some readers, this may well appear gimmicky - but it struck true to me. After all, in my internal dialogue, I call my mom "Mom" and my husband "he", and if I'm lost in thought, it might take me an extra beat to respond to their given names. The narrator lives with a continually running internal dialogue, which builds a wall between her and others. You wonder if she developed this state only after the break, or if she had had it going on before. The downfall here, of course, is that, as the narrator says, "The one thing we know about sorrow is that it's a very personal, individual feeling." That may well be true. But there is only so much interest one can take in a continual narrative of someone else's sorrow - it doesn't quite give us enough to attach to at times, in my opinion.

      I think this book will appeal to readers who love works that lovingly discuss recipes, cooking, and food; and to those readers who love stories of broken hearts. It doesn't have a huge amount of depth or complexity, but it is easy to read, and its simplicity is appealing in a way that is new to me.

      As the reviewer below me points out - the book, for its apparent bittersweetness and easy reading, comes to something of a shocking conclusion as the narrator decides that revenge is not only best served cold, it's also the best remedy for a broken heart. She can't let this man go - her feelings for him retard her healing, and lead her to a surprising end. So that, even if this isn't the kind of book you normally read, you might wish to pick it up - it reads fast - just to see what the denouement is and think about the ideas it presents.