Shelter (Yun)

Shelter 
Jung Yun, 2016
Picador Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250075611


Summary
You can never know what goes on behind closed doors.

Kyung Cho is a young father burdened by a house he can’t afford. For years, he and his wife, Gillian, have lived beyond their means. Now their debts and bad decisions are catching up with them, and Kyung is anxious for his family’s future.

A few miles away, his parents, Jin and Mae, live in the town’s most exclusive neighborhood, surrounded by the material comforts that Kyung desires for his wife and son. Growing up, they gave him every possible advantage—private tutors, expensive hobbies—but they never showed him kindness. Kyung can hardly bear to see them now, much less ask for their help.

Yet when an act of violence leaves Jin and Mae unable to live on their own, the dynamic suddenly changes, and he’s compelled to take them in.

For the first time in years, the Chos find themselves living under the same roof. Tensions quickly mount as Kyung’s proximity to his parents forces old feelings of guilt and anger to the surface, along with a terrible and persistent question: how can he ever be a good husband, father, and son when he never knew affection as a child?

As Shelter veers swiftly toward its startling conclusion, Jung Yun leads us through dark and violent territory, where, unexpectedly, the Chos discover hope.

Shelter is a masterfully crafted debut novel that asks what it means to provide for one's family and, in answer, delivers a story as riveting as it is profound. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1972
• Where—South Korea
• Raised—Fargo, North Dakota, USA
• Education—B.A., Vassar College; M.A., University of Pennsylvania; M.F.A.,
   University of Massachusetts-Amherst
• Currently—lives in Amherst, Massachusetts


Jung Yun was born in South Korea and grew up in North Dakota. She received her B.A. in Asian Studies at Vassar College and went on to the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a Master's in Public Administration.

Career
From there Yun headed to New York City where, after a number of years, she became deputy director for the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts Redevelopment Corporation. Working 90- to 100-hour weeks, she came to realize that, as much as she loved her work, she wanted a different life—in particular, a writing life. So in her early 40s, Yun applied to the M.F.A. program at the University of Massachusetts and in 2007 graduated with her second Masters, this one in writing.

Today, Yun serves as the director of New Faculty Initiatives at the UMass Amherst Institute for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development.

Writing
Shelter, her first novel appeared in 2016 to solid, even superlative, reviews.

Other work has appeared in Tin House (the "Emerging Voices" issue); The Best of Tin House: Stories, edited by Dorothy Allison; and the Massachusetts Review; and she is a recipient of an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize and an Artist's Fellowship in fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband. (Adapted from the publisher and from the UMass Department of English profile.)

Book Reviews
Gripping.... Yun shows how, although shelter doesn’t guarantee safety and blood doesn’t guarantee love, there’s something inextricable about the relationship between a child and a parent…. Shelter is captivating.
New York Times Book Review

The combination of grisly James Patterson thriller and melancholic suburban drama shouldn’t work at all. Yet Ms. Yun pulls it off...The proximity of Kyung's parents and the atmosphere of grief and panic launch him on a spiral of self-destruction that’s impossible to turn away from.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


[A] beautifully crafted, deeply moving first novel.
Chicago Tribune


I read the greater part of Jung Yun's Shelter in a 14-hour sitting, interrupted by only five hours of sleep. I was on a trip, with other people, but I couldn't do anything until I was finished; Yun's debut may be a family drama, but it has all the tension of a thriller. It's a sharp knife of a novel―powerful and damaging, and so structurally elegant that it slides right in...it gets better and richer with every page...Like the writer's version of a no-hitter, Shelter is a marvel of skill and execution, tautly constructed and played without mercy.
Steph Cha - Los Angeles Times


In other hands, this material could fall apart or lose steam, but Jung Yun keeps it together through pitch-perfect, but flawed narrator Kyung and a high-tension storyline.... An unexpected page-turner.
Toronto Globe and Mail


Yun's emotional perspicacity and tensile prose combine to turn it into something deeper than mere family melodrama.... Shelter emerges as rich and multi-layered.
Toronto Star


Jung Yun dazzles in her haunting debut.
US Weekly


[A] fearless and thrilling debut.
Town & Country


The tension inside Kyung [is] visceral....Yun skillfully makes his unraveling feel fast-paced and urgent.
Entertainment Weekly


Yun keeps the suspense and family drama racing neck and neck.... Shelter is a suspenseful, illuminating first novel.
Jane Ciabattari - BBC.com


What follows is the unfolding of a horrific and complicated crime―not to mention a horrific and complicated hidden family history.
Marie Claire


In her intense debut, Jung explores the powerful legacy of familial violence and the difficulty of finding the strength and grace to forgive.... Despite some lengthy asides, especially in the novel’s first half, that threaten to drown the narrative momentum in emotional reflection, a lot happens in this family drama rife with tension and unexpected ironies.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [L]ike Celeste Ng's superlauded best seller, Everything You Never Told Me, also about a dysfunctional mixed-race family's tragedy, this work should find itself on best-of lists, among major award nominations, and in eager readers' hands everywhere.  —Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Library Journal


Yun too frequently explains what would have been more effectively described, leaving the book a little flat. Yun's characters don't merely desire walls and a roof, although houses have a powerful and intelligent presence here. A diverse and nuanced cast of characters seeks shelter from pain and loneliness in this valiant portrayal of contemporary American life.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What were your initial impressions of Kyung Cho in the opening scene of the novel? How did your understanding of him as a father, husband, and parent change as you read on?

2. Financial debt plays a major role in Kyung and Gillian’s lives. What other kinds of debts are present in this novel? And how do these obligations influence the ways in which the characters interact with each other?

3. How do the various houses in Shelter reflect their owners' personalities? In what ways do they provide a sense of security for their owners (or reinforce their insecurities)?

4. As first generation immigrants, Jin and Mae came to the U.S. to pursue their idea of the American Dream. As a “1.5 generation” immigrant (someone who immigrated at a very young age), how is Kyung’s version of the dream similar to, or different from, his parents’?

5. Kyung thinks of his mother, Mae, as someone “who never believed she was capable of anything.” In what ways does your perception of Mae align with or contradict his image of her?

6. Gillian suggests that it would have been understandable if Kyung had simply ended his relationship with his parents. Why might it be difficult for adult children of abusive and/or neglectful parents to simply relinquish their caretaking responsibilities?

7.  Which parent does Kyung seem to resent more? His father, who was the source of such trauma during the first eighteen years of his life? Or his mother, who influenced many of his choices during the last eighteen years?

8. Kyung notes that Jin treats his grandson, Ethan, very differently than he treated Kyung as a child. Is this a selfish act on Jin’s part? Or a selfless one?

9. Both of Kyung’s parents seem drawn to religion for different reasons. What are some of those reasons? And why does Kyung reject the church and the people associated with it so strongly?

10. Connie says that he knew “not even five minutes after meeting [Kyung]— that nothing was ever going to make [him] happy.” How does the idea of happiness differ for each character? And how do characteristics like race, gender, religion, age, and class influence those differences?

11. In the final scene, Kyung begins to see his father in a more sympathetic light. In what ways is that sympathy earned or not earned?

12. What do you hope for the main characters by the novel's end?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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