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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Rebellion crushed: Human Acts by Han Kang

8/1/2016

8 Comments

 
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How does one organise the logistics of identification and disposal of bodies following a massacre? Does the soul exist independent of the body and, if so, at what point might they go their separate ways? How can theatre survive in a climate of censorship? What right has an academic to push a survivor to revisit traumatic memories in the interests of research? What role do women take in agitating for change?

In May 1980, a popular student-led uprising in the South Korean province of Gwangju was brutally crushed by the military. The acclaimed South Korean writer, Han Kang, would have been not quite ten years old at the time and, as she outlines in an epilogue to the novel, hazily aware of the devastation in the city of her birth. In this, her second novel to be translated into English (by Deborah Smith), she memorialises this atrocious episode in her country’s history and its aftermath through interlinked chapters from six different points of view.

As you can imagine, Human Acts is not an easy read, but it is an important and thought-provoking one. I was particularly struck by the courage and practicality of the young people, some of them still at school, in devising a system for bereaved reclaim the bodies of their relatives as the death toll mounts. Yet, as I was taken again and again to those terrifying times, I began to distance myself from the narrative. I’m curious, and a little guilty, about my reaction; as regular readers will know, I believe we have a collective responsibility
to bear witness to human acts of depravity but, while I don’t believe every cloud has a silver lining, I want my fictional terror tempered by a smidgen of redemption. I might have more to say about this when I’ve reflected on it a little more.

Historically, Human Acts addresses events prior to those in another novel about South Korea,
The Defections (whose central character was born in the year before Human Acts begins). Piece by piece, fiction is teaching me about that country. Thanks to Portobello Books for my review copy, my first translation review of the year and my second flagged as ReadDiverse2016.

I’d just started reading this novel (and still thinking it was one I might recommend) when Charli Mills posted her
latest flash fiction challenge to compose a 99-word story about rebellion. I had a few posts-in-progress I might have paired this with, but I was pulled to the sociopolitical aspect of the theme. It’s a long way from 1980s South Korea to England in the decade before the Second World War, but it’s made me to take another fictional look at the history of the Peak District with this tribute to the working-class protesters who paved the way to my own right to roam:
Kinder Mass Trespass, 1932

We came by train and charabanc, in patched tweeds and hobnailed boots. Shouldering canvas knapsacks, we processed up the clough. Lungs exchanging city smog for peat-scented air, we heaved and gasped and sang our defiance to the top. We raised a cheer as, across the plateau, the flat caps of our northern comrades came into view. A grouse cackled a welcome; these moors would not remain a rich man’s playground.
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Suddenly, a gaggle of gamekeepers, as if from the mist. We pitted our case against the barrels of their guns. Yet only we faced arrest.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
8 Comments
Norah Colvin link
9/1/2016 05:06:30 am

The story sounds pretty depressing, Anne, but perhaps, as you say stories such as this must be told, and heard, so that we get an inkling of the atrocities of which we humans are capable. I look forward to hearing your further thoughts as you ponder the need for an inkling of redemption. I like to think that possibility always exists.
I really enjoyed your flash too. It begins almost poetic. The way the groups came together from each side was effective. How frustrating that only they, and not the gamekeepers, who were probably only doing as instructed, faced arrest. I think you have touched on the ability of people to act against their beliefs in previous posts. It is an interesting phenomenon. I often wonder what it would take to push me, but I have no desire to find out.

Reply
Annecdotist
9/1/2016 04:17:10 pm

Thanks, Norah. This touches on an area we’ve discussed quite a bit on your blog. As I said in those discussions I DON’T believe there’s always the possibility of redemption, which is why I was interested in my reaction to this. There must be a fine line for me between my irritation with fiction that denies the bleakness that I perceive and fiction that builds on the darkness.
Glad you liked the flash. I think there were 5 people arrested at the time but, as Charli has said in her post, that’s the way of the world in that the powerless take the blame. The gamekeepers were acting on the instructions of the landowners, but of course they were trying to preserve their own livelihoods. At least this story had a happy ending in that it contributed to the creation of the national parks, although it took a couple of decades for that to come to pass.

Reply
Charli Mills
13/1/2016 05:34:44 am

If I feel I come away understanding what another might have endured, I can tolerate bleakness. Yet if it is a fictionalized apocalyptic future, I usually can't finish the book (though I did make it through McCormac's The Road, but I found a sliver of hope in the son). Having been a child and then returning to reflect on her city's bashing, had to be a powerful act of voice for Kang. In that case I'd argue for showing the bleakness others endured. Perhaps so we can stand witness. Perhaps so we can prevent other events like it.

Your flash had me cheering for the ramblers, tense at seeing the gun barrels, relieved that arrest was the worst occurrence.

Reply
Annecdotist
14/1/2016 12:50:08 pm

Thanks, Charli. I actually don't mind apocalyptic futures – probably because I think that's where we're heading but hopefully I'll be out of it (selfishly) before it comes to the worst. Sad thing is that no matter how much we know about such atrocities, we don't do so well in preventing them, although perhaps we're getting better at it and it's just such a slow to change.
Glad you were able to connect with the flash – thanks for such a great prompt.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
17/1/2016 07:08:10 am

Interesting you say you like books that portray the bleakness and that you enjoy apocalyptic futures. I too think that's where we're headed, but I hope upon hope that we're not. Not much to convince me otherwise at the moment. I guess I think life is bleak enough, give me something a little more uplifting in a story. I began with the word interesting because I was thinking of the way your own book Sugar and Snails gives a less bleak outlook on life. It is more optimistic for Diana's future. Or so I thought. Was I wrong?

Reply
Annecdotist
18/1/2016 01:04:12 pm

Thanks for adding your perspective, Norah, I think my problem is that if it’s too uplifting it doesn’t seem real but I don’t like to drown in misery.
Regarding my own novel, firstly, like the customers in an old-fashioned shop, the reader is always right, so regardless of what I think, your perspective on my novel is correct. But secondly, I agree that the ending is hopeful – and was actually more hopeful than in earlier drafts – because it felt right for the story. The difficulty with Human Acts, I suppose, is that I wanted a more hopeful ending as a reward for staying with the trauma – but I don’t think she could have produced one that would have been faithful to the story itself.

Reply
Claire 'Word by Word' link
17/1/2016 11:02:11 am

I just read an astonishing piece by Naomi at <i>The Writes of Women</i> (linked below), who was at a Foyles reading/discussion with this author and listening to, (I mean reading) her account of that discussion, certainly makes me want to read the book and provides significant context into the author's reasons for writing it, the necessity of having to write it, which while a personal journey for the writer, seems to have touched many readers in her pursuit of it.

I'm definitely adding this to my list of books to read.

<a href="https://thewritesofwoman.wordpress.com/2016/01/17/should-i-live-in-this-world-which-is-mingled-with-such-violence-and-such-beauty-han-kang-at-foyles-charing-cross-road/">‘Should I live in this world which is mingled with such violence and such beauty?’ Han Kang at Foyles, Charing Cross Road</a>

Reply
Annecdotist
18/1/2016 01:07:44 pm

Thanks for sharing this, Claire, and I’ll pop over to Naomi’s blog. I really enjoy author readings as you get more of a sense of how the writer wanted it to come across. I really like the title of Naomi’s post too: how to live in this world which is mingled with such violence and beauty, with the ordinary side-by-side with extreme cruelty is something I’ve thought about a lot.

Reply



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