Reader Score
77%
77% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 5 reviews on
"Expansive, haunting, and intimate, Paul Yoon's new short story collection The Hive and the Honey...shows Yoon at the height of his powers." --Sabir Sultan, Pen America
From the beloved award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a spectacular collection of unique stories, each confronting themes of identity, belonging, and the collision of cultures across countries and centuries.
A boy searches for his father, a prison guard, on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen in the Edo Period. A formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town in upstate New York and attempts to build a family.
The Hive and the Honey is a "virtuosic" (Vanity Fair) collection by celebrated author Paul Yoon, one that portrays the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, with each story bringing to light the knotty inheritances of their characters. How does a North Korean defector connect with the child she once left behind? What are the traumas that haunt a Korean settlement in Far East Russia?
"Absorbing...Yoon details fully realized and flawed characters attempting to wade through the complexities of immigrant life...[and] asks urgent questions about what it really means to belong somewhere." --Time, 100 Must-Read Books of 2023
--Patricia Thang, BookRiot
"In a quietly powerful short-story collection, Paul Yoon creates a kaleidoscopic portrait of the Korean diaspora. In these stories, one of which appeared in the magazine, Yoon's characters struggle to find a place for themselves in a world where life can be capricious and harsh, but sometimes marked by grace." --The New Yorker, The Best Books We Read This Week
"In seven virtuosic stories centering characters that include a 17th-century samurai and a contemporary New York immigrant, Yoon captures scenes of the Korean diaspora." --Vanity Fair, 13 New Books to Read This Month
"Paul Yoon masterfully explores the shared history, displacement, alienation, and the lasting effects of war....Yoon's lean and cutting prose dissects truth and inheritance, interweaves haunting tales with mundane lives, and reveals far-flung characters searching for home." --Electric Literature, "Electric Lit's Best Short Story Collections of 2023"
"Yoon's new short-story collection is another spare, controlled masterpiece, comprising seven exquisite stories highlighting the Korean diaspora scattered across time and oceans." --Terry Hong, Booklist (starred)
"Expansive, haunting and intimate, Paul Yoon's new short story collection The Hive and the Honey (Marysue Rucci Books, 2023) shows Yoon at the height of his powers. Following characters of the Korean diaspora throughout history and across geographies, the collection's stories ask essential questions about how we build families and homes." --Sabir Sultan, Pen America