First things first: Susan Choi’s “Flashlight,” her first novel since National Book Award-winning “Trust Exercise,” is almost nothing like “Trust Exercise.”
There’s no reason it should be, of course, but readers who were introduced to her work by that blockbuster (she had published four novels before it) may expect the terse, tricky writer of “Trust Exercise,” in which we think we’re reading one sort of book about an inspiring teacher and his students at a performing arts high school, only to have the rug pulled out from us as Choi gives us alternate takes on what is really happening. (Choi’s situation reminds me of Annie Proulx‘s: A fine writer for years, she had to deal with expectations altered by mega-popular “The Shipping News.”)
One bit of sleight-of-hand near the end of “Flashlight” may feel both familiar and disorienting to “Trust Exercise” fans, since Choi again wants to make sure we don’t get too comfortable. This time, she’s writing about a family: Serk, his wife, Anne, and their daughter Louisa. In the book’s opening pages, it’s 1978 and Serk has disappeared while walking with Louisa on a Japanese beach.
After his death, both Anne and Louisa spend decades trying to understand their relationship to him and to generational trauma, having to do both with their relocation to the U.S. and to the schism of Serk being, technically, Korean but feeling Japanese, since he was raised there after Japan’s occupation of Korea ended in 1945.
There are a lot of digressions and explanations in those last paragraphs, and that’s deliberate. Choi writes memorable characters in “Flashlight” — not just prickly Serk, rudderless Anne and angry Louisa, but also minor characters who pop up for a chapter or two. That includes a Japanese couple who are trying to find the daughter who’s been missing for decades but whom they’re certain is alive. And Tobias, Anne’s child from a previous relationship, who remains weirdly calm throughout “Flashlight,” despite the strong emotions and sometimes violent behavior around him.
Where Choi’s writing is not as strong, though, is in the plotting. “Trust Exercise” reset itself twice but “Flashlight” does it so often that it’s difficult for it to gain any momentum, especially since Choi is always willing to wander off on distractions that won’t be useful to readers, like a three-page description of Hawaii during a brief visit there.
Quite possibly, Choi wants us to be as confused as her characters, who — like people in a David Lynch movie — often are puzzled or outright wrong about basic parts of their existence. That can be an interesting place to be but the writing of “Flashlight,” which is matter-of-fact and humorless, doesn’t seem to suit that interpretation.
That’s probably too harsh. “Flashlight” is a hugely ambitious book and it gets us to an interesting place, with insight into shocking, real-life events that deserve the attention Choi brings to them. It’s just that you’ll have to be patient to get there.
