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Father's Disappearance Haunts Daughter's New Novel
15 Mar
Summary
- Novel centers on a ten-year-old girl and her father's seaside disappearance.
- Traumatic event reverberates through mother and daughter's lives.
- Book draws inspiration from works by Jenny Erpenbeck and Alice Munro.
Susan Choi's novel "Flashlight," a story that began as a short piece in The New Yorker in 2020 and won an award in 2021, explores a profound mystery. The narrative begins with ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, enjoying a summer in a Japanese coastal town where Serk, an émigré from Korea on academic leave from his American university, is working.
The idyllic summer takes a tragic turn when Louisa wakes up on the beach hours later to find her father missing, presumed drowned. This traumatic event shatters the family unit, affecting Louisa and her American mother, Anne.
As Louisa and her mother return to the United States, the mystery surrounding Serk's disappearance echoes through their lives. The novel, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize and longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize, gradually unveils the truth of what happened.
Choi has cited Jenny Erpenbeck's "Visitation" (2010), Alice Munro's Selected Stories (1996), and George Eliot's "Middlemarch" (1871) as key literary influences for "Flashlight."
