While working as a temp in Geyonggi Province, Korea, the narrator of Bae Suah's NOWHERE TO BE FOUND discovers herself through the processes of a life which takes a great deal more than it gives. The narrator is twenty four years old in 1988, working small and insignificant jobs to help support her alcoholic mother. Her other family consists of a brother intending to move to Japan to find opportunity and a much younger sister whose only dream is to join her class on an airplane trip, much to the narrator's amazement. Her one and only personal relationship fails though she knows it's all for show, and her jobs demean her further than even her mother's abuse. It is a story of the self, and of the forces acting on the self, to make a whole, if fragile, person out of the scattered pieces of the psyche.

NOWHERE TO BE FOUND is an English debut novella by Bae Suah, and it is a fantastic read. The sweeping prose sucks the reader completely into the narrator's world. The characterization of the family is so realistic and so painful that I cried at the end of her mother's first rage. I felt like I knew her, that I knew her struggles and I could reach out and help her. Bae Suah's characterization is beyond phenomenal. These are true-to- life people who, notwithstanding their location, could live right down the street and come up to be two-faced at your family barbecue. I felt for the brother and sister as well, for their lost and broken dreams and what they tried to do for the narrator.

I wish there was more to this story. It feels like there should be more. We only get the narrator's perspective over a short period of time in her life. What more can there be to influence her choices? We know less about this narrator than we know about her disastrous boyfriend, Cheosolu. This mystery doesn't add a great deal to her character; it just makes the reader wonder what more they could learn about her. Toward the end, she shuts off almost completely and all we're left with are her actions. This is a device which I feel can be too heavy in the short content of a novella.

Since the relationship with Cheosulu comprises most of the book, it is arguable that this is the story. I disagree. I think that the relationship is just background content for the narrator's ideas. This is her frame of reference, her experience in the moment. Cheosulu is a symbol, though for what I'm not entirely sure. NOWHERE TO BE FOUND is full of beautiful imagery and symbolism but as a reader I'm never entirely sure what it's supposed to mean.

Bae Suah's debut English novella is a sign of good things to come. I would recommend this to any reader, student or casual, as necessary reading. Characterization is the key to this novella, and I say it is a key which will unlock a great deal of knowledge and passion in the heart of the audience.