I LEAVE IT UP TO YOU by author Jinwoo Chong, is a new to me author and I was impressed by how the quiet, stoic human strength and vulnerabilities are blended into the fabric of this story.
A New Jersey-born Korean-American queer young man moves across the river to the Big Apple for work and to have freedom, a life away from his family, expectations and duties. Young Jack Jr. refuses to take over the family restaurant his father built up from scratch and expects one of his sons to take over. When this responsibility is passed on to Jack Jr. in an announcement with friends and family present, he refuses, leaves home and stays away, not even in touch with the family for the next decade.
A decade later, Jack Jr. wakes up from a coma that he went into after an accident sometime before COVID-19. It’s 2 years since he’s asleep, COVID-19 has changed the world around him as Jack Jr. slowly comes to terms with his present-day life. He is back in the family womb, his parents looking after him, his still fractured relationship with his elder brother. As Jack Jr. joins back into society he realizes it’s like riding a bike, only the look of the bike has changed from what he knew earlier.
Jack Jr. goes back to working at the restaurant he had left behind, learns to be around people he once was close to, and falls in love all the while making sense of the 2 years he’s missed living actively. Ultimately Jack Jr. sees his life come full circle from when he had left home a decade back, only this time he’s forced to face it all with having no options left. As he navigates working as a chef, being friends with his now grown nephew and his attraction to his ex-nurse, it feels like Jack is leaving it up to fate the things he fought once upon a time.
The tone of the story is quite melancholy. A sense of life playing out the way it wants and the characters trying to adjust themselves around it, in the best way they can. Jack Jr. while being resigned to his present day sees life and the people around him in a more sympathetic, understanding way. There’s sadness from letting go of past loves, and grudges but also hope lives in the hearts of the characters for a better understanding of each other and a better future.
I LEAVE IT UP TO YOU is a story of a family in its dysfunctional glory and bittersweet reunion where the next generation takes over their place even if comes a bit later than expected of them.
From the award-winning author of Flux comes a dazzling novel about love, family, and the art of sushi that asks: What if you could return to the point of a fateful choice, wiser than before, and find the courage to forge a new path?
A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family.
Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. As he steps back into the life he abandoned—learning his Appa’s life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 AM fish runs, doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night\'s pitiful number of customers, and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother, James—he embraces new roles, too: That of romantic interest to the male nurse who took care of him throughout, and that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew.
There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too hard to resist.
Why do we run from those we love, and why do we still love those who run from us? A highly entertaining and poignant story about second chances and self-discovery, I Leave It Up to You navigates loss, love, and the absurdity of finding one’s footing after the ground gives way.
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