Hwang Sok-yong
Scribe
13 June 2023 (2020)
600
Paperback
Fiction
Borrowed from the Library
Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a powerful account that captures a nation’s longing for a rail line to reconnect North and South, a magical-realist novel that depicts reflect the lives of modern industrial workers, and a culmination of Hwang’s career — a masterpiece thirty years in the making. A true voice of a generation, Hwang shows again why he is unmatched when it comes to depicting the grief of a divided nation and bringing to life the cultural identity and trials and tribulations of the Korean people.
Mater 2-10 is the first book I have read by Hwang Sok-yong. It was an interesting cross-generational tale that zeroed in on several key periods in twentieth-century Korean history, weaving a story about everyday folk and how the changes in regimes and steady modernisation affected their lives. You could certainly feel the author's strong desire for reunification through the storytelling, and the prose was engaging and evocative. The only downside for me was that I struggled to connect on a deeper emotional level with any of the characters. The time-jumping narrative, too, sometimes took me by surprise, and I would have to read a paragraph or two before I could recall which time period we were now in. I would say I probably preferred some other family-drama Korean novels, such as Pachinko and Beasts of a Little Land, but Mater 2-10 was still enjoyable, and I would pick up other novels by this author in the future. I am giving this book 4 stars.
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