LA Review of Books: The Good Son By You-Jeong Jeong
Two Ways to See Every Story
The two sides to The Good Son are told by mother and son. Once Yu-jin discovers and begins to read his mother’s journal and offers the reader his own take on each chapter of the story that she tells, stroke by (alternately conflicting and complementary) stroke a more complete picture is formed.
The final mystery of The Good Son is genre. Is it a psycho-noir or a tricky amnesia-tinged locked-room mystery? Either subgenre can support unreliability on the part of the narrator, and even after crucial bits of memory are recovered the mystery remains until the resolution. And that resolution is satisfyingly chilling and, depending on the reader, thrilling.
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