The Hive and the Honey: Stories

Yoon (Run Me to the Earth) delivers a lean collection of stories featuring restless, complex characters driven by their need for connection and forgiveness. Throughout, themes of displacement and loss are juxtaposed with simple moments of love and understanding. In “Bosun,” an ex-con wrestles with how to relate to others, considering all that he’s already lost. “Komarov” finds Lee Jooyun, who fled North Korea and eventually wound up in Barcelona, agreeing to wear a wire to gain information on a Russian boxer for her birth country, in exchange for learning about the family she left behind. In the title story, 22-year-old Andrei Bulavin composes a letter to his uncle back in Russia, recounting a disturbing supernatural event at the Korean settlement he’s been sent to police. Yoon carefully mingles the extraordinary with the everyday, evoking the natural world with simple yet striking language: “We come upon a tree that has flowered early. It stands alone amid the endless row of cedars that line the road, its bright red color so sudden and distracting—like the appearance of a door among the evergreens.” This is an elegant exploration of life’s brutal and beautiful moments. (Oct.)