Publishers Weekly
03/18/2024
A female friendship takes on mythological and tragic dimensions in the haunting sophomore novel from Kwon (The Incendiaries). Jin Han, a Korean American photographer and Christian apostate, is at a crossroads. On the surface, everything seems placid: she claims that she and her diffident but charming husband, Philip, don’t want children, and that she’s happy with their found family of arty New Yorkers, who compensate for the parents she barely knows in Seoul. However, Jin believes she’s cursed by the unquiet spirit of an ancestor, a kisaeng paid to keep men company, who fell in love with the firstborn son of an illustrious Korean clan and died vowing revenge against the family that denied the couple’s love. When Jin meets Lidija Jung, a star ballerina absent from the stage following a mysterious leg injury, the two forge an immediate connection. Their chemistry fuels an obsession in Jin, and as the women’s growing intimacy begins to jeopardize her career, identity, and marriage, she considers her generational trauma and wonders, could Lidija be the kisaeng’s revenge? Hypnotic and disquieting, this slow burn will stick in readers’ minds. (May)
From the Publisher
Praise for Exhibit
"A hypnotic queer love story full of lust and longing...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." —Time Magazine
"R. O. Kwon’s Exhibit is, hands down, the sexiest novel of the year...her examination of kink, desire, shame, lust and the liminal space we enter when we finally stop denying ourselves...makes Exhibit uniquely successful and powerfully sexy." —Vogue
"Bewitching." —People Magazine
"A highly sensory experience, awash in petals and colors, smells and flavors, that adds to the literature on a proclivity much discussed and often misunderstood. It lingers like a mysterious, multihued bruise." —The New York Times
"Kwon is a deeply sensual writer...The idea of a divided self, a way of half-living, defines this book. Even the meaning of the title suggests an art exhibit, of course, but also the question of what we show with our lives. What kind of story do we tell others, and more important, ourselves?"—The Washington Post
"Pulses with the queer desire of Korean women, past and present." —San Francisco Chronicle
“An expansive view of the things women are punished for wanting…unflinching." —The Atlantic
“One of the most buzzed-about books of the year…fiery, sexual, and undeniably original.” —Poets & Writers
"R. O. Kwon extracts hidden, taboo desires with precision, and her hair-raising prose sizzles...Your stomach might lurch and your heart might beat faster as you enter Jin’s inner monologue of suppressed wants bursting at the seams." —KQED
"A searing study of art, desire, and bodily and intellectual freedom...Kwon's sentences are like grenades, carefully wrought and concentrated with meaning." —Shelf Awareness
"Kwon’s prose is unlike any other, sensuous and sumptuous and yet razor-sharp." —Electric Literature
"In a hypnotic, sensual stream of consciousness...Kwon explores an intimacy that grows into obsession, revealing insights into the nature of power, sexuality, and free will." —Bustle
"An exhilarating novel about being caught between the desires of the future and the specters of the past." —Nylon
"Muscular and intelligent...A bold, tough novel that invites the viewer’s gaze and stares defiantly back." —Kirkus
"Displays, in stark relief, the patterns created by what we repress, what we celebrate, and how we transform shame into joy: it’s exquisitely curated and terrifically complicated." —Chicago Review of Books
"R. O. Kwon, bless her, takes religion seriously...For Kwon, religion names experience at the border of the speakable and unspeakable, the personal and the public. Her novels understand that we lean on what renders us unsteady, that desire inhabits a realm reason can only glimpse...Kwon’s understanding of this strange relationship between belief and unbelief places her alongside, of all people, Ludwig Wittgenstein." —The Los Angeles Review of Books
“R. O. Kwon writes stunningly about the hunger for transcendence, for something larger than oneself, more encompassing than society...Exhibit feels intended to free readers. It is a novel that makes profound and singular and visible private experiences often considered askance in American fiction, when they are considered at all. The effect is of a kind of openness, a nuanced patterning of shadow and light.” —Alta
“R. O. Kwon puts queer love, loss and faith on 'exhibit' in [her] new novel...The incisive mining of these inner conflicts and identity crises—how to exist in a society that expects you to be a God-fearing, family-oriented woman, when such labels no longer apply—is a throughline fearlessly explored by Kwon.” —CNN
“A lyrical, sensual exploration of the relationship between two Korean American women—Jin, a photographer, and Lidija, a ballet dancer—who meet at a party and soon establish bonds both creative and sexual.” —Boston Globe
“In prose at once sharp and lush, Kwon crafts a gripping tale of a woman wrestling with the past, while boldly making her own future. A haunting and powerful exploration of art, racism, feminism, and desire, this novel will stay with me a long time.”
—Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Circe and The Song of Achilles
“Exhibit is sensational – a novel that's both intimate and operatic, singular and world-encompassing. Kwon's prose is soulful and piercing, chronicling the many ways we lose and find ourselves, blending love and sex and fables between the infinite folds that encompass desire. Exhibit is entirely captivating, and Kwon is truly masterful; it's a book for the mind and the heart and the body, an actual tour de force.”
—Bryan Washington, bestselling author of Family Meal and Memorial
“Exhibit is extraordinary: brisk, jolting, brilliant, beautiful, true. A ghost story, a tale of passion, a captivating portrait of how art is made, it turns myths upside down, assumptions inside out, all in the most exquisite prose in the bookstore. Kwon is one of the finest American writers, and her latest is a must for all readers.”
—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less is Lost
"I tore through this. Exhibit explores how obliteration can be a kind of rebirth, how the nuances of that are complicated by the constraints of chosen and socially imposed identities. Kwon writes about art and ardor with urgency."
—Raven Leilani, New York Times bestselling author of Luster
"A rare jewel of a book, at once forceful and unrepentant, delicate and shimmering. R. O. Kwon carves language into a wondrous, jagged thing, revealing facets of desire usually hidden. To read Exhibit is to feel time slow down."
—C Pam Zhang, bestselling author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold and Land of Milk and Honey
Library Journal
04/01/2024
Kwon's follow-up to The Incendiaries provides a glimpse inside the lives and marriage of Philip and his artist/photographer wife, Jin. After the two meet ballet dancer Lidija at a party, Jin and Lidija forge a friendship that deepens as Jin confides the difficulties in her marriage. Jin and Lidija soon begin an affair, with Lidija as the dominatrix in their BDSM relationship. Interspersed within this story are chapters that eerily relay the words of a Korean kiaseng (akin to a geisha), telling of her enslavement at the age of six and later of her own desires with a woman lover. Kwon specifically touches upon the fetishized perception of Asian women in society and, as in her previous novel, dissects the lives of a couple in conflict, where a third party becomes a divisive threat. She explores themes of traditional and nontraditional love, marriage, and parenthood. Race, culture, and identity are also addressed, especially when readers later learn that Philip's birth name was Felipe, and he grew up speaking Spanish. VERDICT Fragmented chapters, as is Kwon's style, might make this novel a challenging read for some, but the work offers much for book groups and individuals to ponder.—Shirley Quan
MAY 2024 - AudioFile
Ami Park, with additional narration from Sue Jean Kim, performs this engrossing novel from an American rising literary star. Photographer Jin Han lives a quiet life with her husband as she tries to make it as an artist in San Francisco. When she meets ballet dancer Lidija Jung, her entire world changes forever. Jin feels immediately drawn to Lidija, who quickly becomes her muse. Throughout the entire story, Park's voice rises and falls with the women's sexual tension and highlights the electricity between the two women as Lidija satisfies Jin in ways she never knew she needed. Park's performance keeps listeners on edge as we wonder what will become of this all-consuming affair. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2024-02-17
An artist at a crossroads in her career and personal life develops a relationship with a ballet dancer.
Jin Han is a photographer on the edge of 30. She’s had acclaim in the past with a series about religious pilgrims, but she’s afraid the “image has left”—she hasn’t produced any work worth keeping in a long time. She’s under a different kind of pressure from her husband, Philip, who, despite agreeing early in their relationship not to have children, seems to have changed his mind. In Jin’s liminal state, she can’t help but ponder the story passed down through her family about a curse on them originated by a long-ago kisaeng—a girl sold into courtesanship. (The profane kisaeng cuts into the narrative from time to time to tell her own story.) The curse foretells that Jin will steer her life into ruins; it’s just as she’s pondering how this could unfold that she meets Lidija Jung. Korean like Jin, Lidija gave herself that name as a child when she devoted her life to ballet. Immediately, the women are drawn to each other; through Lidija, Jin will learn about freedom from shame and expectation—and the consequences, both elating and frightening, of that same freedom. As ever, Kwon’s style may divide readers. In a book all about image and presentation, the baroque sentences make conceptual sense. But at the level of plot, the writing is often clipped and elliptical, withholding a great deal when it comes to action. Like overexposed photographs, this strategy is both luminescent and obfuscating: It can be hard to see to the heart of the matter. Nevertheless, Kwon’s novel is a muscular and intelligent examination of the layers of Jin’s identity.
A bold, tough novel that invites the viewer’s gaze and stares defiantly back.
