Fiction: Susan Choi's ‘Flashlight'
Serk, who could not swim, is officially declared dead from drowning, and Louisa is thought to have collapsed from shock and struck her head. But good novels rarely opt for the simple explanation when a complicated one is possible, so 'Flashlight' travels both back and far ahead in time to peel away at the mystery of Serk's fate.
That mystery is satisfyingly layered, and Ms. Choi's excavations yield some of their richest material in answering the seemingly basic question: Who is Serk? Born and raised in Japan, Serk grew up believing himself to be a fully Japanese boy named Hiroshi. But when World War II ended, and with it Japanese imperial rule, his parents revealed that they are ethnic Koreans and that his given name is Seok.
Lured by propaganda, his family then returned to North Korea, leaving Seok behind, where he was stripped of his citizenship—in 1952 Koreans in Japan were reclassified as resident aliens—and with it his career prospects. He immigrates to the U.S. and takes yet another identity: Serk, an approximate, Anglicized phonetic spelling of Seok, is a made-up name he can no more acclimate to than he can to his life abroad.
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