The Old Woman With the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo

People stare at their phones, headphones in their ears, shrinking from and swaying with the unending wave of humanity, quickly forgetting that an old person has entered their midst. They excise her from their consciousness as if she's unimportant, recyclable. Or they never even saw her to begin with.

Title: The Old Woman With the Knife

Author: Gu Byeong-mo

Translator: Chi-Young Kim

Genre: Thriller / Suspense

While it certainly falls within the Adrenaline genre, it is slightly more difficult to categorize this book into either thriller or suspense. The book contains elements from both subgenres, including thriller's "grit and darkness to the stories, or a bleakness, reflecting the sense of alienation and paranoia that plagues many of the central characters" (Readers' Advisory Guide, pg. 13) and suspense's cathartic rather than happy ending (pg. 17). Given the relatively slow pacing of this book, it could potentially fall more into the suspense genre, but with the overall dark tone of the book, I think thriller fits it best. 

Publication Date: July 19, 2013 (original) / March 2022 (English translation)

Number of Pages: 288 pages

Geographical Setting: South Korea

Time Period: Contemporary

Series: Standalone

Plot Summary: Hornclaw, a Korean woman in her sixties, is starting to feel the effects of old age. Her memory can be sketchy, her body isn’t as strong as it used to be, and those are fairly important for a disease control specialist. AKA, an assassin. As Hornclaw faces her final assignment, she begins to form a connection with a family, which puts them in danger when a family from her past comes back to haunt her.

Content warnings: Death of a pet, brief scene of attempted sexual assault, graphic descriptions of violence, ageism, child in danger.

Subject Headings: South Korea, Assassins, Aging, Ageism, Family, Relationships

Appeal: 

• Culturally diverse, Own Voices
• South Korean characters, written by a South Korean.
• Violent
• "Not for the faint of heart, these books contain explicit or graphic violence."
• The final confrontation is a bloodbath, and the descriptions do not shy away from the little details.
• Darkly Humorous
• "The humor in these books derives from ironic or grimly satiric treatment of death, suffering, and other morbid subjects."
• The humor of calling the assassins in this book "disease control specialists" is fair enough evidence of the dark humor this book contains.
• Richly Detailed
• "Details enrich these stories, sometimes focusing on a special body of knowledge."
• Some such details include very evocative descriptions of eating fruit.

3 terms that best describe this book: Darkly humorous, Ageism, Emotional

Similar Authors and Works: 

Nonfiction

1. This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism by Ashton Applewhite: 
• Addresses ageism in society and culture, the way older people are treated as invisible or as needing to “fix” themselves.
2. Animal: The Bloody Rise and Fall of the Mob's Most Feared Assassin by Casey Sherman: 
• Mob assassin turned witness, the story of Joe Barboza.
3. The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington:
• Two doctors in the American South use their "expertise" (deliberately in quotes, because they were not very good doctors) to get away with crime. 

Fiction 

1. An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Turston: 
• Darkly humorous, old main character, murder, senior justice.
2. The Plotters by Kim Un-su: 
• Assassination guilds in South Korea, female justice, rebelling against tradition.
3. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson: 
• Adventures of an older person, flashbacks, getting older doesn’t mean stopping.

My take

This book was absolutely fantastic. There were many different things about it that I liked, including:

• Representation of the elderly
• Physical limitations
• Mental challenges
• Unique and detailed imagery
• Storyline is present interwoven with flashbacks
• Very “real” in its depictions of social interactions: younger people ignoring or disregarding the elderly, old men’s self-important attitudes, people ignoring strangers’ struggles, the different work ethics and expectations between different generations.

I mean seriously, the imagery and metaphors alone were incredible, evoking very specific feelings depending on what the main character, Hornclaw, was experiencing. For example: "The aroma lingering in her mouth without having tasted the peach; the scent of the sugary, sticky nectar, so sweet that it stings—she locks it all in her heart, not easily visible, like a small new leaf sprouting on a tree." It's not much, just a description of smelling a peach, and yet it is so easy to imagine, and it's very clear that Hornclaw is having feelings about a lot more than a peach.

The overall story was compelling and interesting, and I was continuously drawn in to continue the book rather than waiting to finish it. I also really enjoyed the translation style, and wish I was able to read the book in its original language.

References

NoveList. (2018). The secret language of books: A guide to appeal. EBSCOHost.

Saricks, J. G. (2019). The readers’ advisory guide to genre fiction. Chicago: ALA