3.5 stars

The Evening Hero as a surprising read - I expected it to be heavy on the historical fiction front, yet it was equally balanced with the present. Yungman is a doctor who is reflecting on his life as he faces retirement, and how his past choices shifted his present circumstances. He is a very serious character, but there are glimpses of humor throughout the story. There is a lot of history embedded in the novel, and tensions between Korea and the U.S. are a large part of the story. I was appalled at some of Yungman's early memories of fleeing his home in Korea, yet felt this was an important part of history that I was grateful to learn more about.

I learned a lot about Korean history and culture through this book, and appreciated Yungman's point of view. I kind of wanted to slap his son, Einstein, he was the most obnoxious character! I wish we had the opportunity to read from wife Yung-ae's POV, she seemed like such an interesting character. I was riveted by the exploration of the medical field and the inadequacy of the American healthcare system, and loved learning about medical terms and the experience of the characters learning medicine.

Though some parts felt drawn out, I enjoyed this novel!

Dr. Kwak is a Korean immigrant, who has lived the last 50 years of his life working as an OBGYN Dr. in Minnesota. He came to America after the War, and was forced to leave his family and everything he knew behind to start a new life in America. Now that he has retired, Dr. Kwan feels like he doesn't know what to do with his life. So he takes a simple mall job to pass the time. In the meantime, he receives a letter from his younger brother, which causes him to face what his life was in Korea over 50 years ago. Much of this book is Dr. Kwan's reckoning his life, both past and future.

Large parts of this book are about war, so if that is a trigger for you, I would avoid. I would also say that the author didn't take great pains to make Dr. Kwak a particularly likeable person, but maybe that was the point. The Evening Hero. This book highlights issues facing immigrants and might be relatable for anyone who has ever moved to a foreign country. There is a dynamic there of assimilating to your new culture but all the while staying true to your roots and remembering where you came from. Dr. Kwak is forced to do the latter, here.

Special thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't get to this book in time before it got archived, but it looks great. A book about an immigrant obstetrician and Healthcare in America.

this had so much potential. it started out so good and then it just fell apart quickly. i felt so disconnected from the characters and the plot.

My main problem with this book is that I felt I was reading a text book. An encyclopedia about the family and I wasn't engaged enough by the end of the book.

I loved The Evening Hero, as it tells a powerful, unique tale. I have found the book to be a great topic of discussion with friends!

i loved the first 10% of this but it petered out for me and i couldn't get back into it. it's sooooo long that it was so insanely hard to even imagine getting through. would love to try again if i could get my hands on an audiobook. for now, DNF.

I loved this book and think of it often -- such a quietly confident yet ostensibly lost main character.

“The Evening Hero” is a reflective story following Yungman Kwak. After being forced into retirement, he suddenly comes face to face with his past from South Korea. This novel is wry in its humor, showing how assimilation comes in different forms by contrasting the doctor’s life to his wife and also to his son’s. The story is interesting but somewhat slow paced.

I was really captured by the first section of the book and liked that it really did a great job presenting the character in a very human way. I felt that I could really grasp him as a person and feel sad for the loss of his career and what all he was losing. The satire about healthcare business was spot on and I could really see something like this be created in the future. After this section, I lost a bit of a grip on the story. I knew it went into his past story, however the abruptness of it made me really struggle. I like how the sections rounded out his past and brought him full circle correcting his wrongs and coming out with a much better relationship with the person this all began with. This was definitely a beautiful story, however I felt that editing had a bit to be desired. I think that in the first section it was going one way and then it circled back and it was like a new book had started. This was confusing and I think the medical business portion needed to be eliminated in my opinion. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

This impactful saga was layered, humorous, and, at times, horrifying. I was completely engrossed. The writing was descriptive & thought-provoking. While I was aware of it, I had not previously read much fiction about the brutality visited upon Korea by Japan, Russia, China, and the United States and this author's poignant perspective on it was truly memorable.

This is a story about the American dream and what it truly means to Dr. Yungman Kwak. His dream was to leave Korea and become a Dr and he did just that, but his life in America doesn’t exactly reflect the true American dream. I like the dual timelines in this one.
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Thank you #SimonandSchuster and #NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

This work of fiction follows a Korean immigrant, Dr. Yungman Kwak, as he reflects on his life. The book goes forward and backwards showing how he came to be where he is now. He survived the Korean war as a citizen of Korea and then used his wits to get himself and his future bride to America so they could pursue the American dream.

As his life gets turned upside down later in life, he starts to reflect on his past and what the future may hold.

The book deals with a lot of complex issues; however, the author has painted the story so vividly, it feels like you are there with Yungman and going through the same experiences.

EVENING HERO contains a lush stew of crackling characters, depth & wit. Adored it and will recommend it to readers who follow me. The connection to this world I've not seen was magnificent.

For fans of Pachinko, The Evening Hero is a family saga of a Korean immigrant family in Minnesota. There are so many themes in this book and Myung-Ok Lee does a marvelous job with each one, from the obvious ones like immigration and racism, to more subtle themes like healthcare in rural America and aging, this book is so well thought out and brilliantly written.

There is a great interview with the author on the Thoughts From a Page podcast which brought even more depth to the story.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for a digital ARC and finished copy.

The Evening Hero is a sleeper and a gem of a novel, juxtaposing the story of a Korean family's modern-day immigration experiences in conservative middle America (the lead-off section peppered with several laughter-inducing exchanges) with a sweeping tale of a two young people surviving and escaping Korea before its irretrievable split into the North and South, and after the country was ravaged during the Great War.

I was astounded by author Myung-OK Lee's disparate writing styles. Although a few characters crossover between stories, it is like reading two completely different novels, but both sensitive and moving. The modern- day era focuses on the "Evening Hero", the literal English translation of the Korean name, Yungman, his long-suffering wife Young-ae, and their comically named son, Einstein Albert Schweitzer Nobel Kwak. The latter follows in his father's footsteps to fulfill the classic immigrant parent's dream of their progeny becoming a doctor. The plot developments in this section are absurd, with Managed Care taking over a "Mall of America" like structure to sell surgeries and exams alongside Starbucks and shoes. Dr. Einstein is a rising executive in the evil Managed Care company, ironically the same entity that drove Dr. Yungman's community hospital out of business. Father goes to work with (for) son and hilarity ensues.

The middle part of the novel - a heart-wrenching flashback to Yungman's torturous childhood in what becomes North Korea - is full of shock and awe. It was fascinating to read about the lead up to the Korean War, and the harrowing conditions for its people. Yungman's indefatigable nature, coupled with luck, catapult him to America, but with secrets he deems too shameful to share with even his beloved Young-ae.

The last part of the novel ties everything together. While this section ran longer than what seemed necessary, it did lend a circular and conclusive air to Dr. Yungman and Young-ae's journeys. Upon finishing the book, I was struck by the quality of what I had just consumed. The Evening Hero delivered a history lesson in the dark side of American 20th century hegemony; a sitcom-like rendering of the Asian American immigrant experience, replete with the dumb everyday racism Asians often experience; and a heart-tugging tale of familial love, despite facing the worst of life's challenges. Rating this 5/5 starts for this beautiful book.

THE EVENING HERO by Marie Myung-Ok Lee (Finding My Voice) is all about Dr. Yungman Kwak, an obstetrician who is being forced to retire from his work in a small rural Minnesota town. I liked the main character initially, but was increasingly frustrated by his personality and inability to make even simple choices. It seems that he has drifted through life, working for roughly fifty years with little thought about what comes next. How could his son, an investor in a struggling health start-up, think that working in a mall at a depilatory center or even administering vaccines would be a good fit for the father? There is clearly some social commentary here, but the characters were ultimately so unlike-able and the situations felt so uncomfortable that I did not finish the novel. That said, professional reviews are generally positive and the book is well-written (e.g., "He had never anticipated that it would end like this, his decades of accumulated experience rusting into oblivion."). I simply struggle to appreciate "darkly comic novel[s]" like this one; hence, the neutral rating of 3 stars.

As I knew it would be this was my kind of story. Complex, heavy, and beautiful. This is a must read! I'll be on the look out for more by this author.

This book was really...unexpected. The protagonist, Yungman, is a doctor working at a rural hospital in a mining town. When the hospital closes, Yungman feels adrift. His wife is involved in a Korean church, and their relationship is frigid. The first two sections were interesting, but once we jumped back in time to when Yungman is a young boy, I began to feel disconnected and disinterested in the story.

DNF at 35%

I received an ARC of The Evening Hero from Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review.

The Evening Hero oscillates between two stories, two time periods: the first follows Dr. Yungman Kwak, who has worked at Horse Breath’s General Hospital in Minnesota for fifty years after immigrating to America; the second follows Yungman during his childhood in Korea. The first story is a clumsy attempt at satire and the second is a crash course in the history of the Korean War, and they mesh about as well as oil and water—until the closing chapter brings them together in a way I found unexpectedly elegant and deeply moving.

I struggled most with the contemporary timeline in The Evening Hero, in which Horse Breath’s General Hospital is shut down due to financial difficulties and Yungman is unmoored from work for the first time in five decades. Lee uses this scenario to expose the insidious ways in which racism and capitalism have rotted the scaffolding of 21st-century America, but she does it in a gently humorous manner, and it was difficult for me to decipher just how funny it was intended to be when I found it so overwhelmingly sad. (The humor is more effective when detached from satire; I laughed out loud at a reference to a gynecology clinic called “At Your Cervix.”)

The flashbacks to Yungman’s childhood create a darker and more compelling story, more certain in what it is attempting to accomplish, and I appreciated how uncompromising those sections of the book were—like R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War, it forces Western audiences (specifically American, in this case) to confront the heart of imperialism and recognize their complicity. This is where the novel truly shines: Yungman is a more dynamic and compelling character in his youth, and I was eager to learn more about that time and place in history. I wondered why we had to return to the contemporary timeline at all when it didn’t complement the flashbacks.

Then the last chapter happened, in which (minor spoilers) Yungman volunteers for MSF and goes to North Korea, the location of his childhood home prior to the 38th parallel division. I won’t say exactly what happens on this trip, but I was shocked by how beautifully Lee brought the stories and the two timelines together. When good books lose their footing and slip into mediocrity, in my experience, it occurs most often at the end—so I was pleasantly surprised to encounter the opposite here. The Evening Hero rises out of mediocrity in its final chapter.

That said, a great novel requires more than a great ending. I ultimately liked The Evening Hero but did not love it: the humor is mostly ineffective, and too much time is spent with inactive characters while the story meanders vaguely through the dystopian hellscape of 21st-century America. I was frustrated by Lee’s prose, too—something about her syntax generates just a bit too much friction, takes just a bit too long to parse. Your mileage may vary! I am glad to have read The Evening Hero despite my frustrations, if only to experience the exceptional ending.