Location as Inspiration

Angie Kim talks about the importance of location, isolation, and community

Happy Friday, readers! As the weather gets colder in D.C., we are giving you plenty of books this week to curl up and hibernate with. I sat down with my dear friend Angie Kim to discuss her newest (and future) work and where she gets inspiration from, some remarkably bright Friday Reads, Shogun’s newest adaptation, and in the same vein, some new adaptations on old classics.

Read! Watch! Consume! Comfort yourselves! Enjoy!

Books on Tap:

I sat down with Angie Kim this week to discuss getting inspiration from your location, isolation, and community. Happiness Falls, a Good Morning America Book Club pick, was published in August 2023 by Random House.

#FridayReads:

This week, our Friday readers are buzzing about Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt,  Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie, Theatre Kids by John DeVore, Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky, and The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei.

Pop! Goes the Culture:

This week, we discuss the resurrection of Shogun, the James Clavell adapation that swept the Emmys (a record-breaking 18 for its first season).

Six Recs: Great Adaptations

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, March by Geraldine Brooks, James by Percival Everett, and A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.

Find me on X, Substack, Instagram, and Threads. Follow us on Substack for daily posts about new book releases, commentary, and more. 

The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.

All titles mentioned: Happiness Falls and Miracle Creek by Angie Kim, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie, Theatre Kids by John DeVore, Hot Air, Bad Marie, Very Nice, and The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky, The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei, Avengers directed by Joss Whedon, Shogun directed by Jonathan van Tulleken (and others), Orange is the New Black directed by Andrew McCarthy, Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, March by Geraldine Brooks, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, James by Percival Everett, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley and King Lear by William Shakespeare.

Transcript: 

BP: Hello, readers. Welcome to my new show, The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. This is a podcast where we'll dive into the hottest book world trends, address some of the great or not so great classics, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode.

But first, I spoke recently with Angie Kim about distance and isolation in her bestselling novel Happiness Falls. We talk about location and where we live and how those factors shape the stories we tell. Join us in conversation as we speak about Angie’s journey, from her Korean childhood; to her Baltimore adolescence; her education which included Harvard Law; and now her work as an author living with her family in a D.C. exurb.  

BP: One of the things I was thinking about, and this was actually funny because it was before we were able to confirm you for the interview. John and I were out for a walk at Great Falls and I was thinking again, we were on the Matildaville Trail. 

AK: Oh God, which I still haven't gone to.

BP: Well, exactly. 

AK: You and I said that we were going to do it, right? 

BP: We are going to do it. 

AK: We have to.

BP: We have to. And so I thought, you know, something I think would be really interesting for us to talk about again, writer to writer, is the inspiration gained from where you live. Because I think that's something you've used. You've used that with Korea. You've used that with Miracle Creek. You've used that with Happiness Falls. I think it's very important to you. So we can talk about me and, you know, my little obsession with Matildaville as well. But let's start with this. You live in Northern Virginia, Angie. You live in a very funny little corner of Northern Virginia. And you have used that to great effect in two bestselling novels. So talk to me about how that first came up for you, how you first knew that, you know, gosh, I'm going to use where I live as a setting. 

AK: I think to me, it's so important because I think of where I am as this very strange place that I've seen change so much in the last, what, 25 to 30 years? We've lived in this house  for so long and when we first moved here, my husband and I both come from really poor  backgrounds. So I'm a Korean immigrant, you know, we didn't have running water where I grew up in Seoul. And my husband is from the South and he lived in a trailer. All of that sort of stuff.

And so I think when we found ourselves in D.C., it was this weird place where there was some of that urban, cultural, sophisticated kind of stuff that you could find in D.C. But at the same time, where we chose to live, which is this little town called Great Falls, which back when we bought our place was in the middle of a horse farm, like, you know, actually not just one, many, many horse farms. So it felt very kind of outside of that world. And it felt like the kind of place where we could have kids who weren't going to necessarily feel like they were really well off, you know, in the same way that, I think if we had lived a little closer in the suburbs, you know, that are closer in or in D.C. itself, it might have been like, and so, that was really important to us.

And then before we even had kids, very quickly it changed. Like all these McMansions went up, you know, and it became this place that we didn't recognize. And so I just thought about,  I did a lot of thinking as a parent, not really as a writer, because I wasn't really a writer back then when we first started living here, about sort of the community that you find yourself in and the kinds of people that your kids are going to grow up around and how that affects the way that you think about yourself, especially me, because I'm such an insecure person anyway. And so I think that had a lot to do with when I thought about my characters and where they were from, it was important that they be in a place like here that was a little bit isolated in some ways.

BP: You came to the United States from Korea, lived with, you know, your aunt, I believe in Baltimore. 

AK: Right. My aunt, uncle and cousin. Yeah. 

BP: You didn't speak any English. You had to learn just, you know, whatever words you could to survive in school. You know what I mean? And that is, to me, that's so relatable because all of us need to figure out what to do to survive in, you know, middle school and junior high school. And so something about the word isolation, and isolated and talking about  the places in this way, I find incredibly powerful because we can think that we have our whole community around us, our whole family around us. But then, as in Happiness Falls for example, the family finds out that everyone has something they haven't told someone else.  And those secrets, which make sense to the individuals, right? That makes perfect sense that they're affecting everyone's lives and sometimes I think, especially for me, being in McLean and so close to the CIA, I think a lot about people who have lived here, people who have lived in our neighborhood, people we've known and do know who have a lot of – all different kinds of isolation. They can't talk to a spouse about what they do. They can't leave their office with certain, you know, like a laptop or whatever. This whole area is filled with people in politics, in the intelligence community, from other countries. So, you know, and I don't want to bang on too much about happiness falls and its language layers, but it is a Tower of Babel here in this area, Angie.

AK: Oh, absolutely. No, absolutely. And also in Happiness Falls, the family is a biracial family, which is a huge, you know, part of, I think, our community here. But at the same time, that which feels a little bit, like, cosmopolitan to me, right, like modern and contemporary and all these things. But then juxtaposed to this kind of rural, isolated feel, again, which is really interesting. And of course, in Happiness Falls, it was a huge kind of plot point in that where I live, I don't know if you have this Bethanne, but the kind of isolation that I have around my house with the, because I'm very close to the river and to the Potomac River, and the feeling that I am so close to Maryland, and yet I have to go all the way around like an hour's drive to get there, which is crazy.

So all of these weird points where you're kind of adjacent to people, but you're yet so disconnected from them. And then there's the point of, because we're so close to the parks, we have very bad internet connection on our cell phones. And so that's like an everyday complaint about here. So of course that becomes something that, you know, the characters are upset about and that happens to, you know, play a role in the story as well.

But whether it's that kind of an isolation, like, related to technology, or isolation related to just the fact that the houses around here are on these big lots that are wooded, so you don't see anybody. Or the fact that, you know, in Miracle Creek, you're not that far from D.C., like, an hour, and yet, you're in the middle of this, like, kind of nowhere town where there are no immigrants and there are no Asian people around and you know what happens when an Asian family goes there. So all of these weird juxtapositions that are kind of created by, and these kinds of anomalies that are created by, isolation in all different types of isolation. 

BP: So when it comes to those distances between people, what is your next thought? Because you have employed them so differently in two different novels. So I'm wondering what you can tell us about what you're working on, not in any kind of intrusive way, but more in a, with this as a lens. Does that make sense? 

AK: You know, it's like you have just seen into my mind because this is exactly what I'm working on. I mean, it's funny because, who was, I think it was David Mitchell who said it doesn't matter what you try to work on, whatever you're obsessed with, you're going to be obsessed with. And so you're going to, you know, you're going to just end up returning to the same obsessions over and over and over again. 

I thought that what I was working on in this novel that I'm working on now was something that I hadn't really explored in as much detail or as explicitly in Miracle Creek and Happiness Falls. But of course, talking to you about it now and thinking like, wow, I haven't really talked about this explicitly, but you know, you're such an insightful and generous reader, I think that you've been able to see that in my work, which makes me really happy because actually the distances between people is like, if I had to say in one phrase what my next novel is about, that's exactly what I would say. And it's also about returning to places and the sort of physical connection, the importance of the physical connection that you have to various places, rather than, you know, like my connection to Korea, even though it's my homeland, I actually haven't been back since I was 10 years old, or 11 years old in 1980. And so it's  unbelievable to me that I haven't been back, and yet I feel like it's my home. I still consider it, you know, my homeland. But not having had that physical connection, and only seen it through, you know, Skype's when I'm Skyping with relatives or, you know, seeing videos and pictures and things like that, there's a huge difference. And what is that? And those are some of the things that I'm –

– I'm being very, very, I'm not being very clear about what I'm working on because, this novel, unlike my first two, I've decided I'm just gonna go ahead and just write very close to my heart and not talk about it and not show anyone until it's done, which I have not done with my first two. With my first two, I gave it to my writing group and my agent, my editor and all this stuff. So I'm not going to do any of that with this one. 

BP: I cannot wait to talk to you when it comes out. Me too. Me too. 

BP: Thank you again, Angie. You can get a copy of Happiness Falls wherever books are sold. Now, let’s move on to Friday Reads, where we’ll see what you’ve been reading this week. 

BP: We're here again with Friday Reads. I'm going to share some posts that have been put up online and here to help me is my producer, Jordan. He's going to read them out loud. Jordan, I hope you're doing well today. What have we got on deck? 

JA: Up first, we've got from Robert Swartwood, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, read by Maren Ireland and Michael Urie.

BP: So I love that Robert Swartwood has chosen Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt because that book is everywhere. Everyone is reading it and Shelby Van Pelt, I hope you are making tons and tons of money. Now, Robert Swartwood, I hope you are as well because it turns out Robert is an author. He's a thriller writer, USA Today bestselling and ITW award winning writer. His latest book out in August of this year's Enemy of the State, so terrific. 

JA: Alright, and then up next we've got from Paula Johnson, weekend book pick, Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie and translated by Arielle Aronson. “Well, I did judge a book by its cover and provocative title and was rewarded with a satisfying story about a jilted wife starting her next chapter.”

BP: This is so interesting. First of all, Paula Johnson, hello. I'm following you now. She's a copywriter, designer who helps authors, experts, companies, and non-profits. But she also writes fiction, hosts a stand up comedy open mic, and studies improv. So, I'm kind of impressed. You know, Paula, I'm also impressed by this book pic, because first of all, I love literature and translation. Second, I love this book cover that shows a sort of retro looking piece of a woman's face and neck and sweatered shoulder. It's very interesting. Her pearls look quite old and yellowed and, Autobiography of a Boring Wife. You know, if something's titled autobiography… or autopsy. Excuse me everyone! Autopsy of a Boring Wife, you know, it's going to be anything but boring.

So let's move on, Jordan, because clearly my eyes are tired today. 

JA: Alright and then keeping on our theme of books with striking covers, we've got another one from David Lawson saying, I could relate a ton to John DeVore's excellent memoir (Theatre Kids) of him growing up in Fairfax County, Virginia, then moving to NYC where he lives in Astoria, Queens and makes theater in the same post 9/11 pre-smartphone city that I moved to.

BP: I love this. David, another person I'm going to be following. He hosts the Astoria Bookshop Storytelling Show on the first Thursdays of every month. I actually have a couple of friends who live in Astoria. I love it there. Best Greek food ever. David, not that Greek food has anything to do with you, but I love the cover of this book and because I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, I was really interested and so the subtitle is A True Tale of Off Off Broadway. John DeVore, I'm going to take a look at it and guess what? Another library book. Love it. This is a good week for library books at Friday Reads.

JA: Yeah, always exciting to get some library books on Friday Reads. And we've got from Rachel Coker, two forthcoming novels on my reading list because Roxane Gay says they're great and that's all I need to know, Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky, and The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei. 

BP: Okay, I am seriously ticked off, not with you, Rachel Coker, but with whomever is publishing Marcy's latest book, because Marcy Dermansky, another friend of mine. Marcy Dermansky writes incredibly taught, spare, experimental fiction about real women. And if you haven't read Bad Marie, or Very Nice, or The Red Car, you are missing out. So I know Hot Air is going to be another book that I love, and I'm glad that Roxane Gay says that it's going to be good. The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei sounds terrific too. And I am going to check it out. So Rachel, thanks for sending in your Friday reads. And I have a lot of reading to do, Jordan. We've got to, we've got to wrap this up. 

JA: Alright. We'll do it before the list gets too long.  

BP: Thanks. 

BP: This year, Shogun resurfaced as a pop culture behemoth, garnering 18 Emmy wins and enjoying sweeping popularity. But that got me thinking, Shogun has existed before in many times and in many ways, and I wanted to take some time to explore the way the narrative has been reinterpreted in its many variations. In this week’s Pop Goes the Culture, we’ll dive into the history of Shogun.

When the Dutch ship Erasmus washes up on the shores of feudal Japan, everybody wants a piece. Armed with western weapons and full of half-dead sailors, every bit of the craft holds value for its finders, from its construction, to its provisions, on to whatever knowledge those shipwrecked Europeans have. The surviving English pilot, John Blackthorne, is taken into custody by the fictional Minowara clan, led by the equally fictional Lord Toranaga. 

In this period of 17th-century Japan, ruling warlords battle for ultimate supremacy; the civilization hasn’t seen a central ruler in decades. Five regions sit on the governing council to represent five regions of Japan. Three regions are the richest from natural resources, historical wealth, and new Portuguese Christian resources. The two to keep track of are Lord Toranaga’s region, the Kanto, and his antagonist Lord Ishido’s region, the Goshu province. Dynasties clash, western countries interfere, and in comes Blackthorne. 

John Blackthorne has direct orders: Loot and destroy Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World, discover new islands in the Pacific, and claim those islands for The Netherlands, which will open up more trade for their thriving economy. His plan is derailed by the long, difficult voyage, and starvation takes half his crew. At every morbid turn, Blackthorne is determined not to die. He will warn the Japanese of Portugal’s imperialist aims and carry out his own colonial orders.

This is Shogun, James Clavell’s 1975 novel of historical fiction. Since then, there’s been Shogun the musical, 

Shogun, directed by Michael Smuin at the Marquis Theater. Call ticketron. 

Shogun the video game,

This is our land, and it shall be strewed with blood. The path to peace is a dangerous journey. 

And two television series. The first was aired in 1980 with a six-episode run on NBC. Starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune, the series was advertised as an “epic tale of power, passion, beauty, and tragedy.” The OG Shogun, if you will, was the very model of a modern major miniseries, lush with Hollywood-style Japanese architecture (think heavy on the pagodas) and Chamberlain’s blond locks (think heavy on the hairspray). Who could resist swashbuckling set not just in a different century, but on a different continent? While Richard Chamberlain was the big star for the American audience, global viewers were thrilled to watch Toshiro Mifune, a favorite of director Akira Kurosawa and a heavyweight of mid-century Japanese cinema.

In 2024, FX has taken on Shogun’s second small-screen adaptation. Cosmo Jarvis’s Blackthorne employs a mix of determination and blunder. In the first two episodes, two characters choose their own death by suicide, and others encourage Blackthorne to do the same, or else, they warn, he will likely die by someone else’s hand. This is where we see Blackthorne’s steadfast strength of will—he will not die in Japan. And yet, with his hands literally tied, he shoots harried looks to the shore and offers snarky remarks akin to Avengers one-liners. His too-wide robes slope his shoulders. He is utterly ungraceful. 

At first, this casting feels like a failure. How can we root for this version of John Blackthorne? This certainly can’t be our hero. He does not belong here—and that’s the point. 

In this version, Blackthorne is the “other.” He’s judged for his limited bathing schedule and his Protestant God. He can’t speak the language. His shouts and curses are a useless expense of energy. Finally, he gets a translator: Mariko, a highborn Christian woman who, despite her late father’s disgrace, remains loyal to Lord Toranaga. She is Blackthorne’s interpreter and guide in this new world, and our introduction to more compelling characters.

Do you remember when Orange Is the New Black premiered? The story begins with Piper, a privileged white woman who goes to prison for aiding in drug smuggling a decade ago. Then we get into Litchfield Penitentiary, which is where the story truly begins. There, we meet stand out characters like Laverne Cox’s Sophia Burset, Samira Wiley’s Poussey [Poo-say] Washington, and Danielle Brooks’ Taystee Jefferson, and consequently care less and less about Piper’s fate. Shogun practices a similar fake-out. We’re led into what looks like a familiar story, some white savior fish-out-of-water in an unknown land, ready to better the sorry lives of its inhabitants. Instead, we enter a much more complicated world.

Mariko’s husband and son are secondary to her service to her Christian God and her lord, Toranaga. In this latest version of Shogun, more attention is given to Mariko’s agency both on her own and Blackthorne’s behalf. We are reminded that the translators have certain powers: they could be translating based on their own gain. Each social level plays a part. 

This new version of Shogun takes more care to describe the firmly yet delicately delimited Japanese social strata. In this story, there are the elite: mother of the heir and the heir himself, and the Council and their families. Then, there are the soldiers, more like squires who have dual military and political allegiance, the hatamoto class that supports Toranaga and his peers. After that, the Christian missionaries who influence religion, trade, and language in the regions. The regions are full of villagers like merchants and commoners who are used as pawns for political gain. 

FX’s Shogun reminds viewers that feudal Japan was a sophisticated society. In the first episode, Blackthorne and his men call the Japanese “savages,” while they themselves are covered in dirt, bugs, and bile. Then, also early in the season, a Portuguese sailor gestures to the landscape and reminds Blackthorne that Europe can’t be the apex of human society if this also exists. The project of Shogun in 2024 is not to retell James Clavell’s novel, but to reform it. 

BP: Shogun is just one of many adaptations to find success in film and television. But there are plenty of great novels with great adaptations on screens big and small. Here, I have 6 recs of novels to start your next TV or movie binge.

Welcome back to another Six Recs. I'm going to try to give you six recommendations in three minutes, and my producer Jordan is going to time me. So this week's list is Great Adaptations. Are you ready to time me, Jordan? 

JA: We are rolling. 

BP: Excellent. So the first one is Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, and this is Pride and Prejudice set in Cincinnati, but don't worry, there are no five ways like the chili in it, okay? You know, ba dum bum. 

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Well, guess what? It turns out in the Iliad, Achilles’ heel was actually his soulmate. I know, I know, I'm here all week. I'll try to be a little less silly.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie is a really agonizing take on Antigone, the Sophocles drama, but this one is set in modern London in a Muslim community and it's the Women's Fiction Prize winner in 2018. It's just so good. 

March by Geraldine Brooks is a retelling of Little Women from the viewpoint of the father, Colonel March, who goes off to be a chaplain during the Civil War. So what happens when a family man is changed by combat?  

James, by Percival Everett, is really new. And guess what? Call him by his full name, James. This isn't Huck Finn's Jim. And thank goodness. A book that really, really was overdue. So glad Everett wrote it. 

Finally, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. Many have tried to retell King Lear and few have succeeded. But Smiley sets her novel on a farm in Iowa and in transitioning the Shakespearean tragedy onto Midwestern farmland, she hits it out of the park. There's a great movie adaptation of it too. 

There you go. Six great adaptations. Jordan, how did I do? 

JA: Alright. That came in at a whopping one minute and 53 seconds. An incredibly fast performance.  

BP: That's incredible. Yay. But as we know, sometimes it's really fast. Sometimes it's much slower. So we'll see next time on Six Recs. Thanks. 

Well that does it for this episode of The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. Follow us on Substack for daily posts about new book releases, commentary, and more. It’s free! Talk to you next week! 

The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted and produced by me, Bethanne Patrick. It’s also produced by Christina McBride with engineering by Jordan Aaron and our booking producer is Lauren Stack.