New Yorker Fiction Review #304: "Valley of the Moon" by Paul Yoon

 

Review of the short story from the July 3, 2023 issue of The New Yorker...

"Valley of the Moon" is a short story from Paul Yoon's forthcoming short story collection The Hive and the Honey, set for release in October. Based on the strength of this story, I would be inclined to buy the whole short story collection, or at least rent it from the library. 

"Valley of the Moon" tells the story of a North Korean man who returns to his home after the war (presumably the Korean war), deep in the mountains, after a long spell spent in a refugee camp and, before that, serving in the army. I say North Korean only because in the story one of the characters refers to wanting to reach the border, which is some 100 miles north of where the action takes place, and I assume this refers to the border with China, since I further assume no one would want to go north to escape into North Korea. But the politics in this story are never fully explained, which is one of the reasons I like it. 

The man settles back into his solitary life on his family farm, his mother and father having been -- again, presumably -- killed at some point during the war. He accidentally commits a murder. Adopts two children who eventually run away. Has a telephone installed into his home. Grows old. And eventually dies. It is a simple, essentially plotless, and yet intriguing story. 

"Valley of the Moon" is a great example of how a story doesn't have to have a complex plot in order to be gripping. Sometimes simply the character and the "world-building" are enough to carry the reader along. Furthermore, Paul Yoon's choice to keep the reader in the dark about specific things like the exact geographical location gives the story a sense of being unmoored in space, time, history; such a story could take place in any country and at almost any time throughout history. In part, Paul Yoon is exploring the effects of isolation and loneliness upon the human heart. That is not something that needs to be tied to a specific time and place. 

What also gives this story its tantalizing quality is the overriding presence of violence, death, and mystery. The main character Tongsu, is returning from a war which he narrowly survived, while many of his contemporaries didn't. In the very beginning, he and his fellow passengers on the bus discuss their war stories and show off their injuries. Tongsu has lost an eye. 

When Tongsu finally makes it to his family farm, he finds bomb craters everywhere and assumes -- without much emotion -- that his family have been killed. He does not find out how they died and never will. As Tongsu grows into his solitary life on the farm, he discovers a place he likes to visit at night -- the eponymous "valley of the moon" -- a riverbed where he likes to sit at night in the light of the moon. But one night, a mysterious visitor accosts him and Tongsu accidentally kills him. For the rest of Tongsu's life, this murder exists, in various ways, as a little dark cloud in the corner of his skies; never fully darkening out the sun, but never leaving either. 

Paul Yoon's achievement in this story is subtle, but I believe he has achieved something of note along the lines of the "less is more," and "show don't tell" philosophy of fiction writing. The narration sits at a far enough remove from the main character, that we as the reader do not feel spoon-fed or overburdened with detail. And yet the details Yoon does use in the story are carefully chosen to create a character whose world and activities are foreign, even to the main character himself. Tongsu, it seems, is as isolated and alien in his own environment as a man living on the moon. He is as foreign to his own post-war world as we the reader.