Unnamed narrator

The unnamed narrator is a 24-year-old woman living in Sokcho, a resort city on the South Korean border with North Korea, and working at a guest house. She provides few autobiographical details, but the reader does learn that she attended university in Seoul where she studied French and Korean literature and that her father was a Frenchman who seduced her mother and left her before the narrator was born. When the novel begins, the narrator has a boyfriend named Jun-oh and a close relationship with her mother, but both of these relationships are strained. She has only recently moved from her mother's home into the guest house where she works, and it is clear that this was an attempt to distance herself from her mother and have her own life. However, she still feels pressure to conform to her mother's expectations (particularly that she get married) and...