The Booker Review

“Sometimes, the unjustly downtrodden took up arms and fierce miens, but equally often they turned the other cheek, studied harder, camouflaged themselves ever more behind obedience and merit and bided their time, believing against all evidence that the future would bring something better, for them if for nobody else. He tried to be the second kind of ruined person.”

Flashlight begins and ends with Louisa, but is really the story of her father, Serk. It is a story about hope and loss; and, primarily, it is a story about identity.

Serk is a man of many names. Born in Japan at the end of the Second World War, he goes by ‘Hiroshi’ at school and ‘Seok’ at home. He feels Japanese, but the Japanese don’t recognise him as such because his family are ethnic Koreans. Against his prophesying warnings, his parents and siblings heed the magnetic siren-call of the new DPRK, migrating to North Korea in hopes of a better life, while he instead leaves for college in the US and rebrands himself as ‘Serk’. Interestingly, this name change is never once mentioned, leaving the reader with a faintly unsettled undercurrent of feeling as we try to decode his true self. Who is this man really: teacher, father, spy?

Years later, Serk returns to Japan on an academic posting with his American wife Anne and daughter Louisa. Anne and Serk each secretly meet family members in Japan, while Louisa slides effortlessly into Japanese school life. Anne is becoming more and more ill – nobody yet knows why. And then calamity really strikes as Louisa is found washed up on the shore, alone, after a night-time walk with her father along the beach.

We hear the story out of order, following each of Louisa, Serk and Anne in turn, sometimes with cameo appearances from other characters, the narrative spanning decades and continents. The motif of the flashlight somehow ties the story together across this space and time, in a way that brings to mind the silver sword – another childhood favourite of mine – yet more complicated, too. Less a symbol of pure hope than of hope waning; of seeing things and not seeing them. So many secrets, so much unknown.

I found Serk’s story utterly riveting, full of mysteries. Although I foresaw some of the reveals, I still found them delicious when they happened. Conversely, I found something slightly repellent in Anne’s story – perhaps just a little too close to home? – feeling anger rising as the doctors dismiss her very real symptoms, a case of documented medical misogyny in action.

And Louisa I simply found highly relatable. A scene depicting a séance around a flashlight in a youth hostel feels so… autistic? Shut out of the social group for stating facts; ruminating over some imagined offence to people who have long since forgotten everything she said. She starts out as somewhat of an unreliable narrator, yet I found her very likeable, clearly processing her grief and trauma through maladaptive coping mechanisms.

A theme of resilience draws the reader on at each turn: “Coming back to herself at such moments, she thinks, Life is over. But apparently not. There are more things to cherish and lose.”

Side note: If you’re going to attempt 13 books in 3 months, don’t leave the longest ones till last 😉

That said, I found Flashlight a powerful tale, and one that I didn’t like to rush.