Vladivostok Circus, Elisa Shua Dusapin, tr. Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Elisa Shua Dusapin’s novels are a marvel to be, because they’re suspenseful and engrossing, but nothing really happens, and nothing gets resolved. Rather, as the story progresses, you burrow a little deeper into the characters; the situation thickens. But this unfolding is more like a folding — it adds dimensions, but conceals as much as it reveals.

In Vladivostok Circus, for example, a woman goes to Russia to design costumes for a trio of Russian bar performers (I paused while reading to look up some videos of such acts, which was a good decision — it’s hard to grasp otherwise). That’s it, that’s the story. But meanwhile, we learn about the backstory of the performers, and a little about the costume designer; her past wounds and anxieties. It’s hard to describe, because it sounds so boring and pointless, but when I was reading, I was so completely in it, the outside world fell away. I have this experience with all of her books. But there is also a kind of central theme or motif in the novels that offers a kind of formal analogue to their various movements — in Winter in Sokcho, the artist’s ink swirls, in Pachinko Parlor, the complexities of uprooted and migratory identities. I didn’t feel it as clearly in Vladivostok Circus, but as I write this, I realize that perhaps it was balance, trust?