Exhibit by R.O. Kwon

Exhibit Reviews

• 
  emma

  if a book has a low average rating, is categorized as lit fic, and is about a woman destroying her life...i'm in.
  
  even if i should be out.
  
  (review to come)
• 
  Jaidee

  
  3.2 " a kaleidoscope of what might have been" stars !!
  
  This is a bit of an awkward and difficult review to write as I was rooting for this book wholeheartedly. Instead this was a very mixed experience that often did not sit well with me. We have an immensely talented (but perhaps overconfident) author put out a novel that could have been a cultural psychosexual feminist tour de force but instead we are left with something extremely beautiful but sometimes felt manufactured, overly clever and well artificial. I felt that Ms. Kwon sacrificed depth, truth and authenticity for prowess, gratuitousness and dare I say it...EXHIBIT(ionism).
  
  The prose is exquisite, the vision is important and imperative but the final result felt superficial and dare I say it...a tad lazy.
  
  A good reading experience but a hugely missed literary opportunity....
  
  I have great faith that this author can put out something more meaningful and not just darkly gorgeous.
  
  This was my Pride Read of 2024. Happy Pride everybody....
  
  
• 
  Meike

  For the life of me, I could not get into this: There is so much packed into Kwon's second novel, both aesthetically and when it comes to themes, that the text appears to be constantly pulled apart by centrifugal forces. What's the center, you ask? Well, that's the next problem: Religion? A marriage under duress? Queer desire? BDSM? Art? Everything of the above and more?
  
  Main character Jin is not only a photographer grappling to find inspiration, she's also an ex-evangelical whose half-Argentinian movie-producer husband suddenly wants to have children, although they had agreed otherwise. Enter Lidija (assumed name, she's Korean like Jin), an injured ballerina, so also a momentarily stifled artist, who as a dom wants to and knows how to fulfill Jin's desire for sexual power play.
  
  I applaud Kwon for finding the courage to write against shame and sexual stigma, which Kwon has explained was a very difficult endeavor (
  https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...). Alas, the will to write dense poetic prose tends to overpower the whole text, as does the impetus to add all kinds of minor issues. IMHO, the connection between creative and sexual expression should have been at the center, aspects like a Korean ghost haunting the story are a great idea theoretically, but then mainly work as a distraction.
  
  Still, I hope this ambitious text will find many readers who have an easier time enjoying the various layers the book has to offer and more patience when it comes to the meandering character of the pacing.
• 
  Jessica Woodbury

  I wanted to like this but it wasn't a match. I think with this kind of novel, with this kind of prose, with this kind of "literary" feel, that it is always going to be pretty subjective and it either hits or it doesn't for each reader. But for me the prose, which often gave you just bits of things, edges of conversations, didn't dive into the themes the way I would have liked. Because these themes are really interesting to me! I've read other novels with similar ones and been captivated. But with this book it felt like coming into a room when everyone is leaving, like I'd missed all the substance. All I felt like I had was the prose and the style, whereas the characters only seemed to get farther and farther away from me.
• 
  luce (cry baby)

  2 ½ stars
  
  for something that had the potential of being subversive this struck me as very vanilla and delivery wise cold. the novel tries to be cerebral but i found the author's use of random high-brow or obscure words a gimmick. still, the novel's clinical mood isn't wholly ineffective and i did appreciate (on paper) the themes and perspectives it sets out to explore. however, the lack of depth did hinder my reading experience. full review to come.
• 
  Lupita Reads

  Jin is a photographer married to Philip, her college sweetheart. She feels safe with Philip and loved by him yet there’s a disconnect between them that begins to grow when the topic of whether they’ll have children or not comes up. Philip imagines his life as a father while at times Jin can’t stomach seeing herself as a mother. Then there’s the fact that Jin is expressing an interest in exploring consensual violence within their sexual intimacy. However, Philip is unable to meet or even understand her desire for it. There’s a layer of suffocation that begins to build for Jin and starts to reflect itself in her creativity. That is until she meets Lidija, a professional ballerina on a break from her dance company due to an injury. Jin and Lidija begin slowly to get to know each other and share things they haven’t told others.
  
  From page one I was sucked into Kwon’s stunningly poetic writing. The novel moves fast but not too fast with Kwon’s quick and sharp sentences. I needed about 300 more pages to this story though. The building tension between Jin and Lidija became sort of an obsession for me. I was turning the pages looking for something. More like studying something. Studying how two women who are strangers to each other turn towards one another in the way they do (won’t say how because SPOILERS). But that exploration of the thin line between friendship to desire is something that stood out so aggressively here for me because I wanted/needed more about these two. I love how Kwon interweaves religion and desires in her writing. How Kwon explores the stigmatization around kink, its impact, and the struggle with repression. I’d like more of this, please. I’ll leave you with a favorite quote:
  
  “Lidija and I had rules in place. Holding out the bell, she’d signal a role change. I did as she said as long as I had the bell in hand. If I broke a rule, or didn’t listen to Lidija’s bidding, I’d fail. But I hadn’t learned yet where failing led. I didn’t intend to let Lidija down. If I let the bell fall, or Lidija fetched it, we’d drop back to being friends again. In and out, we’d slip, form-shifting, equals, then lopsided.”
• 
  Queralt✨

  I’m one of the few people who enjoyed R.O. Kwon’s debut novel,
  The Incendiaries, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to pick up Exhibit. This new novel is as similar as it is extremely different from her first book, it’s one of these quiet literary fiction novels where very big things happen, but what seals the deal is the writing itself.
  
  Exhibit follows a photographer named Jin Han, of the Han family. The Hans were cursed by a kisaeng and they are all doomed to die for love. Jin is haunted by this story as if it were a real threat and when we meet her, her life is in shambles: she’s lost her faith, her husband Philip has suddenly decided he wants a kid (she doesn’t), she can’t take photographs, and she’s come clean to Philip and told him she’s into masochism (he isn’t). Her life has been following a controlled path and now everything is chaos until she meets the ballerina Lidija Jung who lends her an ear and wants to help her out with some of her frustrations.
  
  Before I started writing this review, I checked a few others and saw different theories about what this book is about. I think I’ll throw my own. I do think this is a book about the female body and what women owe to each other, but I think it’s mostly about control and chaos. There’s this line in one of Lizzy Mcalpine’s songs that goes ‘Lovely to sit between comfort and chaos,’ and this book felt like Jin’s comfort being shaken so hard she seeks a complete undoing to transform herself. Jiin talks about Ovid’s work in the book, and I think her whole journey is about an undoing that leads to a metamorphosis. And I’d argue this metamorphosis remains incomplete at the end, halted by something that happens (which I also interpreted as a test of faith? Idk, I have too many thoughts about this book).
  
  I thought this was very good. The writing was impeccable and something I had not quite experienced before, I had to re-read bits all the time because of how indirect it is. I also found it interesting that Kwon told this story through narrative but also through mixed conversations - we are in the middle of dialogue, and what is not that direct dialogue, is Jin recollecting or retelling us a past/future conversation with Lidija. All the in-betweenness and atemporality of the narrative felt like a fever dream.
  
  Another interesting thing I want to mention is Kwon’s decision to add hangul here. Jin refers to her mother as 엄마 and her dad as 아버지. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book use Korean in hangul as opposed to romanized.
  
  When it comes to this book deals a lot with the art world (photography and ballet mostly, for obvious reasons), kinks (this shouldn’t be a surprise considering Kwon edited
  Kink: Stories), the female body (and how men expect to have rights on it and what it does), women, and hiding secrets. It’s also sapphic/bi.
  
  Fave bits:
  “Listen to us,” Lidija said. “Such ladies, living to serve the group. I, like you, require not a thing. In fact, I don’t quite exist.”
  
  ___
  “Oh, I love that,” I said. I’d sat up, jolted. “People do love a dead girl.”
  “If we die, we’re quiet.”
  “With no opinions.”
  “It’s the ideal girl.”
  
  ___
  People may think us abject, pliant. Docile objects. It soiled us, this defiling lie. But plied with dirt, I’d plant a garden. Or so it began, an idea coiling the light.
  
  ___
  Hostile spirits, I was told, used to be thought female. One idea being that, if a girl died ill-used, she’d lived pining for a reprisal long denied. Ditto, with a wife, such being the roles possible, back then, girl or wife. People felt disquiet: this rage, pent up, might find a place to go.
  
  ___
  Kin split. Land, ripped apart. Invaded. Pillaged. In just the 1950s, more U.S. shells falling in Korea than in all of the Pacific through the 1940s. Spilt life fed this soil. I was forged in ash.
  
  *ARC received for free. This has not impacted my review.
• 
  Amber

  ARC gifted by the publisher
  
  Jin Han, a young photographer at the crossroads of her career, meets the alluring ballerina Lidija Jung at a party. As they become more entangled, both women's lives will never be the same.
  
  EXHIBIT asks the question of when a woman's body is on display (pregnancy, motherhood, gratitude) and when one is asked to hide (sexuality, desire, menstruation, kink). Kwon's poetic prose flows seamlessly between Jin's family stories, her feverish relationship with Lidija, and her disintegrating marriage.
  
  Another fascinating aspect is the juxtaposition between art and the artist. Jin's transformation from an artist who objectifies through lenses to becoming the subject of her own work and Lidija's body/skills as the center of critique gave me a lot to think about how we separate an artist's body from their work.
  
  A love child between THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY (C Pam Zhang) and MEMORY PIECE (Lisa Ko), I devoured EXHIBIT in a day and can't get enough of it!
  
  -
  
  initial thoughts
  
  When is a woman’s body forced on display and when is one asked to hide? This is the theme in EXHIBIT that stands out to me the most. There’s also a religious aspect that I don’t fully grasp.
  
  The writing is very lit fic that reminds me of A LAND OF MILK AND HONEY and the nebulous style has a hint of MEMORY PIECE. I loved how this book made me think about my body, my choices, my fate. Highly recommend to lit fic lovers who enjoy experimental writing styles!
• 
  Kristen

  Not for me. The author mistakes violence for intimacy and edge.
  
  I also found the story and the characters’ thoughts to be a bit of a mess. I kept re-reading pages convinced that I had missed sentences that would have helped the dialogue and decisions make sense.
• 
  Kristi Hovington

  Reading this book is like slipping into a lucid dream; the prose is so lush, bordering and often crossing into poetic, and the images in the novel so striking; a scene where the main character is in her studio surrounded by flower parts comes to mind as one of many that will linger.
  
  This story is elliptical and indirect; at times I wasn’t sure if I was in the past or the present, and with the ending, I’m not entirely sure of what happened; I can see a couple of possible outcomes and don’t have surety of any of them.
  
  None of that detracts from the beauty of this book, though; if anything, the ambiguity enhances the dream-like experience.
  
  This is an important exploration of women in modern times; even with supportive, loving husbands/partners, how much (invisible) work still defaults to women, and how women’s desires are often ignored or suppressed, how women who do not wish to have children are viewed as aberrant.
  
  This book is only 200 pages and I read it one sitting without meaning to; I really could not put down. I wish it had been 200 more.
• 
  Oscreads

  Intense book. I’m obsessed with Kwon’s sentences. They are quick and sharp. This character was layered and smartly written. I couldn’t put it down.
• 
  Jessica

  2.5 stars
  Not going to lie-I had high hopes for this book-I thought the premise sounded interesting, I think R.O.Kwon is such a fascinating author, but just like The Incindiaries, I felt that this book didn't live up to its hype. The storyline and characters had such promise and I love the idea of exploring queerness, desire, loss of faith, and art, but none of the plot or characters were really fleshed out and then the book just ended. I know a lot of reviewers have mentioned Kwon's literary prose/writing style, and I didn't have a problem with that, but the dialogue was SO BAD. Nobody repeats the person's name they are talking to multiple times in conversation. Basically, all the issues I had with The Incindiaries showed up in Exhibit: slow storyline, vague characters, bad dialogue, and abrupt endings.
  
  Also, for a book that was heavily marketed for its exploration of kink in relationships, there was barely any mention of it. More importantly, I'm not an expert in BDSM, but I'm pretty sure choking someone without their express consent goes against the rules. Anyway, I'm sure I will read R.O. Kwon's next book, regardless.
• 
  Maia

  I tried … I really, really tried. Or -as this absurdly self-important, pretentious “author” would have it- I, tried. I tried, yes.
  
  Gosh! I read the NYT review and was intrigued. Typically I love Asian writers.
  
  But it was, just, not, to be.
  
  Well, all kidding aside: it was simply impossible for me to get through this drudge of a novel, even though I rarely (rarely!) give up on a book!
• 
  John Caleb Grenn

  While Exhibit isn’t my usual cup of tea, I can’t help but notice how stark, real and striking this novel is in its precision of language and capturing of the side of relationships not usually discussed in novels. If you’re ready for a slow, nearly eerie intricate examination of people’s innermost, pick this one up.
• 
  Laurens.Little.Library

  DNF @ 23%
  
  Written in the sparsest of sparse language, this odd work of lit fic is probably meant for someone—but that someone ain't me.
  
  On the surface, it should have worked. It's about a couple who've been together for many years, only now, the husband wants kids and the wife is't interested. It's about racism, featuring a predominantly Asian-American cast. It's also queer, as the FMC is bisexual and starts up (what is billed as, but I never got that far) a torrid affair with a ballet dancer she meets at a part. Add in some lines about "obsession" and "kink" and I was sold.
  
  In the end, the prose is so stylistic that it was too strange for its own good.
• 
  Helen | readwithneleh

  Jin Han is a photographer who is married to her college boyfriend and seemingly living the life of her dreams, at least on the surface. But underneath, there are murmurs and whispers of want. We see Jin as an artist struggling to find inspiration, as a wife feeling betrayed by her husband’s sudden and new desire for children, and as an ex-evangelical navigating her repressed sexual desires. And it isn’t until she meets Lidija Jung, a professional ballerina, at a lavish party in Marin that the whispers turn into howls. The two women bond and their lives are changed by their shared desire for pain, pleasure, and artistic drive.
  
  I absolutely loved this book. The writing felt like photographs—snapshots of scenes, moments caught in the in-between of past and present, pleasure and pain, suffocation and inspiration. It is the kind of poetic, bold and daring writing that I love for it always makes my heart flutter and keeps me on my toes. And this book had me in knots (in a good way) the whole time I was reading it. The tension between Jin and Lidia had me in a chokehold and would not let me go. As Kwon explored the dichotomy of female desire and shame, and the expectations and limitations of both through these two women and the kisaeng, I found myself both enraged and thrilled.
  
  With themes of faith (or the loss thereof), sexual repression and desire, self-identity, and artistry, this book was a study of an intersection of identities that one can hold with or without their permission. Sometimes because of how we were raised and how we were told to behave, women have always lived with limitations on their identity. This book shows how there is beauty in the unseen, in the abstract, and sometimes even in the violence.
  
  Thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own.
  
  ------------------------------------
  
  i'll never be the same again. obsessed with what Kwon did here.
  
  full rtc.
• 
  Krista

  This book reads like a dream where you know you’re asleep but can’t quite manage to wake up all the way. Snatches of moments, half-lit scenes, and oblique references meditate on art, faith, friendship, expectations, and filial responsibility. The writing is juicy and crisp and each sentence is a jewel. I recommend reading this in one sitting if you can to fully appreciate the themes.
  
  NetGalley provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
• 
  Tell

  Intense, potent, vivid, dark. I will say I expected slightly more k*nk based on all the press around the book, but I was still surprised by the descent into sexual intensity that we got. The last ~50 pages of this took my breath away.
• 
  Kaleigh

  Was so excited to read this book without realizing I'd read the author before and couldn't engage with their prose. Same thing here. It's so sparse and euphemistic and flowery and more like a colletion of poems really. I just can't handle that kind of thing in a novelistic frame of mind.
  
  

  “I fell in love. It had to be a secret. She and I, we kept it. Pulled up, her skirt flared open. She had petal skin. Insults attend a kisaeng’s life, but she’d also lived in silk, idling in orchid baths. She hadn’t pushed grass in her mouth, then dirt, while half a village died. She thought it prudent to trust in, of all the options, people. I shit you not. It left her wide open to this rough, uncaring world. But I’d stand guard.”

  
  
  Sorry what? Sorry? What? Nice poem but I didn't want to read a poem today.
• 
  Hannah Bae

  Good god!!! ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 📸🩰👀👋🫦💧💧💧❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 (Suffice it to say that this was a sexy, exhilarating, stunning crafted read!)
  R. O. Kwon has a poet’s gift for language and a fearless handle on story.
• 
  Aubrey

  Sometimes I feel as if I were speedrunning diverse reading. I read the review a good two months in advance of publication, I tack on the hold before 99% (at least) of the reading populace knows it even exists, the hold swans in, I make room, and with the average book being 200-300 pages in length, I have it back on the shelf in one to two weeks. I missed the hype of Kwon's first novel, but when this came around with its kink and its queer and its non-whiteness, it would've been rather pathetic had I allowed it to pass me by. In any case, I know it's rather cheap to compare this to Han Kang's
  The Vegetarian, but when there's a similar Ovidian intersection of the floral and the female on photographic display functioning as major plot mechanic between both works, you have to wonder. Outside of that, this piece of writing's strongest double edge sword is the series of incisions it calls its prose, which works wonders when the light hits just right and throws the reader headlong out of the ring whenever it hits particularly harsh (and lord while I hate it when folks mewl about 'vulgarity', the expletive laden elegies of one lone long dead intermissioned more than they lined up the final shot). Of course, it could have all been my whiteness and increasing estrangement from that concept termed 'womanhood' and all its inextricable vernacular, but while I can claim a surface level engagement with the to and fro and the 'poor representation' versus the 'subversive progress', it all fell out with neither outright yea nor fervent nay on my part. Still, the topics concerned are important enough, especially with Hays Code 2.0 encroaching all the more on the self-sustenance of certain corners of Internet without which we would have long ago tumbled into fascist kyriarchy. Indeed, this may have left me rather chill, but I'm still thinking about that
  Kink: Stories, if only to keep the brainless little shitlords who see my stubbornly high follower count and think that the way to influencer valhalla is through my rabbithole of a descent off my front porch. Long story short, if you're wondering what the 'read of 2024' is (an exercise in insipidity if there ever were one), this certainly goes farther in earning the title than most.
• 
  Caleb Bedford

  This is fantastic. Literary fiction with the taut, propulsive pacing of a thriller. I couldn't put it down. Kwon pulled me in and refused to let me go.
  
  This is a novel about art and artists. It is also a novel about love and pain. What amount of suffering would someone endure for their art? What sacrifices would they make for who or what they love?
  
  There is a spiritual and religious element to this novel, as well, interwoven and related to an old family curse, relayed within "as told to Jin Han."
  
  As poetic and sensual as it is intense, Exhibit is a novel you will not want to stop reading, from the first sentence to the last.
• 
  Elena L.

  Jin Han is a brilliant photographer and in her marriage to her college love Phillip, she has been pressured to have a child. Lidija Jung is an injured ballet soloist. When they meet each other at a lavish party, they become entangled by their ambition and desires.
  
  Jin and Lidija find in art - photography and ballet, respectively - inspiration, solace and meaning for life. Through the lives of a woman with kisaeng's spirit whose inner desires overlap another soul with her own ambition, Kwon excels at showing the way desires contrast with stereotyped image of Asian women. There is certain fragility in the pressures, in how the story highlights the body image, the public figure hidden of imperfection x private, living in hiding.
  
  The old familial curse that haunts Jin is vividly painted in form of 'The Kisaeng's story' - the Korean tale mirrors the two female characters, in how woman's body is exhibited while also defying the social and cultural norms regarding Korean women. Furthermore, Kwon sharply examines religion and one notices that even faith seems unable to save in some circumstances (I wonder how much comes from the author's own experience).
  
  This is a character-driven story, which singular prose (reminiscent of LAND OF MILK AND HONEY) might not be for everyone. The ideas and its delivery (however in a more abstract way) remind one of MEMORY PIECE. This is a novel that requires one to read between lines, to decipher and have one's own interpretation.
  
  EXHIBIT feels like a meticulous character study, about womanhood and desires. In 200 pages, this book reads very literary fiction, innovative and experimental.
  
  - note: this is perfect for buddy read as the reader will probably have some (if not a lot) of questions
  
  [ I received an ARC from the publisher - Riverhead books . All opinions are my own ]
• 
  Desirae

  
  The central relationship will appeal to many readers, but it's the connection between the two women and their respective art forms that really raises the stakes in this most recent effort from R. O. Kwon.
  
  First, I'm going to say that I love the way this writer infuses queerness and sexuality. The characters are always layered and never pigeonholed into limited roles or representations, and folks who seem to be living pretty typical existences in some ways can also go to - hypothetically - gatherings that may be shocking to those who do not frequent such affairs. I really enjoy learning more about these aspects of Kwon's characters in general, and that feature comes through clearly in _Exhibit_.
  
  Jin and Lidija, a photographer and ballerina respectively, meet at a party and find that they have their artistry in common but also that they have a unique connection with each other. They also both hold vital secrets, and it is the discovery of these hidden truths and implications of those revelations that bring on major shifts in both characters' lives. As usual, Kwon's style aptly matches the motifs. Structurally, Kwon's choices may read as too experimental for readers hoping for a basic b kind of novel, but girl, that's not why you crack this author's books.
  
  I tore through this in almost one sitting. Now that I know where the characters are going, I want to spend more time recounting their journey.
  
  This is a unique read from an author who's becoming quite well known for exactly that. I enjoyed it and will continue to queue Kwon's work on sight.
• 
  June

  I like her iambic prose,
  but fancy less their wild pose;
  a book on the subjects goes
  where more readers chose;
  
  Her verse sung in gold,
  adverse culls the bold:
  tension grows to strip off clothes,
  transience froze, art shows...
  agony arose, whispering rose.
  terse-ly "repeat" a moral mold,
  immersive I maybe, but not sold.
  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  AI revised my review as such:
  
  I admire her iambic prose,
  yet care less for their wild pose;
  a book on such subjects flows
  to where the crowd's choice shows.
  (my comments: AI is better)
  
  Her verses sung in tones of gold,
  adversity selects the bold:
  tension rises to shed clothes,
  in transience, the art it shows...
  agony springs, the whispering rose.
  Briefly "repeats" a moral code,
  engrossed I stand, yet unconsoled.
  (My comments: from inaccuracies to errors)
• 
  Isa

  Kwon's language is just as lush and obsessive as I remember 😍
• 
  Gregory Duke

  I cannot stand Kwon's overwrought prose. So little is done with so much. Always.
• 
  Sarah

  Astonishingly bad. Almost DNF but I am stubborn. Novel about a photographer named Jin who cheats on her film producer husband Philip with an injured ballerina Lidija because Jin wants to be whipped and burned during sex. Extremely pretentious sentence fragments. Trying and failing so hard to be artsy.