Miles From Nowhere Author Nami Mun at Elliott Bay Tuesday

Korean-born, American-"raised" novelist Nami Mun visits Elliott Bay Book Company next Tuesday, January 6, at 7:30 p.m. We put the "raised" in quotes like that because she actually lived on the street for a bit. But this is a novel, not a memoir--or not over 1 percent memoir--so the appeal has to have more to do with her skills as a novelist, than her street cred.

Mun is a Pushcart Prize winner--a short story which appears in the book as the chapter "Shelter" did the trick--and four other chapters had their genesis as short stories in various publications. The resulting novel is so episodic, you could also think of it as a collection of linked short stories. It begins in the 1980s, in the Bronx, with Joon, a young Korean girl, "escaping" from a homeless shelter, and explaining how she ended up there.

Things go from underage sex worker to junkie, and while Mun is never trite, it's hard to come to grips with her can't-catch-a-break protagonist Joon. In his review of Miles from Nowhere, the P-I's John Marshall says, "It takes something extraordinary to pierce comfort's cocoon," and "Mun's novel has no false notes." We agree with the first part, but not so much with the last--what's been praised as "offhand poetry" sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise flatly direct prose.

Some people are drawn to tales of extremity--on learning that there would be closely observed homelessness and drug addiction, we put off reading the book until after Christmas. (A cinematic relative--in this one sense--is Slumdog Millionaire, which also rubs your nose in horrific poverty and degradation.) Maybe it's a relief that Joon is an affectless screen on which bruises from beatings and ulcerated needle tracks appear without histrionic wailings and gnashings of teeth.

If there's an arc to the novel, it has to do with Joon's dogged unfamiliarity with what hope feels like. Why she arrests her descent isn't clear to her, even in retrospect. It's no thanks to her friends, who come and go chapter by chapter, only occasionally meriting a postscript. The Joon recounting the events is both hyper-present in her reminiscences and elegiacally disconnected from that "miles from nowhere" self.

We used to believe suffering was valuable, that there was a lesson in it somewhere; now we think unheard voices are worthwhile--we should listen and connect. There may be some truth to that, but this novel made clear to us that there are still some experiences we don't aspire to connect with. It takes a writer with Mun's contemplative eye to describe it before we'll even try.