Peter Stupples reviews Star Of The North, by D. B. John. Published by Penguin Random House
This novel from D.B. John has it all.
A Korean-African American young woman visiting South Korea meets a young man and spends an idyllic day on an island beach near the North Korean border. The two are suddenly and secretly snatched by sailors from a North Korean submarine and taken to a camp across the border. After months of investigation in South Korea and the US, the authorities, ignorant of the fate of the two lovers, decide that they must have drowned accidentally. The Korean-African American girl has a twin sister, Jenna Williams, who can never resign herself to the drowning theory and is determined to find out the truth. She is an accomplished linguist and athlete who eventually trains to become an operative in the CIA. She becomes involved in negotiations between the United States and North Korea to lessen tension and to bring an end to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions (the novel is nothing if not topical).
Within North Korea, a second plot line traces the life of a black-market trader who uses the corrupt system to make life bearable for her family. Multi-layered plots develop from these contexts, eventually racing towards violent and constantly surprising conclusions.
Political thrillers tend to be less nuanced than classic spy novels, aspiring less to "literature" — characterisation is shallow, motives are honed to the bare essentials, the heroes are stoic, able to bear any physical deprivation and pain, yet also have remarkable intelligence that can outwit the most highly efficient totalitarian regime. This novel hits all these broad buttons with sledge-hammers.
The general consensus in the West is that the North Korean regime is brutal, that the population is brainwashed, that the common people are deprived of the good things in life. It is assumed that any misdemeanour, such as raising doubts about the wisdom of the regime, is rewarded with years of hard labour in concentration camps, the down-trodden workers used to build nuclear facilities and chemical weapons plants.
This novel spares no pains to paint this picture in grim gothic smears of blood, under dark, lowering skies, to the music of screams and the thumps of weapons against flesh. The Americans are somewhat naive purveyors of reason, anxious to stop an escalation in nuclear armaments and with the skills, led by the charismatic Jenna Williams, to outwit the North Koreans.
Could this be read as a feminist novel or promoting the super-intelligence of African Americans? If you can stand the strains of brutal torture, kungfupanderism and superheroism against all odds, you may want to give this some thought.
- Peter Stupples, now living in Wellington, used to teach at the University of Otago
