2.5
Exhibit
ByPublisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY DUGGINS PRIZE
"Hypnotic...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." —Time Magazine
"R.O. Kwon’s Exhibit is, hands down, the sexiest novel of the year." —Vogue
"A highly sensory experience...lingers like a mysterious, multihued bruise." —The New York Times
"One of the most buzzed-about books of the year…fiery, sexual, and undeniably original." —Poets & Writers
From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life.
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She's been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY DUGGINS PRIZE
"Hypnotic...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." —Time Magazine
"R.O. Kwon’s Exhibit is, hands down, the sexiest novel of the year." —Vogue
"A highly sensory experience...lingers like a mysterious, multihued bruise." —The New York Times
"One of the most buzzed-about books of the year…fiery, sexual, and undeniably original." —Poets & Writers
From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life.
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She's been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesExhibit Reviews
2.5
“I adored The Incendiaries. I often find myself thinking of Phoebe and William. I did have some qualms with the structure of it though, especially the portions on the cult leader that did not quite landed for me, but I still enjoyed it enough to surpass that and give it my highest marks.
I went into Exhibition with high hopes because the mix of art, God, kinks, marriage, etc sounded fascinating, however, I was underwhelmed.
The prose was very Kwon (I appreciated how Philip and Jim were such foodies and how there were passages that made my mouth literally water) but it felt disjointed and forcefully obscure at times in a way that it did not in The Incendiaries. I was most intrigued by her exploration of God in that book too but here it just failed to connect, perhaps because it was mostly said and not showed ( at least until the second half and the hospital passages) that Jin was devoted.
In The Incendiaries, the Jejah cult leader's chapters were purposefully short and often not very illuminating in terms of information and connection to the story, I had the same feeling but worse with the Kisaeng's story here, even though I admit they provided some comic relief from Jin's constant complaining. Perhaps the main problem of the book for me (it is still only my opinion) is that I did not connect with Jin, and I would have liked to have understood her and her psychology, including her kinks exploration more.
Will I read R.O Kwon in the future? You bet! She is still an amazing writer but this was not her best work (imo)
PS: The easter eggs of Julian and Phoebe Lin were the best part”
“I wanted the story to focus more on the familiar curse, Jin's strange relationship with Lydija, whatever was going on with Jin's husband but instead we got a lot of paragraphs about Jin grappling with leaving the church which were so boring in comparison to what else she had going on!”
About R. O. Kwon
R. O. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling novel The Incendiaries, which was named a best book of the year by more than forty publications and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon coedited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
Other books by R. O. Kwon
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