Nuclear Family by Joseph Han

 Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023--San Antonio

After spending two weeks and getting only 40% of the way into Nuclear Family by Joseph Han, I abandoned it.  I just never was eager to get back to it, although I kept returning to it every 3 days or so.  There were too many characters.  And not much was happening so far that was really interesting.  It is about an immigrant family in Hawaii that came from Korea years ago and has work hard to build up a reputation for having 3 restaurants that serve the best Korean food in Honolulu.  But when a son leaves to go to Korea to teach English so he can "find his roots," the ends up trying to cross the DMZ into North Korea.  The news of that event causes the Hawaiian Korean community to start questioning whether the family is really South Korean as they have said or if they are North Korean, and the gossip causes almost all the customers to start boycotting the restaurants.  The family struggles again just as they had thought they had accomplished the American dream of building a successful business and doing a good job of raising their two children (the son who went to Korea and a daughter who has always taken a lead role at the restaurants).  The book was named a best book of 2022 by TIME, NPR, and others and has good reviews and ratings, but I just couldn't continue with it.  No rating.