Generator

In this sometimes tender and often bitter outing from Korean Swiss writer Gremaud (All the World’s a Mall), a woman traces the footsteps of her “generator,” the father she never knew, from one nuclear power site to the next. The narrator, born Lee Hye-rin in Korea and going as Jennifer Ball where she now lives in Switzerland, travels to coastal Holyhead in Wales, where her father was born 82 years ago. From there, she travels to the nearby Wylfa nuclear plant, where he began his career, and on to Linkou in Taiwan, where he married a local Chinese woman and fathered two children. In Korea, she visits the site where the generator had an affair with her mother while he was there to help build the Kori I nuclear reactor. When the narrator was born in 1977, the generator’s career was at its zenith. By the late 1980s, after the Three Mile Island accident and meltdown at Chernobyl, his work dried up amid anti-nuclear sentiment. The novel offers intriguing insights into the nature of identity and one’s origins, along with pointed commentary on the generator’s achievements and the deep uncertainty left in his wake. This leaves readers with much to chew on. (Jan.)