The Good Son

The smell of blood woke me. It was intense, as though my whole body were inhaling it. It reverberated and expanded within me. Strange scenes flitted through my mind the fuzzy yellow light of a row of street lamps in the fog, swirling water below my feet, a crimson umbrella rolling along a rain-soaked road, a plastic tarpaulin shrouding a construction site snapping in the wind. Somewhere a man was singing and slurring lyrics: a song about a girl he couldn t forget, and about her walking in the rain.

It didn t take me long to figure out what was going on. None of this was reality or even the remnants of a dream. It was a signal my head was sending my body. Stay lying down. Don t move. It s the price you have to pay for not taking your medication.

Not taking my meds was a quenching rain in the desert of my life, even if it sometimes caused a seizure. Right now, I was experiencing the unsettling hallucinations that warned me a storm was imminent. There was no safe harbor; I could only wait for it to arrive. If past experience was any indication, when it was over, I wouldn t remember what had happened. It would be simple and intense, and afterward I would be tired and depleted. I deserved this; I knew full well what I was getting into when I chose this path. It was an addiction; I kept doing it again and again despite understanding the risks. Most addicts get high to chase after a fantasy, but for me it was a different route: I had to get off my drugs to reach a heightened reality. That was when the magic hours opened up my headaches and tinnitus disappeared, and my senses became acute. I could smell like a dog, my brain whirred quicker than ever, and I read the world by instinct instead of with reason. I felt empowered and superior.

Even then, I still had tiny dissatisfactions. I never felt superior to Mother and Auntie. These two women treated me like a seat cushion something to be suffocated and smothered. I knew what the chain of events would be if

South Korea s leading writer of psychological thrillers and crime fiction, You-Jeong Jeong is the award-winning author of four novels including Seven Years of Darkness, which was named one of the top ten crime novels of 2015 by Die Zeit (Germany). Her work has been translated into seven languages. A #1 bestseller in Korea, The Good Son is the first of her books to appear in English.
 
Chi-Young Kim is the award-winning translator of the Man Asian Literary Prize-winning and bestselling novel Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim, and works of fiction by Sun-Mi Hwang, J.M. Lee, and Young-Ha Kim, among others. She lives in Los Angeles.

At long last, South Korea s preeminent author of psychological thrillers has arrived Stateside. The Good Son . . . [is] a perfect introduction: an ingeniously twisted mother-son saga that keeps your heart pumping and then breaks it.
Entertainment Weekly

A chilling portrait of a psychopath, and a beautifully evocative tale of wealth and isolation in modern South Korean life. You-Jeong Jeong has been called the Stephen King of South Korea, although I d prefer to compare her to Lionel Shriver, Dorothy B. Hughes, or Patricia Highsmith.  
Molly Odintz, Lit Hub

Absorbing . . . An unlikely thriller that we continue to read thanks to Ms. Jeong's controlled prose...with a sickened sort of fascination. It's a testament to the author's skill and seriousness of purpose that she maintains suspense about her inhuman-seeming protagonist's fate until the bitter end.  
The Wall Street Journal

Want to read an under-the-radar psychological thriller? Feel smug about pocketing The Good Son.
Elle.com

Hard to put down.
The Financial Times

Jeong expertly inches up the tension in this crafty, creepy story.  
The Guardian

Jeong s thrillers are wildly popular in South Korea, and we ll soon learn why . . . The gore is intense, but the psychological terror might never wash off.
Vulture

Riveting.
Bustle

Satisfyingly chilling.
The Los Angeles Review of Books

"[A] must-read psychological thriller." 
Lenny Letter

Award-winning translator Chi-Young Kim ensures that Jeong is introduced to Anglophone readers with chilling precision . . . Lauded as South Korea s leading psychological crime-fiction writer, Jeong performs intricate plotting here in a tale that . . . enthrall[s].
Booklist

A precise, meticulously plotted thriller . . . The tension comes from Jeong s prose, which spares not a single word . . . [The Good Son] sucks you in with precision and holds your attention, leaving