Eunice Hong’s debut novel, Memento Mori, selected by Aimee Liu as a Red Hen Press Fiction Award Winner, follows an unnamed Korean narrator through mythology, memory loss, and numerous personal tragedies. Traversing past lives in North Korea and imagined existences in Hades, this book probes family histories and the varied ways to process grief with rawness, gentleness, and surprise.
At bedtime, the narrator tells her younger brother the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus, wondering what Eurydice might have felt—after losing her entire family, and then her own life, did she even want Orpheus to bring her back from the dead? Through this lens, Hong leads us to question our mortality, and the many difficult decisions that we face because of it: How can we find peace in spite of our traumas? What mysteries of brain chemistry, stardust, and varied human experiences make us the unique individuals that we are? How do we consider the needs of our ailing loved ones in a way that extends them dignity and grace? How do we move forward when the heaviness of the past threatens to overwhelm us?