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About the Book

Haesoo is a successful therapist and regular guest on a popular TV program. But when she makes a scripted negative comment about a public figure who later commits suicide, she finds herself ostracized by friends, fired from her job, and her marriage begins to unravel. These details come to the reader gradually, in meditative prose, through bits and pieces of letters that Haesoo writes and finally abandons as she walks alone through her city.

One day she has an unexpected encounter with Sei, a 10-year-old girl attempting to feed an orange cat. Stray cats seem to be everywhere; they have the concern of one other neighborhood woman and the ire of everyone else. Like Haesoo and Sei, the cats endure various insults and recover slowly. Haesoo, who would not otherwise care about animals or form relationships with children, now finds herself pulled back by degrees into the larger world.

Praise for COUNSEL CULTURE:

“In this near-weightless tale of the heaviness of living, Haesoo Lim, a former psychotherapist and regular TV guest, walks the nighttime streets of her South Korean town, lost in a fog of confusion after the disintegration of her marriage and the ending of her career. . . . Haesoo’s story is revealed to us remotely, tentatively, akin to the way she herself moves around the neighborhood and to the way many of the block’s frightened street cats eye her. One scruffy orange cat in particular piques her interest. It’s been named Turnip by a local child, 10-year-old Sei, who befriends Haesoo. Gradually, the reality of Sei’s empty home life brushes up against Haesoo’s sad wanderings, which in turn brush up against Turnip’s struggle for survival: a triangle of characters locked into each other’s fate, each looking for relief, for a lasting home. Melancholy and ruminative yet possessed of a quiet energy, Kim’s tale leads Haesoo toward the realization that, more often than not, what we yearn to be is who we already are, that life is less a matter of becoming than of revealing.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Award-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin’s sublime sophomore title-in-translation, Counsel Culture, is the spare, intense study of a woman in crisis, a subject Kim so strikingly presented in her 2022 Anglophone debut, Concerning My Daughter. She reunites with translator Jamie Chang, who again skillfully mirrors Kim’s clean, affecting prose.”

— Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness

“Kim does not offer pat solutions or mawkish sentimentality; rather, Haesoo’s attempts to care for Sei and Turnip provide a framework for her defensiveness and self-pity to give way to atonement and healing. The result is an appealing meditation on personal and professional ethics.”

— Publisher’s Weekly

“Kim’s beautifully introspective novel thoughtfully explores the time it takes to process difficult experiences and the restoration that can happen when people open up to each other without expectation.” 

—Emily Park, Booklist 

“Counsel Culture is a heartwarming story of a middle-aged woman who rescues a sick cat and comforts a child through difficult times, set in the chilling tale of a man who takes his own life because of her. The two veins entwine and cling relentlessly, staying with the reader beyond the covers.”

—Cho Nam-joo, author of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

“What do a midlife counselor, a 10-year-old girl and a couple of feral cats have in common? This unique, gritty and heartfelt story of loss, friendship and redemption, of course!”

—Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine

About the Author

Kim Hye-jin is an award-winning author from Daegu, South Korea. She won the 2023 Kim Yujeong Literary Award, the JoongAng Literature Award in 2013 for Central Station, the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature in 2018 for Concerning My Daughter, and the Daesan Literary Award in 2020 for The Work of No. 9. She was also the Special Award Laureate of the 4th Lee Hochul Literary Prize for Peace in 2020.

Book Details

Paperback ISBN: 9781632062321 • $18.00
eBook ISBN: 9781632062338
Publication date: March 5, 2024
5" x 7.125" • 208 pages
Fiction: South Korea / Cancel Culture / Urban Isolation / Rescue Cats
Rights: North America