Excavations by Hannah Michell

July 18,. 2023

Excavations by Hannah Michell

After a day spent looking after her children, Sae is looking forward to her husband Jae coming home from his job with a small engineering firm subcontracted to do work for a major Seoul corporation. But then there is a news report that the building where Jae is working has collapsed and hundreds of people are trapped or dead. Sae goes in search of her husband, but as the days pass with no sign of him, Sae begins to uncover more and more deception, eroding away at what she believed was their life.

I enjoyed this novel a lot more than I expected to when I started it. There are different types of excavations going on: the building site, unethical business practices at the corporate level, a karaoke salon where businessmen gather and spill their secrets, Jae's hidden past, what Sae thought was their life together. You can feel Sae's growing desperation as the days pass and she is unable to get answers about what happened to her husband. Thoughtful contemporary fiction.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Seoul, Korea