From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, a powerful, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life.
‘Haunting and powerful’ Madeline Miller
‘Brisk, jolting, brilliant, beautiful, true’ Andrew Sean Greer
‘I tore through this’ Raven Leilani, author of Luster
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Phillip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She’s been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Urgent, bold, and deeply moving, this novel asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?
‘Haunting and powerful’ Madeline Miller
‘Brisk, jolting, brilliant, beautiful, true’ Andrew Sean Greer
‘I tore through this’ Raven Leilani, author of Luster
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Phillip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She’s been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Urgent, bold, and deeply moving, this novel asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?
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Reviews
Kwon's spare staccato sentences feel like drawing short gasps that refuse to give readers the satisfaction of a full-bodied breath. Because of the uncertainties inherent to desire, Kwon leaves readers wanting, wondering, who and what Jin will ultimately choose for herself, but hoping she keeps meeting the ghost of the kisaeng on the way there
A rare jewel of a book, at once forceful and unrepentant, delicate and shimmering. R. O. Kwon carves language into a wondrous, jagged thing, revealing facets of desire usually hidden. To read Exhibit is to feel time slow down
A lyrical, sensual exploration of the relationship between two Korean American women - Jin, a photographer, and Lidija, a ballet dancer - who meet at a party and soon establish bonds both creative and sexual
The sexiest novel of the year... her examination of kink, desire, shame, lust and the liminal space we enter when we finally stop denying ourselves... makes Exhibit uniquely successful and powerfully sexy
Exhibit takes an expansive view of the things that women are punished for wanting... Whether she is justified in hurtling toward her urges matters less than the spectacle of her craving. Searching and introspective, Exhibit reflects some of the same social issues that Kwon has addressed in her non-fiction... the stigmatization of kink, the complexities of queerness, and the constant, destabilizing threat of violence against Asian women... Jin's misdeeds are fictional, but the societal constraints she faces exist well outside the novel's pages
Unabashedly bold and filled with desire, a novel openly and proudly bearing its intimacy on every page
Kwon is one of the finest stylists of her generation ... the savage beauty and intensity of the prose gets under your skin, lingering like the bruises Lidija leaves on Jin
Exhibit is sensational - a novel that's both intimate and operatic, singular and world-encompassing. Kwon's prose is soulful and piercing, chronicling the many ways we lose and find ourselves, blending love and sex and fables between the infinite folds that encompass desire. Exhibit is entirely captivating, and Kwon is truly masterful; it's a book for the mind and the heart and the body, an actual tour de force
Exhibit is extraordinary: brisk, jolting, brilliant, beautiful, true. A ghost story, a tale of passion, a captivating portrait of how art is made, it turns myths upside down, assumptions inside out, all in the most exquisite prose in the bookstore. Kwon is one of the finest American writers, and her latest is a must for all readers
Hypnotic and sometimes perplexing, R.O. Kwon's second novel literalizes the twinning of pain and art with a ballerina character who is an actual sadomasochist... A highly sensory experience, awash in petals and colors, smells and flavors... It lingers like a mysterious, multihued bruise
I tore through this. Exhibit explores how obliteration can be a kind of rebirth, how the nuances of that are complicated by the constraints of chosen and socially imposed identities. Kwon writes about art and ardor with urgency
An athletic literary talent. The idea of a divided self, a way of half-living, defines this book
In prose at once sharp and lush, Kwon crafts a gripping tale of a woman wrestling with the past, while boldly making her own future. A haunting and powerful exploration of art, racism, feminism, and desire, this novel will stay with me a long time
Kwon's prose is unlike any other, sensuous and sumptuous and yet razor-sharp. Here, she captures the quick-developing intimacy between a photographer named Jin and a ballerina, to whom Jin spills a family secret-a confession with unforeseen consequences
In this sexy novel full of art, queer sex and hopelessly entangled human relationships, Kwon explores characters' desires to the fullest, filling her short novel to the brim with complex motivations and the impulse that drives humanity's need for connection with others
A hypnotic queer love story full of lust and longing... a haunting romance about desire, obsession and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up
Exhibit expands Kwon's set of interests, which includes queerness, racial identity, aesthetic vocation, domestic violence, childbearing, and parental aging. But its primary concern, the pattern that constellates these other interests, remains religion, its inexplicability... Stylistically, we see her precise and unusual metaphorical vehicles, her love of prenominal modifiers. At its best, this style is legitimately surprising, demanding are consideration of its objects
Reading Exhibit feels like watching ballet: a breathtaking performance of fluidity and flight that appears effortless, weightless, but takes huge power, talent, and skill. The result is kaleidoscopic prose, sizzling with tension and beauty. I adored it.
In this novel of ardor and tested fidelity... The two women, both at loose ends, embark on a secret, sadomasochistic relationship. As Jin finds ecstasy in being dominated, she questions her identity, her cultural background, and her truest desires. Kwon's poetic prose gilds a narrative that tightly weaves together myth, self-exploration and artistic ambition
In a hypnotic, sensual stream of consciousness... Kwon explores an intimacy that grows into obsession, revealing insights into the nature of power, sexuality and free will
R.O. Kwon writes stunningly about the hunger for transcendence, for something larger than oneself, more encompassing than society... Exhibit offers a brave, sometimes elliptical portrait of one woman's liberation from the expectations of others... It is a novel that makes profound and singular and visible private experiences often considered askance in American fiction, when they are considered at all
A book that's spicy enough for summer but substantial enough for book club? Sold