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    The Mountain: Stories
    The Mountain: Stories
    The Mountain: Stories
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Mountain: Stories

    Written by Paul Yoon

    Narrated by Tim Campbell

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In The Mountain, Paul Yoon displays his subtle, ethereal, and strikingly observant style with six thematically linked stories, taking place across several continents and time periods and populated with characters who are connected by their traumatic pasts, newly vagrant lives, and quests for solace in their futures. Though they exist in their own distinct worlds (from a sanatorium in the Hudson Valley to an inn in the Russian far east) they are united by the struggle to reconcile their traumatic pasts in the wake of violence, big and small, spiritual and corporeal. A morphine-addicted nurse wanders through the decimated French countryside in search of purpose; a dissatisfied wife sporadically takes a train across Spain with a much younger man in the wake of a building explosion; a lost young woman emigrates from Korea to Shanghai, where she aimlessly works in a camera sweat shop, trying fruitlessly to outrun the ghosts of her past.

    Though each story is distinct from the others, his restrained voice and perceptive observations about violence-to the body, the landscape, and ultimately, the human soul-weaves throughout this collection as a whole, making The Mountain a memorable read.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateAug 15, 2017
    ISBN9781681686721
    Author

    Paul Yoon

    Paul Yoon is the author of four previous works of fiction: Once the Shore, which was a New York Times Notable Book; Snow Hunters, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, which was an NPR Best Book of the Year; and Run Me to Earth, which was one of Time’s Must-Read Books of 2020 and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in the Hudson Valley, New York. .

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    Reviews for The Mountain

    3.5/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Reading this collection of short stories was--well, it was an experience, and not one that I can say I particularly enjoyed. I will give Yoon credit for being able to create an atmosphere that completely draws you in to each story and overwhelms you. But at the end of every one but the last, I ended up feeling empty and depressed. It was exhausting to read of people living empty, lonely lives, accepting violence, hunger, loss, addiction, pain, exploitation, and poverty as if these were the expected norm. Perhaps they are for many people, and I feel badly for them; perhaps Yoon meant these stories to be a call to action. In any case, I was glad to come to the end, and I need to search my TBRs for something a bit more fun or uplifting, something that doesn't keep banging on the same depressing note on every page. I'm not one who always wants a happy ending; in fact, I often find them boring and unbelievable. But this book just plain exhausted me. I am emotionally worn out.
    • 4/5
      The connecting thread through these stories is the theme, of displacement by war or another tragic happening. Men and women we hope are seeking answers or a new way to live. Loneliness, because so many have lost those important in their lives, or are now unhappy for different reasons, unable to forget. Not much happens in these stories, they are very slowly paced but as I read I realized the patience of both the writer and the reader. The trust of an author in their readers, that their patience will eventually be rewarded, when life and trauma are revealed, and the value in these stories become apparent. People, some just barely hanging on and the day to day living in a world no longer recognizable.The prose is never melodramatic, but rather elegant and stately. The violence of war, not only on those who fought, but on those who are left, and in some the very land itself. Effects on the psyche, physical and mental scars, difficult to overcome. Although the stories are unfolded slowly, the message is fierce. In the last story, there are only six, the author reveals that the violence and battles are continuing now, maybe neverending sine we seem to learn so slowly or not at all. The stories encompass a wide Swatch of area, from the Hudson Valley, to Russia and Shanghai. It seems no area, no person will escape some form of tragedy. ARC from NetGalley.
    • 4/5
      In The Mountain Paul Yoon’s stories quietly connect with one another as each character moves through the pages after WWII. Sometimes eerily depicted, as in “A Willow and The Moon” where a young woman follows in her mother’s morphine-addicted footsteps or “The Mountain,” an incredibly sad story of a young woman whose father’s past haunts her, these two stories were perhaps my favorites and in my mind exemplify Yoon’s compellingly beautiful fiction.