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Miles from Nowhere
Teenage Joon is a Korean immigrant living in the Bronx of the 1980s. Her parents have crumbled under the weight of her father’s infidelity; he has left the family, and mental illness has rendered her mother nearly catatonic. So Joon, at the age of thirteen, decides she would be better off on her own, a choice that commences a harrowing and often tragic journey that exposes the painful difficulties of a life lived on the margins. Joon’s adolescent years take her from a homeless shelter to an escort club, through struggles with addiction, to jobs selling newspapers and cosmetics, committing petty crimes, and, finally, toward something resembling hope.
278 pages, Hardcover
First published March 13, 2008
93 people are currently reading
9,442 people want to read
About the author
Nami Mun
3Ìýbooks120ÌýfollowersNami Mun grew up in Seoul, South Korea and Bronx, New York. For her first book, Miles from Nowhere, she received a Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize, and was shortlisted for the Orange Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Miles From Nowhere became a national bestseller within first weeks of publication and was selected as "Editorsâ€� Choice" and "Top Ten First Novels" by Booklist, "Best Fiction of 2009 So Far by Amazon," and as an Indie Next Pick. Chicago Magazine named her "Best New Novelist of 2009."
Previously, Nami has worked as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a photojournalist, a waitress, an activities coordinator for a nursing home, and a criminal defense investigator. After earning a GED, she went on to get a BA in English from UC Berkeley, an MFA from University of Michigan, and has garnered fellowships from organizations such as Yaddo, MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and Tin House. Her stories have been published in Granta, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Evergreen Review, Witness, and elsewhere. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in Chicago.
Previously, Nami has worked as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a photojournalist, a waitress, an activities coordinator for a nursing home, and a criminal defense investigator. After earning a GED, she went on to get a BA in English from UC Berkeley, an MFA from University of Michigan, and has garnered fellowships from organizations such as Yaddo, MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and Tin House. Her stories have been published in Granta, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Evergreen Review, Witness, and elsewhere. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 532 reviews
December 8, 2018
Extraordinary. Gripping. Harrowing. Moving. Hopeless. Hopeful. A truly gorgeous book about a young woman whose parents failed her so she made a life for herself on the streets. Unforgettable.
May 20, 2021
I bought this book as Authors such as and had praised it. However I did leave it on my shelf for a while before picking it up.
3.5 rounded up
is a collection of dark, harrowing accounts of a young girl trying to survive after running away from home. At times it is deeply sad, graphic and disturbing, which at first I found quite jarring. However I was then able to see snatches of beauty in the sadness, the writing and the way in which our protagonist saw the world.
“I looked at Mr. McCommon, his hands smothering his face, his chest flinching. He had no idea that grief was a reward. That it only came to those who were loyal, to those who loved more than they were capable of. He had a garage, full of her belongings, and all I had was my guilt. It took on its own shape and smell and nestled in the pit of my body, and it would sleep and play and walk with me for decades to come.�
3.5 rounded up
is a collection of dark, harrowing accounts of a young girl trying to survive after running away from home. At times it is deeply sad, graphic and disturbing, which at first I found quite jarring. However I was then able to see snatches of beauty in the sadness, the writing and the way in which our protagonist saw the world.
“I looked at Mr. McCommon, his hands smothering his face, his chest flinching. He had no idea that grief was a reward. That it only came to those who were loyal, to those who loved more than they were capable of. He had a garage, full of her belongings, and all I had was my guilt. It took on its own shape and smell and nestled in the pit of my body, and it would sleep and play and walk with me for decades to come.�
May 29, 2019
A sad, harrowing novel and a bewildering one to rate. Miles from Nowhere follows thirteen-year-old Joon as she navigates the streets of New York. Her father abandoned her and her mother, and her mother suffered from a severe mental illness with no ability to take care of Joon, so Joon left to fend for herself. Joon’s adolescent years span a homeless shelter to an escort club to jobs selling cosmetics and then more. Throughout this, Joon suffers from drug addiction and a number of damaging relationships. Miles from Nowhere, while unrelenting in its depiction of Joon’s suffering, does move our protagonist toward a quiet space that starts to look something like hope.
Be warned: this book is not for the fragile-hearted. Nami Mun writes in explicit detail about Joon’s experiences of assault, substance use, and crime. This book’s portrayal of Joon’s anguish made me reflect about how much sheer luck determines our life circumstances. She had the awful luck of being born into a family with parents who had no capacity to care for her, so she did her best to fend for herself on the cold, cruel streets of New York. In contrast, I know myself and many others who had enough luck to be born into more privileged families, with parents who could provide steady meals and shelter even if they lacked emotional warmth. Through Joon’s narrative, Mun also dispels the model minority myth that Asian Americans do not suffer from physical or mental health issues. Mun includes subtle yet striking anecdotes that highlight the racism Joon and her family have experienced and how those moments accumulated to affect their wellbeing. Mun’s prose is bare and stark, perhaps in part to reflect Joon’s limited mental space due to her drug use. The narration feels detached, yet simultaneously gripping with phrases of beauty thrown in here and there. I so wanted to know that Joon would be okay.
It’s hard to rate this book. I can see how the graphic detail and the relentless suffering would turn readers off. Still, I cared a lot about Joon and appreciated how Mun did not write her as some exceptionally gifted, extremely compassionate, tirelessly hard-working character. Joon is a teenager with awful circumstances with a will to survive and do her best, and like all of us do, she makes some regrettable decisions along the way. I think I understand the detachment of the narrative though I do wonder if I could have felt even more connected to Joon if Mun inserted even a few more passages that let us into her heart more, that addressed her emotions in a more direct way. Still, a moving novel I would love to hear other readers� thoughts on, especially fellow Asian American readers.
Be warned: this book is not for the fragile-hearted. Nami Mun writes in explicit detail about Joon’s experiences of assault, substance use, and crime. This book’s portrayal of Joon’s anguish made me reflect about how much sheer luck determines our life circumstances. She had the awful luck of being born into a family with parents who had no capacity to care for her, so she did her best to fend for herself on the cold, cruel streets of New York. In contrast, I know myself and many others who had enough luck to be born into more privileged families, with parents who could provide steady meals and shelter even if they lacked emotional warmth. Through Joon’s narrative, Mun also dispels the model minority myth that Asian Americans do not suffer from physical or mental health issues. Mun includes subtle yet striking anecdotes that highlight the racism Joon and her family have experienced and how those moments accumulated to affect their wellbeing. Mun’s prose is bare and stark, perhaps in part to reflect Joon’s limited mental space due to her drug use. The narration feels detached, yet simultaneously gripping with phrases of beauty thrown in here and there. I so wanted to know that Joon would be okay.
It’s hard to rate this book. I can see how the graphic detail and the relentless suffering would turn readers off. Still, I cared a lot about Joon and appreciated how Mun did not write her as some exceptionally gifted, extremely compassionate, tirelessly hard-working character. Joon is a teenager with awful circumstances with a will to survive and do her best, and like all of us do, she makes some regrettable decisions along the way. I think I understand the detachment of the narrative though I do wonder if I could have felt even more connected to Joon if Mun inserted even a few more passages that let us into her heart more, that addressed her emotions in a more direct way. Still, a moving novel I would love to hear other readers� thoughts on, especially fellow Asian American readers.
January 8, 2009
[I received an ARC of this book through Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ' First-reads program.]
“I was trapped in my body, and my body was trapped in this empty lot with men who knew nothing about love or pity but everything else crucial,� our young narrator, Joon, tells us early in this debut novel by Nami Mun. Like so much of Joon’s narration, it is a statement made with the chill accuracy of retrospect. And, given the context in which the line appears, its implications are terrifying.
Miles from Nowhere, which tells the story of Joon’s teenage years spent living on the streets of New York City, is a book that knows everything about love and pity, including how to withhold both. It contains images of startling brutality � a dog, fed chicken bones, dead in the gutter with “a little dish of blood under his mouth�; a “small pregnant girl� with a bruised cheek sitting in the “rusted� light of a dirty bathroom � and depicts despair with crystalline intensity. The reader may flinch; the prose never does.
Given this, it is a measure of Mun’s artistry that Miles from Nowhere is not overwhelmed by the darkness it contains. The book’s power lies in all that it does know about love and pity, and the ways in which that knowledge shines through. Setting plays a part in this: in Mun’s hands, even the dirtiest and most mundane corners of New York are capable of flaring with sudden radiance. In one extraordinary passage, which cannot be adequately explained in summary, the brightly lit windows of a ninety-nine-cent store, its aisles lined with multicolored detergent bottles “like an open box of crayons,� offer momentary, almost mystical comfort to Joon at the end of a harrowing night. (I should add, though, that in this book such moments rarely come with the clichéd flashbulb burst of an epiphany; rather, they arrive like the sunrise: by the time you actually notice the light, the shadows have already been shifting for some time, as if in preparation. Mun is an exacting, word-perfect author in this regard � the moment cited above is a full forty pages in the making.)
If Nami Mun’s New York is a place of darkness shot through with unexpected glimmers of light, then her narrator, Joon, is the perfect tour guide. Joon comes to understand early on that “[i]n order to get what I needed � shelter, food, money, friendship � parts of me, piece by piece, would have to be sacrificed.� And yet of all the things that Joon does sacrifice � her health, safety, sobriety, dignity, and perhaps even at times her sanity � she never loses her essential capacity (to keep returning to my talking points) for love and pity. Like one of Balzac’s flaneurs, Joon is a camera, constantly observing others, interweaving her own story with theirs if only for the temporary comfort of togetherness that this provides.
Reviewers who have called this book “depressing� are missing the point. Miles from Nowhere pits Joon’s need for love and pity, and her ability to bestow the same upon others, against the howling vacuum of the city. In this light, Joon’s resilience is miraculous � and all the more so because the reader believes in it, roots for it all the way. (Rarely has such a simple line as “I was that person� left me so exhilarated.)
As a novel, Miles from Nowhere is episodic; reading it, I find myself reminded, in a way, of a picaresque: the journey is as important as the destination. There is no conventional, overarching plot “problem� save the unceasing daily pressure to survive. As an avid reader of short fiction, though, I should mention that a number of the chapters here were originally published in literary journals as short stories; one of them, “Shelter,� received a 2007 Pushcart Prize. The book coheres as a novel � thanks in large part to the pitch-perfect consistency of Joon’s voice and the intensity of the reader’s feelings toward her � but Mun is a skilled engineer of the short-story form, and the reader who also studies these chapters as short stories will be richly rewarded. Note, for example, the intricately interwoven timelines in “On the Bus,� or compare the ending of Mun’s “King’s Manor� with that of Denis Johnson’s “Car Crash While Hitchhiking� (one a drug-induced fever dream paradoxically promising connection, the other promising just the opposite). The very finest chapters/stories here � “Avon,� “King’s Manor,� and “What We Had,� by my reckoning, though there's not a weak entry in the bunch � are intricate engines of tragedy, and in their formal perfection they bestow upon Joon and her supporting cast a stark, cool beauty. This beauty is the truest solace that literary art can offer its subjects and its readers. Those familiar with Robert Stone’s best short stories � “Helping� and “Miserere,� for example � will recognize the effect.
That this is Mun’s authorial debut is astonishing; it feels like the work of an author in mid-career, completely assured of her powers. Like Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Point or Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere does not simply “herald the arrival of a significant new talent� (that old reviewer’s trope, endlessly trotted out to describe promising first books). Rather, it stands as evidence of an enormously skilled, confident, and compassionate author who somehow has come to us already fully formed.
“I was trapped in my body, and my body was trapped in this empty lot with men who knew nothing about love or pity but everything else crucial,� our young narrator, Joon, tells us early in this debut novel by Nami Mun. Like so much of Joon’s narration, it is a statement made with the chill accuracy of retrospect. And, given the context in which the line appears, its implications are terrifying.
Miles from Nowhere, which tells the story of Joon’s teenage years spent living on the streets of New York City, is a book that knows everything about love and pity, including how to withhold both. It contains images of startling brutality � a dog, fed chicken bones, dead in the gutter with “a little dish of blood under his mouth�; a “small pregnant girl� with a bruised cheek sitting in the “rusted� light of a dirty bathroom � and depicts despair with crystalline intensity. The reader may flinch; the prose never does.
Given this, it is a measure of Mun’s artistry that Miles from Nowhere is not overwhelmed by the darkness it contains. The book’s power lies in all that it does know about love and pity, and the ways in which that knowledge shines through. Setting plays a part in this: in Mun’s hands, even the dirtiest and most mundane corners of New York are capable of flaring with sudden radiance. In one extraordinary passage, which cannot be adequately explained in summary, the brightly lit windows of a ninety-nine-cent store, its aisles lined with multicolored detergent bottles “like an open box of crayons,� offer momentary, almost mystical comfort to Joon at the end of a harrowing night. (I should add, though, that in this book such moments rarely come with the clichéd flashbulb burst of an epiphany; rather, they arrive like the sunrise: by the time you actually notice the light, the shadows have already been shifting for some time, as if in preparation. Mun is an exacting, word-perfect author in this regard � the moment cited above is a full forty pages in the making.)
If Nami Mun’s New York is a place of darkness shot through with unexpected glimmers of light, then her narrator, Joon, is the perfect tour guide. Joon comes to understand early on that “[i]n order to get what I needed � shelter, food, money, friendship � parts of me, piece by piece, would have to be sacrificed.� And yet of all the things that Joon does sacrifice � her health, safety, sobriety, dignity, and perhaps even at times her sanity � she never loses her essential capacity (to keep returning to my talking points) for love and pity. Like one of Balzac’s flaneurs, Joon is a camera, constantly observing others, interweaving her own story with theirs if only for the temporary comfort of togetherness that this provides.
Reviewers who have called this book “depressing� are missing the point. Miles from Nowhere pits Joon’s need for love and pity, and her ability to bestow the same upon others, against the howling vacuum of the city. In this light, Joon’s resilience is miraculous � and all the more so because the reader believes in it, roots for it all the way. (Rarely has such a simple line as “I was that person� left me so exhilarated.)
As a novel, Miles from Nowhere is episodic; reading it, I find myself reminded, in a way, of a picaresque: the journey is as important as the destination. There is no conventional, overarching plot “problem� save the unceasing daily pressure to survive. As an avid reader of short fiction, though, I should mention that a number of the chapters here were originally published in literary journals as short stories; one of them, “Shelter,� received a 2007 Pushcart Prize. The book coheres as a novel � thanks in large part to the pitch-perfect consistency of Joon’s voice and the intensity of the reader’s feelings toward her � but Mun is a skilled engineer of the short-story form, and the reader who also studies these chapters as short stories will be richly rewarded. Note, for example, the intricately interwoven timelines in “On the Bus,� or compare the ending of Mun’s “King’s Manor� with that of Denis Johnson’s “Car Crash While Hitchhiking� (one a drug-induced fever dream paradoxically promising connection, the other promising just the opposite). The very finest chapters/stories here � “Avon,� “King’s Manor,� and “What We Had,� by my reckoning, though there's not a weak entry in the bunch � are intricate engines of tragedy, and in their formal perfection they bestow upon Joon and her supporting cast a stark, cool beauty. This beauty is the truest solace that literary art can offer its subjects and its readers. Those familiar with Robert Stone’s best short stories � “Helping� and “Miserere,� for example � will recognize the effect.
That this is Mun’s authorial debut is astonishing; it feels like the work of an author in mid-career, completely assured of her powers. Like Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Point or Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere does not simply “herald the arrival of a significant new talent� (that old reviewer’s trope, endlessly trotted out to describe promising first books). Rather, it stands as evidence of an enormously skilled, confident, and compassionate author who somehow has come to us already fully formed.
October 23, 2009
It's like this: I was in the second bookstore of the day (Waldenbooks; first had been Hastings) and was browsing the shelves. Just browsing; I wasn't planning on buying another book. I saw this book, and didn't recognize the name.
I looked at the cover. I didn't want to touch it; it's light, white in the middle, soft blue at the outside, and I know what happens when I read books like those. You should see my Salinger collection; the covers are smudged with black fingerprints.
But I couldn't take my eyes off the cover. It's such a simple cover: soft colors, with a skyline across the bottom (and across the top of the back). The title and author glisten a little. I didn't notice "shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers" or "NATIONAL BESTSELLER"; I was trying to remember what the font was called.
I bought it. Even though I had passed up another book in another bookstore, an author I had actually heard of, I ended up buying this book partly, yes, because I was in love with the cover.
Normally after I buy a book, I go home and skim the reviews on goodreads. I'm confident in my tastes and don't think that a plethora of good or bad reviews will change my mind regarding whether or not I like a piece of literature. The most frustrating thing, for me, is finding a book with many one- and two-star ratings, but no reviews attached.
You can look for yourself what the ratings/reviews are. "Depressing" seems to be a common sentiment.
And depressing it is. I'm not going to take you through the plot of the book because people do it far better than I can, and what matters to me is not plot, usually. If it mattered, I wouldn't have picked up this book: runaway Korean immigrants in the Bronx is about as far from my white middle-class Ohio-corn-fed experience as, well, as you'd imagine it would be.
I know a guy who used to be homeless. He's now studying Buddhism in India, and over meager lunches of potatoes and bread, he'd tell us stories. Really fucked-up stories about people who shouldn't have been homeless, people who had essentially been shit on their entire lives or suffered from mental illnesses and didn't have a family to assist them. So I knew what I was getting into, and that's why some of the really fucked-up stuff in this book doesn't seem like mere fiction; this stuff has happened to real people, in real life.
There are scenes in this book you hope aren't true. You hope no one has ever experienced such things in their life, but you also know that these things do happen, and the author is able to present these things through Joon in a very simple way. Joon doesn't ignite the flames of her life as they burn, but simply sits and watches them. It can feel, at times, like she's not a very good character, but as the book goes on, you start feeling her emptiness, and you see the characters in her life vividly from the get-go.
The individual chapters are basically stories, something I've been noticing a lot in books lately. Mun makes this seem perfectly normal, and the threads from one story don't necessarily tie neatly into the next story, but are as disjointed as meeting up with an old childhood friend to have lunch, pledging that you'll keep in touch, and then losing touch for another ten years until you bump into them at Wal-Mart, putting a gallon of milk in their cart next to the assorted cleaning supplies, too much for even an intense spring cleaning, and you want to ask them what happened and then you decide you don't really want to know, and push your cart along after a brief exchange of utterly facetious "hey how are you?" "yeah, I'm fine" "good to see you again" "yeah, we should get in touch someday" that you don't know won't come to fruition.
"What We Had" was the weakest chapter in the entire book for me, but it has a lot of weight to it as it begins to wind-down the narrative. My favorite chapters were "Avon" and "On the Bus" and I do think that while the chapters can be read out of order, even alone, when strung together they present a very clear, frightening, disturbing, and yet gritty-beautiful novel.
Apparently, Mun herself had two of the jobs that Joon has in the book, and the book as a whole strikes me so eerily real that I'd love to sit down with her and hear how she fictionalized her experiences in the book.
So go ahead, judge a book by its cover. You're judging people by their covers, anyways.
I looked at the cover. I didn't want to touch it; it's light, white in the middle, soft blue at the outside, and I know what happens when I read books like those. You should see my Salinger collection; the covers are smudged with black fingerprints.
But I couldn't take my eyes off the cover. It's such a simple cover: soft colors, with a skyline across the bottom (and across the top of the back). The title and author glisten a little. I didn't notice "shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers" or "NATIONAL BESTSELLER"; I was trying to remember what the font was called.
I bought it. Even though I had passed up another book in another bookstore, an author I had actually heard of, I ended up buying this book partly, yes, because I was in love with the cover.
Normally after I buy a book, I go home and skim the reviews on goodreads. I'm confident in my tastes and don't think that a plethora of good or bad reviews will change my mind regarding whether or not I like a piece of literature. The most frustrating thing, for me, is finding a book with many one- and two-star ratings, but no reviews attached.
You can look for yourself what the ratings/reviews are. "Depressing" seems to be a common sentiment.
And depressing it is. I'm not going to take you through the plot of the book because people do it far better than I can, and what matters to me is not plot, usually. If it mattered, I wouldn't have picked up this book: runaway Korean immigrants in the Bronx is about as far from my white middle-class Ohio-corn-fed experience as, well, as you'd imagine it would be.
I know a guy who used to be homeless. He's now studying Buddhism in India, and over meager lunches of potatoes and bread, he'd tell us stories. Really fucked-up stories about people who shouldn't have been homeless, people who had essentially been shit on their entire lives or suffered from mental illnesses and didn't have a family to assist them. So I knew what I was getting into, and that's why some of the really fucked-up stuff in this book doesn't seem like mere fiction; this stuff has happened to real people, in real life.
There are scenes in this book you hope aren't true. You hope no one has ever experienced such things in their life, but you also know that these things do happen, and the author is able to present these things through Joon in a very simple way. Joon doesn't ignite the flames of her life as they burn, but simply sits and watches them. It can feel, at times, like she's not a very good character, but as the book goes on, you start feeling her emptiness, and you see the characters in her life vividly from the get-go.
The individual chapters are basically stories, something I've been noticing a lot in books lately. Mun makes this seem perfectly normal, and the threads from one story don't necessarily tie neatly into the next story, but are as disjointed as meeting up with an old childhood friend to have lunch, pledging that you'll keep in touch, and then losing touch for another ten years until you bump into them at Wal-Mart, putting a gallon of milk in their cart next to the assorted cleaning supplies, too much for even an intense spring cleaning, and you want to ask them what happened and then you decide you don't really want to know, and push your cart along after a brief exchange of utterly facetious "hey how are you?" "yeah, I'm fine" "good to see you again" "yeah, we should get in touch someday" that you don't know won't come to fruition.
"What We Had" was the weakest chapter in the entire book for me, but it has a lot of weight to it as it begins to wind-down the narrative. My favorite chapters were "Avon" and "On the Bus" and I do think that while the chapters can be read out of order, even alone, when strung together they present a very clear, frightening, disturbing, and yet gritty-beautiful novel.
Apparently, Mun herself had two of the jobs that Joon has in the book, and the book as a whole strikes me so eerily real that I'd love to sit down with her and hear how she fictionalized her experiences in the book.
So go ahead, judge a book by its cover. You're judging people by their covers, anyways.
January 27, 2018
Well holy shit.
If you like bleak books and minimalist writing, hit this one.
As a challenge to my fellow readers: A minimalist book that is not bleak or depressing? I'm just curious. It seems like a lot of minimalism comes from a sad place.
Has anyone come across anything?
If you like bleak books and minimalist writing, hit this one.
As a challenge to my fellow readers: A minimalist book that is not bleak or depressing? I'm just curious. It seems like a lot of minimalism comes from a sad place.
Has anyone come across anything?
December 19, 2008
This book is the story of Joon, a teenage runaway in New York in the 1980s. The book jumps around in time a lot. But in general it details the main character's parent's marriage falling apart, her mother descending into mental illness, her running away, becoming a prostitute and getting hooked on drugs. She gets off drugs, and gets back on drugs. And gets back off drugs again. Along the way there are many heart breaking and heart wrenching vignettes about her life on the streets. Its sort of like a 1980s female version of
All in all, I thought this book was pretty well written, but the main character was sort of superficial. The first person narrator talked a lot about painful experiences, but not really about how that made her feel. Like every painful experience made her feel empty. And because this character is so superficially fleshed out, all these painful events that happen to her don't really affect the reader all that much. You can't feel sorry for a character that you never got introduced to or attached to. The author slams you with traumatic event after traumatic event, but you just sort of shut yourself off, and don't get too involved because you got no stake in it. This book would have been much better, had the author given more time to describing the actual character and her thoughts and deeds in normal times, and less time describing all the bad events that happen to her.
I feel like this book is "emotional pornography." The author just throws terrible situation after terrible situation at the protagonist. It gets somewhat desensitizing after a while.
The writing style in this book shows real promise. There are beautifully crafted passages. However, the style is inconsistent. It feels like the author is experimenting with several different writing styles at various points in the book and sort of cycling through them. I found this very distracting, and while each distinct style showed a lot of promise. However the way she jumps around shows that she needs a lot more focus.
One thing I really like about this book is that it is very fashionable for girls to wear trashy throwback 80s clothes. This book will disabuse anyone about any sort of romance for the trashiness of the 80s.
I read this book because I got it from first-reads.
All in all, I thought this book was pretty well written, but the main character was sort of superficial. The first person narrator talked a lot about painful experiences, but not really about how that made her feel. Like every painful experience made her feel empty. And because this character is so superficially fleshed out, all these painful events that happen to her don't really affect the reader all that much. You can't feel sorry for a character that you never got introduced to or attached to. The author slams you with traumatic event after traumatic event, but you just sort of shut yourself off, and don't get too involved because you got no stake in it. This book would have been much better, had the author given more time to describing the actual character and her thoughts and deeds in normal times, and less time describing all the bad events that happen to her.
I feel like this book is "emotional pornography." The author just throws terrible situation after terrible situation at the protagonist. It gets somewhat desensitizing after a while.
The writing style in this book shows real promise. There are beautifully crafted passages. However, the style is inconsistent. It feels like the author is experimenting with several different writing styles at various points in the book and sort of cycling through them. I found this very distracting, and while each distinct style showed a lot of promise. However the way she jumps around shows that she needs a lot more focus.
One thing I really like about this book is that it is very fashionable for girls to wear trashy throwback 80s clothes. This book will disabuse anyone about any sort of romance for the trashiness of the 80s.
I read this book because I got it from first-reads.
March 3, 2009
This is an excellent book, especially for a debut novel. While the story itself is dark and sometimes depressing, the writing is always beautiful and no matter how low the main character Joon falls,you always care about her. I read the whole 286 pages in one sitting, what more can I say.
November 8, 2008
Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun[return][return]I received Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun about a week ago, and decided to glance over the first few pages on Saturday. When I receive an ARC I thumb through the book, read a little and try to obtain an overview before I sit down and read it. [return]It soon became apparent that I wasn t going to put this book down, and it quickly landed on top of my TBR pile. I can t think of a better way to spend a rainy day. As I began to read Miles to Nowhere, I came to know Joon, a thirteen year old run-a-way, living on the streets. The story takes place in the 1980 s in New York City. [return][return]As the story begins, Joon a Korean girl lives with her parents. Their marriage is a rocky relationship always on the brink of failure. One day her father finally has enough and decides to leave home. This sends her mentally ill mother, unable to cope with his desertion, on a tragic trajectory of wacky behavior. When Joon takes to the streets she fights for survival wearing the scars of pain. Her battles become narcotic addiction, failed friendships, and lost loves. She tries to climb out by working in a variety of jobs from dance girl hostess to an avon door to door salesgirl. The story is written episodically with Joon as the narrator. We learn about all the friends, parents and the people Joon meets through her point of view. You can t help but love Joon and want to protect and embrace her and tell her it s just a bad dream. Time passes in Joon s mind, sometimes rational, sometimes fragmented. You feel her confusion, her sense of loss and despair all through her cognition. Mun makes it look easy the way she has managed to create the passage of time over five years as Joon ages to eighteen. This book does not come out until December 26th, but you will want to get a copy as soon as you can. This is a warm, sensitive, reflective story, sometimes amusing, sometimes dispiriting but carrying a message of hope. You will close the cover and say ahhhhhhh.
November 3, 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It was so stark yet so poetic and full of life. Nami Mun had some ludicrously beautiful lines in the novel that just blew my mind.
January 21, 2019
this was easy, nice, bad reading. i loved her story and her struggles. i loved the pretty flashes in here. lots of lovely, delicate details rendered beautifully.
February 14, 2020
Stunning
If you haven’t read this yet I envy you! You’re about to experience a literary feast of the highest order.
If you haven’t read this yet I envy you! You’re about to experience a literary feast of the highest order.
October 8, 2024
Miles from Nowhere follows a Korean American teenage runaway, Joon, as she navigates the streets of New York. The book jumps through time as we see her become an escort, a prostitute, an Avon lady, into drugs (this leads to a brutal scene), out of drugs, etc. Meanwhilee, Joon reflects on her broken family, and how her relationship with her mother impacted her.
It’s a slow, bleak, harrowing book. It felt a bit like a pity party, Joon had nothing in her favor. She went with the flow and coped as she could. I’d say the theme is something that puts me off, which is why I think the book didn’t work for me: mommy issues. It’s a harrowing book with an unhealthy dose of misery porn, and it did get to me, but I don’t know why it didn’t work well for me. It felt sort of dull and insipid. I didn’t find watching someone hit rock bottom repeatedly worked for me, though the few nice bits (the sandwich guy, the ending) were nice.
Anyways, 3 stars. It did what it had to do, I just don’t think this was an astonishing read or something I’ll think about often.
It’s a slow, bleak, harrowing book. It felt a bit like a pity party, Joon had nothing in her favor. She went with the flow and coped as she could. I’d say the theme is something that puts me off, which is why I think the book didn’t work for me: mommy issues. It’s a harrowing book with an unhealthy dose of misery porn, and it did get to me, but I don’t know why it didn’t work well for me. It felt sort of dull and insipid. I didn’t find watching someone hit rock bottom repeatedly worked for me, though the few nice bits (the sandwich guy, the ending) were nice.
Anyways, 3 stars. It did what it had to do, I just don’t think this was an astonishing read or something I’ll think about often.
November 23, 2023
As good as it's brutal. A weird mix of short stories pretending to be a novel. A Korean American girl's voyage into the underbelly of the American dream. One of Chuck Palahnuick's recommended readings.
June 18, 2019
I'm able to exhale again now that I've finished this.
It's an addiction novel, possibly a memoir (even though the author and the main character have different names). Addiction novels have set arcs, and this one doesn't diverge from that arc too much. We don't see her redemption (as is the norm), but our ending hints at it.
But it's possible to believe it doesn't occur. She almost "escapes" her lifestyle in previous chapters, but the sense of inevitably that comes with addiction is ever present.
The book proceeds in a vaguely chronological way. Each chapter is an important or poignant moment, and then the next chapter is some time in the future. The inbetween chapters are left for us to guess at, but once we know our narrator, we can fill in the blanks with drug use. The blanks certainly deglamorized drug use, unlike some other addiction novels/movies. Mun tells us with her silence that nothing of note happened in the blanks.
At the end, an editorial note tells us that most of these chapters have been previously published as separate works. Pushing everything in here together adds meaning, and strengthens the theory that this is truly a memoir in disguise. Why separately publish stories that all return to a single character?
Notable side characters emerge only to be beaten down. No one succeeds here. Every person is shot through with our narrator's cold, pessimistic gaze. Every side character arc terminates in its lowest point.
Difficult to recommend for the absolute unwavering dark cynic view, but I ran through this anyways. An anti-redemption story is always worth it, especially from this unique point of view.
It's an addiction novel, possibly a memoir (even though the author and the main character have different names). Addiction novels have set arcs, and this one doesn't diverge from that arc too much. We don't see her redemption (as is the norm), but our ending hints at it.
But it's possible to believe it doesn't occur. She almost "escapes" her lifestyle in previous chapters, but the sense of inevitably that comes with addiction is ever present.
The book proceeds in a vaguely chronological way. Each chapter is an important or poignant moment, and then the next chapter is some time in the future. The inbetween chapters are left for us to guess at, but once we know our narrator, we can fill in the blanks with drug use. The blanks certainly deglamorized drug use, unlike some other addiction novels/movies. Mun tells us with her silence that nothing of note happened in the blanks.
At the end, an editorial note tells us that most of these chapters have been previously published as separate works. Pushing everything in here together adds meaning, and strengthens the theory that this is truly a memoir in disguise. Why separately publish stories that all return to a single character?
Notable side characters emerge only to be beaten down. No one succeeds here. Every person is shot through with our narrator's cold, pessimistic gaze. Every side character arc terminates in its lowest point.
Difficult to recommend for the absolute unwavering dark cynic view, but I ran through this anyways. An anti-redemption story is always worth it, especially from this unique point of view.
May 2, 2017
, by , is the tale of a teen runaway living on the streets of New York in the 1980s. Joon is an almost-likable protagonist, but I found myself getting more and more frustrated every time she made the wrong choice. She does try to make her life better, leaving the reader with enough hope to get to the end of the book.
Mun, a new author, seems to have written this fictional book based on her own life experiences. For having overcome her past, I commend her, but I wasn't too keen on her writing style. Perhaps she wrote the way she did to help the reader better relate to life on the streets, but I found it hard to adjust to the constant jumping from one tidbit to the next. Also, Mun introduced supporting characters that come and go so quickly that they never really become part of Joon's story, although you can't help but think they were introduced for a reason.
Overall, this was not a book I would have selected at the bookstore for myself; this was a book I would not have even picked up at the library. However, I am glad I read it, and it was a quick read that was easily put down and picked back up (because you can only read about so many depressing things that happen to one person before you begin to think that life sucks).
P.S. I received an advance readers copy of this book through a Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ First Reads book giveaway.
Mun, a new author, seems to have written this fictional book based on her own life experiences. For having overcome her past, I commend her, but I wasn't too keen on her writing style. Perhaps she wrote the way she did to help the reader better relate to life on the streets, but I found it hard to adjust to the constant jumping from one tidbit to the next. Also, Mun introduced supporting characters that come and go so quickly that they never really become part of Joon's story, although you can't help but think they were introduced for a reason.
Overall, this was not a book I would have selected at the bookstore for myself; this was a book I would not have even picked up at the library. However, I am glad I read it, and it was a quick read that was easily put down and picked back up (because you can only read about so many depressing things that happen to one person before you begin to think that life sucks).
P.S. I received an advance readers copy of this book through a Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ First Reads book giveaway.
March 24, 2011
I will never forget this book. The harrowing tale of a teenaged runaway the story becomes the car accident which you can't pull your eyes from no matter how you try. Joon is in turns a thief, junkie, prostitute, mental patient, daughter, lover, saint. The book looks unflinchingly at the part of society and city life that rarely peeks out from the shadows. The disenfranchised and those that barely register are featured here with out disguises. The writing is superb. It is all meat no filler. It will sucker punch you with events you never saw coming and scenes so sad your heart will ache. There are no pretty flowers or country settings in this book and no wasted prose. Though the protagonist is a young asian female the writing style is muscular, masculine and unforgettable. A story of urban grit and the underbelly of city life, its for those who like their literature, "straight-up".
January 4, 2009
This is the debut novel of Mun, and it isn't an easy one. At the age of 13, after her father left them for another woman and her mother went completely insane (she was already half-way there, but...), Joon decides that she would be better off on her own, on the streets. The book is basically 5 years of vignette's about the various situations she had fallen into. Most are not pretty, but Joon accepts them all without anger or much emotion at all--some of that is the drugs she's on, but most of it is the fact that she has never been valued in her entire life, so she doesn't expect it now. If anything, she becomes a collector of other people's stories, a witness to lives falling to ruin. The characters are always interesting, and the story is well told if rather muted.
Read
January 7, 2009I love debut novels--it's a treasure hunt to me. More often I've found piles of gold than empty chests. And certainly, this book by Nami Mun counts as gold.
It tells the story of Joon, who, at 13, decides she's better off on the streets than living at home with her crazy and distant mother. Five years of her life are covered in fairly short vignettes, as she faces horror after horror and becomes a sort of official witness to a lot of the darkness in the world. It's graphic at times in both language and subject matter, but I'm jaded enough to overlook that and stayed with this surprisingly quiet, compelling novel. I'm glad I did.
Jackie
It tells the story of Joon, who, at 13, decides she's better off on the streets than living at home with her crazy and distant mother. Five years of her life are covered in fairly short vignettes, as she faces horror after horror and becomes a sort of official witness to a lot of the darkness in the world. It's graphic at times in both language and subject matter, but I'm jaded enough to overlook that and stayed with this surprisingly quiet, compelling novel. I'm glad I did.
Jackie
May 31, 2021
I absolutely adore this book. I took my time with it, even reading some passages aloud to myself. I was blown away by the beauty and strength of the prose. I will read pretty much anything she writes. It inspired me to write. It's one of those books that seems like it could just keep going, and does, somehow, after the story on the page runs out.
Love love love
Love love love
February 8, 2009
Calling this fragmented story collection a "novel" is quite a stretch. It reads like an MFA thesis written by a student who can't decide if she wants to do a "novel" or a "story collection." The detached, sterile 1st-person POV seems forced and over-workshopped.
September 25, 2020
the only book i actually finished during my most recent reading dry spell
March 9, 2019
Wow - this book drew me in from the beginning and never let up. Can’t say I’d recommend it to everyone though; it has lots of triggers: sexual abuse, drug addiction, abandonment. Beautifully written, raw, stark. This one will stay with me for a while.
March 29, 2019
Quiet and powerful. Lovely and heartbreaking. This book is quite the powerhouse. I loved the way it was written, seeing little chunks of Joon’s life wrapped together with sentences that essays could be written about. After working on the psych floor for three weeks, this book found me at the right time.
“He had no idea that grief was a reward. That it only came to those who were loyal, to those who loved more than they were capable of.�
“He had no idea that grief was a reward. That it only came to those who were loyal, to those who loved more than they were capable of.�
January 11, 2013
In my personal opinion while reading the novel "Miles From Nowhere" it seemed to me as any old, average book. I truly wasn't very impressed by the content or the story line that the author, Nami Mun had created for a story, that I feel could have had a very different approach. With the characters having a hard life and with the conditions they were put under, I feel it could have had more excitement and surprised to occur in order to make the book a more intriguing read for myself.
The main character Joon-Mee, who is a young girl that lives with her family in New York. Herself and the family live as runaways and are homeless. With the author giving this main setting of the character and her background being Korean- American, I was expecting the author to gives a twist to how the life of the family would be able to be improved. Yet, in the novel what really occurs is the family is living day to day, barely making it by living in a homeless shelter, with prayers that each day could start as a new beginning for Joon- Mee and her family. Joan-Mee works each day to help her sick mother to try and get better and in this process she slowing begins improve their lifestyle by accepting the life they live and knowing that it was what was meant for her and her family, as this realization came to her mind Joon-Mee stated; "And at the start of every new day, I still believe I could choose my own beginning, one that was scrubbed clean of everything past" (Mun 89). With Joon- Mee coming to this realization with her life each day began to lighten and she noticed a new positive thing that was in her life, even though she still had struggles.
This idea went on for quite some time, in my opinion it became a little redundant and tedious to continue to read on. The message of the story I feel was very heartfelt and positive with what the author had created the character's mind set to be. Yet, in my opinion it didn't seem to interest me all too much. The story continues to give the feeling of hope as Joon-Mee is introduced to several new characters that help open her up to view the world and her homelessness and not such a bad situation. She was thinking to herself about the lessons she learned and what ideas were brought forth from those who she met and said; " Life's only as bad as you make it out to be. It's go nothing to do with the way it is" (Mun 156). In my personal views on how the author portrayed the character was to be overall very optimistic and positive on the outlook of her life.
The overall book wasn't truly a great book for me, more just alright. I feel like I was expecting more from the author to give as writer to develop the story in a way that wouldn't have been as predictable as it was. I was also expecting the novel to move more fast pace, yet the book was more of a relaxing and pleasant type of read, which was one thing I enjoyed. It gave me the feeling that i was able to take my time with the novel and still be able to enjoy the writing.
The main character Joon-Mee, who is a young girl that lives with her family in New York. Herself and the family live as runaways and are homeless. With the author giving this main setting of the character and her background being Korean- American, I was expecting the author to gives a twist to how the life of the family would be able to be improved. Yet, in the novel what really occurs is the family is living day to day, barely making it by living in a homeless shelter, with prayers that each day could start as a new beginning for Joon- Mee and her family. Joan-Mee works each day to help her sick mother to try and get better and in this process she slowing begins improve their lifestyle by accepting the life they live and knowing that it was what was meant for her and her family, as this realization came to her mind Joon-Mee stated; "And at the start of every new day, I still believe I could choose my own beginning, one that was scrubbed clean of everything past" (Mun 89). With Joon- Mee coming to this realization with her life each day began to lighten and she noticed a new positive thing that was in her life, even though she still had struggles.
This idea went on for quite some time, in my opinion it became a little redundant and tedious to continue to read on. The message of the story I feel was very heartfelt and positive with what the author had created the character's mind set to be. Yet, in my opinion it didn't seem to interest me all too much. The story continues to give the feeling of hope as Joon-Mee is introduced to several new characters that help open her up to view the world and her homelessness and not such a bad situation. She was thinking to herself about the lessons she learned and what ideas were brought forth from those who she met and said; " Life's only as bad as you make it out to be. It's go nothing to do with the way it is" (Mun 156). In my personal views on how the author portrayed the character was to be overall very optimistic and positive on the outlook of her life.
The overall book wasn't truly a great book for me, more just alright. I feel like I was expecting more from the author to give as writer to develop the story in a way that wouldn't have been as predictable as it was. I was also expecting the novel to move more fast pace, yet the book was more of a relaxing and pleasant type of read, which was one thing I enjoyed. It gave me the feeling that i was able to take my time with the novel and still be able to enjoy the writing.
February 11, 2019
Oof is this a punch to the teeth. The spare, beautiful writing is a counterpoint to the horrific stories of a young girl on the streets. Prostitution, assault, drug abuse, and the teensiest bit of light through the cracks - for me a journey into a hidden world.
February 7, 2023
Oof, this was heavy and disturbing. But I shirked all responsibilities and finished it in a day... couldn't put it down.
January 28, 2010
I have won exactly one goodreads.com giveaway, 1 year ago. Unfortunately, the mailing coincided with an uncharacteristic week-long snow/ice/snowstorm - I think the pansy mailman didn't want to shuffle through the drifts to drop the book off at my door and just left a note in my faraway mailbox saying I wasn't home when he tried to deliver it. 'Come snow' my ass!
From what I understand of goodreads.com's secret formula for awarding these freebies, my lack of review for this book (that they believe I possess and should have read&reviewed) dropped my chances of winning again to nothing. Evidence: a year of not winning.
Let the giveaway famine end. I wish I could have read my own free, pristine copy a year ago. I imagine I would have at least liked it. I posit I would have written an acceptably postive review.
Please let me back in the pool for the giveaways? Please?
From what I understand of goodreads.com's secret formula for awarding these freebies, my lack of review for this book (that they believe I possess and should have read&reviewed) dropped my chances of winning again to nothing. Evidence: a year of not winning.
Let the giveaway famine end. I wish I could have read my own free, pristine copy a year ago. I imagine I would have at least liked it. I posit I would have written an acceptably postive review.
Please let me back in the pool for the giveaways? Please?
February 23, 2009
An unsentimental and unapologetic look at life on the streets for Joon, a teenager sleepwalking through the boogie-down Bronx just before and during Reagan's trickle-down prosperity. Missing are site-specific details of the borough, but Nami Mun makes up for it with an unswerving look into the mind of a teenager lost within her own heartbreak, confusion and numbing drug fog. Mun keeps it short, seeming determined to keep the reader from slipping into knee-jerk liberal responses to the violence and lost chances by not dwelling on either, but both have an impact nonetheless. I would have liked a deeper look into how a Korean American made a place for herself in a society that still defined race relations in black and white, but maybe that's another novel.
May 8, 2010
MILES FROM NOWHERE was one of my choices for best books of 2009. Heartbreaking, tough, funny, enlightening, this short, amazingly compact novel (which has won a bunch of prizes) tells the story of a Korean-American teenager who runs away from her drunken, boorish, absent father and her unstable mother and makes her way on the streets of New York. By "makes her way," I mean she sells both drugs and herself, gets strung out, gets exploited by everyone in sight, and in almost every instance gives as good as she gets.
Nami Mun is an unforgettable writer with an unforgettable story. I've given away five copies of this book, something I only do once or twice each year.
Nami Mun is an unforgettable writer with an unforgettable story. I've given away five copies of this book, something I only do once or twice each year.
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