Book Review: The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-Mo
A bad first impression for the author’s English debut.
The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-Mo. Translated by Chi-Young Kim. Narrated by Nancy Wu. Harlequin Audio, 2022. 6 hours (approx.).
Gu Byeong-Mo is an award winning South Korean author and international best seller. Chi-Young Kim’s translation of The Old Woman with the Knife marks Gu’s English debut. Unfortunately, it makes a bad first impression. It is boring, contrived and thematically all over the place.
Hornclaw is a 65-year-old contract killer. She wants to retire on her own terms, but she may get killed first as her body slows down. Already she has made one mistake, and the wound she received from it puts her in touch with a young doctor named Kang. She develops feelings for Dr. Kang’s family - feelings that are later exploited by her nemesis, Bullfight.
The novel had the potential to be entertaining, and on occasions it realized that potential. I genuinely couldn’t put the book down during the final fight, in which the antagonist kidnaps Dr. Kang's daughter to lure Hornclaw into a trap.
The unnamed henchmen (which Bullfight explicitly states were hired to be “cannon fodder”) shoot as accurately as the storm troopers in Star Wars. Meanwhile, Hornclaw nails one right between the eyes through a window and from five stories below. She was even using a handgun! She then proceeds to kill or wound the remaining villains. It’s a scene full of action genre tropes but a hell of a lot of fun.
The book reads like an action flick, and, like those high-octane movies, The Old Woman with the Knife is essentially a fantasy. Cars don’t fly, yet that doesn’t prevent millions from enjoying The Fast and the Furious franchise.
Likewise, Hornclaw is an old woman, yet she is a crazy accurate marksman and capable of wrestling younger men. There is no trouble here provided the reader understands what he’s in for.
Even so, it is difficult to imagine Hornclaw as old. In my mind I kept seeing a younger character. And since this novel is ostensibly about her aging out of her profession, a more realistic approach to the action would have been better.
Unfortunately, the final fight is the only major fight. There are a few confrontations throughout the novel, yet none of them come to much except bloody descriptions of the victims.
So, it reads like an action flick … sans the action.
It also reads like an anime. That Gu is Korean may be related or maybe just coincidence. In any case, there are a number of anime (and other) tropes here. In particular, the superhuman skills of the protagonist. Other glaring cliches include:
Hornclaw is effectively an orphan
Her first kill is selfdefense
A father figure trains her
She only kills those who deserve it
There’s a character named “Worry Fixer”
She is the strongest assassin in town
Hornclaw is too good at her job, and it sucks the suspense out of the novel. The reader never feels she is in any real danger except when her dog dies.
Deadweight, the dog, is Hornclaw’s sole companion. His unexplained death near the end of the novel seems to foreshadow his owner's demise. Yet, that demise never comes leaving me perplexed.
I was also perplexed by the mention of a flashbang that never gets used. Evidently, Gu doesn’t care much for Aton Chekhov’s advice, “If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.”
These examples are part of a larger problem: Gu approaches but then recedes from a number of themes and symbolisms.
Throughout the novel Hornclaw regrets her career, which doesn’t allow her to have a family. Indeed, this is why she takes a keen interest in Dr. Kang. His daughter and parents give Hornclaw a glimpse down the path not taken. Yet, nothing comes of this. Kang is barely in the second half of the novel. His daughter is a McGuffin. That Hornclaw rescues the girl out of sympathy for the Kang’s is true. That’s motivation, but as a character I don’t think she grew.
The symbolism of her fingernails is marginally better. A manicure, in her mind, is associated with the quiet life Hornclaw never had. At the end, she finally gets one but only on her right hand. The other was lost in the confrontation with Bullfight. It’s a literal and metaphorical half victory: she gets what she wants but at the cost of a significant piece of herself.
But what are we to make of the recurring imagery of peaches? This symbolism goes nowhere.
Also, Bullfight’s character arc falls flat. There was an opportunity for an emotional release as he lay dying, but once again nothing materializes.
In conclusion, The Old Woman with the Knife needed more action to be a thrill ride, more thematic and symbolic resolution to be meaningful and fewer cliches to be original. As it stands, it is a boring “popcorn book” with a failed attempt to be something more.
So, when will the movie come out? 😜