Chasseurs de neige

If I had to give it an adjective, I'd say it's an introspective book. A book worth reading. At first glance, what strikes you is the simplicity. Then there is its conciseness: a conciseness that, combined with what might seem like a sober narrative, could be interpreted as a children's book. However, it is Paul Yoon's mastery that has managed to create a short and simple story, giving the novel the right balance, since the narrative episodes recounted by the protagonist are interpreted with great intensity.
The writing could have had more abundant dialogue, but what emerges most throughout the novel is the protagonist's "silence": this particularity of the tale causes the story itself to become an inherent mutation of the character, while also enriching the narrative with continuous flashbacks. The story is full of memories. They are memories that unexpectedly continue to take root in Yohan's daily life. Some figures in the story exist and have their own names, but when the protagonist recalls them, they are mainly mentioned, in the sense that there is no physical presence of people. Thus, the story justifies the limited dialogue between the characters, and the choice of silence for the main protagonist is what dominates.

Yohan is a Korean refugee living in Brazil. As a foreigner, Yohan does not speak Portuguese correctly. The person he lives with is a Japanese tailor. [...] Over the course of the narrative, Yohan at one point realizes that the person who welcomed him and gave him a job is a survivor of a Japanese internment. From this relationship, the two will begin to fully understand the situations of those who were recruited or expatriated: despite this common wave of thought, the tailor has a deeper idea in this regard. For the tailor, it is not as important how long one has been away from home, or the hell one might have crossed. In the mental silence the tailor lives in, it is not even important if a person does not speak the language correctly: his conscience, permeated by silence, is motivated by the fact that there are people who remain excluded, people who can no longer have that type of communication made up of few words and mutual understanding.
The tailor, as a person, is absorbed into the place where he lives and, in Brazil, is treated as if he were one of their community. Similarly, the employer will try to do something for Yohan; typically, novels concerning refugees or immigrants are very broad in their scope, but in this case, the poor Korean will be completely accommodated in a new home. Nevertheless, in a conscientious environment that is fundamentally made up of needle and thread inside the tailor shop, the protagonist with his memories retreats to the past as if he were living the event in the same moment, giving the whole story a series of flashbacks. Although both survived, they are calm in their lives. They are people skilled at sewing clothes. There are no moments of xenophobia. At no point does Yohan fall into sadness or reach patriarchal longing, although his thoughts are always anchored to his place of origin: this is because the country that welcomed Yohan is like the land he left, and the connections forged are as strong and important as those with Korea.

Throughout the writing, the protagonist shows the vast world that solitary people can quietly call home: in complete solitude, he crossed half the globe and survived the war. Without any company, he arrived in Brazil to become a professional tailor. As a solitary person, the only friendships he had were with other military personnel, while at the end of the story he will have an approach with a Brazilian woman; a female contact that was recounted almost with the same coldness as his own reminiscences. Furthermore, the story does not follow a chronological order because the protagonist's memories appear and vanish, in a way that he learns to build the present from his past: the remoteness of a refugee from North Korea towards what will be his new adopted country is constantly perceived. The reticence and distance the protagonist feels are palpable.
In the main character there is solitude and empathy with the old tailor who decided to help him, even though his support might sooner or later pass away. In general, what the protagonist is experiencing is a balanced world. So much so that when his companion's loss occurs, Yohan does not collapse into sadness. A new door will open for him: with this affective and operational loss, the protagonist will gain a greater awareness of the circumstance, and the tragedies of the past will combine with the pleasures of the present.

To conclude, it can be defined as an introspective novel. It is a story that depicts a silent world made of great solitude, where both components speak and transmit messages: a book to be read to understand how a person can feel completely alone when they find themselves in a new context. Even if there are new situations for the protagonist, people never start from scratch because everyone has their own past. [...] According to the protagonist, it is a book that can be defined as a story based on muteness: in the sense that people can speak without words. What is not said can sometimes have a stronger meaning than what is verbally pronounced: this is because what people say is not always reflective.