Flashlight Author Susan Choi Shares How Her Family Background Influenced Her Acclaimed New Novel

Following the success of her acclaimed 2019 novel Trust Exercise, set in a performing arts high school, author Susan Choi decided to go a different route with her latest book, Flashlight.

The author spoke with journalist Scott Simon on the Jan. 2 episode of NPR’s Book of the Day podcast about the novel, which has been nominated for literary honors like the Booker Prize and the National Book Award. 

Flashlight is a family mystery that follows Louisa, who is a child when her father, Serk, disappears during a walk on the beach. The tragedy at the novel’s core reverberates for years to come, leaving Louisa and her mother, Anne, questioning what truly happened to Serk.

“She does her best to fend off this child psychiatrist. She’s very unreceptive to him,” Choi said of her protagonist’s visit to a mental health provider. “But at the same time, she kind of can’t help engaging with him, even as she’s sort of trying to fend him off.”

“I hope the reader realizes that she’s going to so much trouble to fend off this guy because she’s actually terribly lonely,” the author continued. “She does want to talk to somebody, and she does end up talking to him, saying more to him than she ever meant to.”

In the novel, Serk, who’s Korean and born and raised in Japan, lost touch with his family after they moved to North Korea. This tension hit close to home for Choi, the author noted.

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“My own father and grandfather come out of this history of Japan making Korea a colony, and then having to give up the Korean colony with the end of World War II,” Choi said. “I was so interested in what was going on with ethnic Koreans who kind of got washed up in Japan at the end of World War II.”

“They were second class citizens under this Japanese empire, but then there is no Japanese empire, and they’re citizens of nothing,” she added. “My interest in what was that like kind of led to my inventing this character who grows up in this situation where he really doesn’t have a country.”

Choi called her characters an “alternate” version of her own family. She said her own experiences visiting Japan as a child when she was Louisa’s age served as a stark contrast to growing up in the midwest, where “no one ever looked like me.”

“We went to Japan, and I was sort of expecting to fit in brilliantly and be received with glory,” Choi said. “At last, here you are, a person who looks like us. And of course, I didn’t look like anybody there either. Japan cast a dark shadow, and I think that Korea-Japan relationship was something I wanted to explore in this slightly different way.”

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But Choi also found a connection with her complex protagonist, the author says.

“I think there’s a lot of me in Louisa, admittedly,” Choi said. “It’s a hard thing to admit, because she’s a character that is so committed to fending off love. But it was so important to me that she find love and some kind of peace, and that’s why we end up following her for many, many decades and many, many pages. But I think she gets there. I hope she gets there.”