Flashlight

A Novel

De: Susan Choi

Narrado por: Eunice Wong

A Most Anticipated Book of the Year: Time, The Washington Post, and Literary Hub

A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise.

One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old.

In chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan, lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.

What really happened to Louisa’s father? Why did he take Louisa and her mother to Japan just before he disappeared? And how can we love, or make sense of our lives, when there’s so much we can’t see?

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2025 Susan Choi (P)2025 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Flashlight is instantly bewitching: a mysterious family tragedy whose solution reaches beyond psychology into geopolitics. Susan Choi’s fictional investigation reveals a writer at the height of her spectacular powers.”—Jennifer Egan, author of The Candy House

“In this superbly crafted book, the fraught geopolitics of family life—the official secrets, the acts of espionage, the diplomatic failures—are set against the intimacies, grievances, conflicting memories, and unmet needs of national allegiance. Ferociously smart and full of surprises, Flashlight is thrilling to the last.”—Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood

“In a brilliant feat of storytelling, both intimate and sweeping, Susan Choi has created a profoundly moving epic that blends a tender family portrait with a haunting examination of the Korean diaspora. Flashlight is that rare novel that has everything I want in fiction: gorgeous writing, fascinating characters I fell in love with, an immersive, addictive story with an ending that made me gasp, then cry. I’m in awe.”—Angie Kim, author of Happiness Falls

Excellent story & narration

This is such an epic story. The narrator did an excellent job. I enjoyed this and I’ll think about it for a long time to come.

Sprawling, and unexpected

A wonderful story, maybe too much rumination at times, but beautiful details and interesting arc. Brings up themes of family, belonging, memory, history, and thing that do not tie up into a neat bow.

Brilliant, poetic, epic

Breathtaking in it's use of language, span of time, depth of heart, and earnest engagement with the past, this novel was impossible to put down. It deepened my heart, and opened my eyes, especially as an American. But ultimately as a human being who loves, and who aches for our shared and unique experiences of human suffering and human healing.

Would not recommend but the story could have been great

It’s so unfortunate because the story was a great idea. There were so many chapters that felt like the ramblings of a mad woman. Just wordy paragraphs of which little went anywhere. The idea was fantastic so I gave two stars for that but the rest was a mess!

First book I’ve ever felt I wasted my point on

The narrator had an off putting style of speaking. The plot was everywhere and I didn’t care about the characters

I want my 15 hours back

Don’t judge a book by the first chapter. I was so excited for this after listening to the 5 minute sample. It was terrible. I kept waiting for it to come together - to make sense - for the characters to jell. I waited and waited. It never came. I have no idea what the point was. Looooong drawn out. Jumps all over the place. Waste of time and money!