Petty Lies: A Novel

By: Sulmi Bak

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Synopsis: We Need to Talk About Kevin meets The Vegetarian in this chilling epistolary novel of four characters locked in a frightening cycle of vengeance and comeuppance. Mira is a desperate young woman, hired by a wealthy single mother to tutor her lonesome son, Yuchan. But Mira is not who she presents herself to be; she is haunted by the death of her own family and motivated by the dark pulse of vengeance. Yuchan was cruel to Mira&’s mother. A kind of cruelty she can&’t ever forgive. And then there is Jiwon, the boy&’s mother, a bad mother, Mira thinks—or so Jiwon tells herself she must not be. But as Mira spends more time in the family&’s sprawling home, she begins to suspect Yuchan is not the culprit she&’s after. Someone else in the family has been pulling the strings. Someone with a deviant plan she can&’t begin to imagine. Structured around four different letters and journal entries: Mira's, Jiwon's reply, Yuchan's younger brother's diary entry and, finally, Mira's own written recollection. Each new section brings us deeper into a web of cruelty, consequence, and closer to the truth.