Re Jane

March 16, 2015
Park’s debut is a cheeky, clever homage to Jane Eyre, interwoven with touching meditations on Korean-American identity. Jane Re has never felt like she fit in, and not just because she’s a half-Korean orphan in the “all-Korean, all the time” enclave of Flushing, Queens. After graduating from CUNY, she’s still stocking shelves in her uncle’s grocery store while her overachieving peers have moved on to graduate school and high-profile finance jobs. Desperate for a change of scenery, Jane takes a job as an au pair for the Mazer-Farleys, a Brooklyn couple with an adopted Chinese daughter. Jane comes to love her charge, her new neighborhood, and her new bosses. But when the friendly bond she shares with Ed Farley goes a step too far, she flees New York for Seoul, where she gets in touch with her roots and uncovers a new sense of identity. Though the Brontë references occasionally land with the subtlety of an anvil, Park’s clever one-liners make the story memorable, and her riffs on cultural identity will resonate with any reader who’s ever felt out of place. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth and Lane Zachary, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth.

Jane Re is half-American, half-Korean--and an unlikely character for this contemporary retelling of the British classic JANE EYRE. Jane's plucky, sarcastic interior monologue is delivered in bright tones by Diana Bang. The story takes listeners from the New York boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn to Seoul, Korea. We feel the ups and downs of being a multiracial orphan through Bang's characterization of Jane. As people are indifferent, inconsiderate, and downright mean to Jane, Bang delivers insensitive lines of dialogue filled with the glee of the mean-spirited. She uses believable accents to convey the novel's range of nationalities--from Brooklynites to Koreans living in America. At times, her emphatic delivery lacks variation in tone, but the fast-paced story keeps one listening. M.R. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine