Big kudos to this author for putting in the spotlight a much neglected narrative in the world of fiction. Centering the book on a much older female protagonist, with all her attendant problems with ageing, but also highlighting her strength and resilience was like a breath of fresh air. Loved the dark humour, and the general commentary on how society begins to treat older people as invisible and unimportant. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed this book about an elderly female assassin. It might not be for everyone, the writing style seemed...sparse? For being so bleak it was a surprisingly simple tale of an old woman coming to the end of her career, beset by physical problems and facing competition from a young male upstart. It has moments of violence as it to be expected from a book about an assassin but I didn't find it to be gratuitous. It was definitely something different and I enjoyed it overall.

Hornclaw is a 65 year old assassin; as she navigates the difficulties of her advancing year with her career she also has another issue; a young male to the organisation seems to enjoy baiting Hornclaw. Is it merely her advancing years or is there something else behind this animosity?

I loved this book; Hornclaw was a strong and deadly character who as well as navigating her advancing years also had her colleagues doubting her abilities and seeming to antagonise her at every turn. The plot was gripping in that we learnt how she became an assassin as well as her current life and the plot was fast paced and extremely entertaining. A 5 star read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review

This was everything you need for a thriller and crime story. It is not as black and white as you first think and like most typical thrillers, is full of twists. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

3.5/5.

Over the past few years we’ve seen a surge of crime fiction novels where the main protagonist is someone from the elderly community who bravely fights criminals along with their gang of fellow pensioners. Hornclaw, the narrator of Korean author Gu Byeong-mo’s new novel, might be sixty-five, but her story isn’t one fit for a cosy crime novel. Because Hornclaw is a criminal herself, an knife-wielding assassin who works alone. She’s the type of person you should be scared of – fast, silent and deadly.

Full review here: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2022/03/26/the-old-woman-with-the-knife-gu-byeong-mo/

SO SO SO SO REFRESHING. It was so incredible to read about an older woman, who is just so much more than her age. Iconic.

I loved the concept of this book as soon as I read the synopsis and it didn't disappoint! Very refreshing to read a thriller novel with a 60-something female protagonist.

The Old Woman With The Knife by Gu Byeong-mo was a different kind of read for me but one that I still enjoyed. It was also my first time reading a Korean author’s work in translation.

The Old Woman With The Knife focuses on 65 year old Hornclaw. She is a contract killer who is nearing retirement. As might be expected, she has experienced loss and grief in her life and now lives a solitary existence with her dog Deadweight. Following an uncharacteristic error on a job, Hornclaw finds her past catching up with her in the present. Added to this is the threat of sabotage from a young up start at the company Hornclaw works for.

This was certainly an interesting read. It reads as both a thriller and a character piece on Hornclaw. I really liked how the protagonist was an ageing female, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in a thriller. Hornclaw is most definitely feeling the effects of her age, and yet she continues to push on, in order to complete her mission. It’s interesting too that Gu Byeong-mo explores both Hornclaw’s physical ageing, but also the other sides of it, her concerns over her memory and the creeping loneliness that is becoming more starkly apparent. Gu Byeong-mo exploration of Korean societies approach towards their elders also makes for an interesting read.

With respects to the thriller side of this book, I enjoyed the way the different elements of the story wove together. Hornclaw is shown to be a very precise and professional killer, and yet a mistake she makes leads her on a path that she wouldn’t have expected, where she begins to care about and show compassion to those who are being threatened. I won’t reveal the twists so as not to spoil them but I felt they worked well.

Overall a solid read that cleverly subverted the norms of thrillers, whilst also thoughtfully exploring ageing and loneliness. 3.5/5

With thanks to Netgally and Canongate for the advanced copy in return for my honest review.

This is the first book I have read that is set in Korea. At first I didn’t even know whether it was South Korea or North Korea and the time line is also vague. Ultimately it turned out to be set South Korea some time after the Korean War and then 45 years into the future which brings the story to sometime near the present day. I always struggle a bit when I don’t have a sense of place and time for a story.

The other thing that discombobulated me was that I’d always pictured South Korea as a modern and affluent country with a high standard of living but this story included many mentions of poverty and struggle. The woman with the knife is known only by the code name Hornclaw and she is a 65 year old assassin for hire (euphemistically referred to as a disease control specialist) who favours knife work over other forms of killing. She has been doing this for 45 years after kind of accidentally falling into the ‘profession’.

Having said all that the story is not really about assassinations, it’s more an examination of ageing and how it affects people. Hornclaw is starting to feel her age. Although she is still fit and strong she knows her working days are numbered and while she has a comfortable amount of savings to live on, she is by no means rich. Much of the story is a reflection of how she got to where she is and her prospects for any sort of retirement versus being killed on one of her last jobs. She lives with an adopted dog called Deadweight and he is her only companion. As she approaches retirement she allows herself the luxury of feeling some small emotions and this is almost the undoing of her.

It was a strange piece of writing. I don’t know if it was intentional or if something was lost in translation but the whole book felt very dispassionate. There was no drama and even the fight scenes were narrated as if giving a dry statement of events. I can’t say that I really enjoyed this although I didn’t dislike it either but I felt it needed more feeling. As it was it took me three days to read as I had to read some other books in between to perk me up again. There was not that much of a story to it, rather an old woman’s reflections on her life and profession. Many thanks to Netgalley and Canongate for the much appreciated arc which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

A whip-smart, taut and compelling novel about a 60-something female assassin navigating the vulnerabilities posed by her ageing body, and a meditation on loss and loneliness. It says a lot that I am still thinking about this book a few days after finishing it - I will definitely be recommending this one!

The Old Woman With the Knife is a strange mixture indeed: a psychological thriller that includes insightful comments about attitudes to ageing in South Korea.

Gu Byeong-Mo’s focus is on Hornclaw, a 65 year old woman working in the field of “disease control”, which it becomes apparent is a euphemism for contract killing. She’s built a long career eliminating individuals considered to be “vermin”. She’s stalked them, chopped off their fingers, broken their bones and invoked fear in them before despatching these people “in the most gruesome way possible.”

In 45 years she’s seldom put a foot wrong, planning her attack with precision and leaving no trace of her existence. On her latest assignment she makes an uncharacteristic error, creating a sequence of events that puts her own life in danger. Hornclaw was already thinking it was time to retire but the antics of an upstart colleague who seems determined to undermine her, make the idea even more appealing.

Byeong-Mo weaves into this narrative some observations about attitudes towards people who are growing older. I did wince at the notion reflected in the novel’s title, that a woman of 65 is “old” . I know the bones are creaking and parts of me no longer work as they used to but I most definitely don’t think of myself as old. Once the eyebrows had resumed their normal position, I remembered how work colleagues in China frequently rejected images proposed for advertising campaigns because the model was “too old” (at 30). So maybe in Asian society, 65 is not the new 50 or whatever slogan we’re supposed to buy into now.

Hornclaw is an interesting character. Outwardly she’s an ordinary woman, the kind you wouldn’t look at twice and certainly never suspect of murderous intent. But beneath her gentle facade lies a fiercely determined woman who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She lives an almost hermit-like existence with only source of affection; her elderly dog Deadweight, We learn only a fair way into the novel that she was once capable of love and affection but became a killing machine because of an event when she was a young girl.

The thriller elements had little appeal for me. They weren’t gratuitously violent or excessively described (neither of which I would appreciate anyway). I just found them rather lacking dramatic tension and the fight scenes overly long. Though I enjoyed Hornclaw’s character (especially her relationship with her dog), I wasn’t invested enough to be all that bothered about whether she survives her colleague’s machinations.

I can see that this novel might appeal to readers who like quirky novels but personally I’m not clear what the overall point is of this novel. Maybe it’s meant to be a critique of a society whose citizens readily take out assassination contracts to deal with double-crossers, unfaithful partners and corporate enemies. Or maybe it’s a novel about finding once more the capacity for love and compassion? Both could have been interesting avenues but they were never fully exploited. It’s a novel that ended up, for me, as a narrative that had potential but needed more investment in character and motivation..

My foray into Korean fiction is off to an auspicious start with The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-Mo and I am thankful to Canongate Publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Sixty-five-year-old Hornclaw is having serious concerns over her ability to continue with the job she has been doing with tremendous success for more than three decades as a disease control specialist—in other words, a professional assassin. She is highly efficient in her job, and hasn’t been troubled in her entire career by any remorse about the people she has killed. She has no family, and lives alone with her dog Deadweight who, like herself, is getting seriously old. Hornclaw is afraid that her age has caught up with her and her physical and mental faculties are not what they used to be. Also, there has been a rare slip-up in a recent job that has made her involved with some good, fine people that she would’ve been better off not knowing. To make matters worse, a young, ruthless disease control specialist named Bullfight is being openly hostile towards Hornclaw and has been taunting her at every opportunity. Soon, he ups the game by sabotaging her latest job and targeting the good people she has come to care about. Will Hornclaw—with her experience and supreme skill—be able to put the upstart in place, or will her age and her unfamiliar emotional state make her succumb to the younger, faster and more ruthless opponent?

The Old Woman with the Knife is a unique novel in more than one sense. The protagonist is unlike any I have come across—a woman, a senior at that, who is a strong, unemotional, professional killer. There is no justification for what she is, though there is a backstory with just enough explanation about how she became so. The author shows, with minimum of description, the psychological upheavals Hornclaw goes through—coming to terms with her age, the diminishing skills and the emotions she never thought she would have. The other characters are skilfully drawn too, making the reader care about what happens to them. The plot is alternately fast and slow paced, like Hornclaw’s alternating feelings. The suspense of whether she will defeat her adversary, and how much collateral damage their fight will cause, keeps the pages turning until the utterly satisfying climax. The translation by Chi-Young Kim is top notch and the book reads smoothly.

The Old Woman with the Knife is an excellent novel that works eminently as a thriller while providing a glimpse of the Korean life and a sensitive portrait of an unconventional woman. I liked it a lot and would certainly watch out for more like it!

First I would like to thank Canongate and Netgalley for providing me with an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I am not really sure what to think of this book. I'm probably 3.5/5. Overall, I think I like it, but it also feels like its potential has not been fully realised. The author is clearly talented and is able to create a very compelling noir-like atmosphere and believable characters. However, there are many themes this book touches upon that I would have loved to learn more about.

There are many things I liked about the book, and the protagonist is perhaps the best thing about it. Hornclaw is a vivacious, conflicted, complex, scarred, and ambiguous woman. Her backstory feels real and is intricately linked to her actions later in life. She feels alive, and is among the best protagonists I have encountered in this genre.

Unlike many other books of this genre, this one actually touches themes that stay with you, and is, perhaps due to this, less forgettable (for example, I know I read 50+ Nordic Noir novels, but for the life of me I barely remember a handful). The main theme that sits at the core of this book is the treatment of old people in society as a whole and in the workplace in particular (in Korea, but perhaps also elsewhere?). Some of the episodes described in the book are heartbreaking, and they are nothing but small daily cruelties. Exploring this topic through the lens of an ageing assassin is bold, exciting, and - cool!

The reason, however, I can't give this book a higher score is twofold. First, the ageism topic could be explored in much greater depth and nuance. It is at the forefront for the first third of the book or so, but the story very quickly gets dominated by a traditional (and shallow) revenge plot line. The other reason I struggled is the ending. For a rather sophisticated book, with terrific psychological profiling, the scene where everything culminates felt formulaic and boring. This book (and the protagonist!) deserved better.

There are some nice bits of social commentary in The Old Woman with the Knife, with smart observations about ageing and class. It's a refreshing take on the genre, following the story of an older assassin approaching the end of her career and all the issues - both dramatic and mundane - that this presents.

But as a thriller, ultimately it falls a little flat. The plot is underwhelming, and the prose is so understated that even the most dramatic action sequences lack tension. Despite unravelling her backstory, Hornclaw lacks nuance as a character: she is so steely it is difficult to feel any sympathy towards her.

The Old Woman with the Knife is an interesting addition to the thriller genre, but it needs a bit more of a kick to land a real impact.

I'm the perfect reader for this type of literature. Thank you for approving this ARC. So, first of all, I love the subtlety of this plot. A lot of things are happening at the same time but you don't feel assaulted, it just gently seeps into your brain. If you enjoyed The Woman In The Purple Skirt, you'd like this one.

I cannot tell you how much I loved reading something from the perspective of an older woman when the topic is not about...getting older! Just the most gorgeously original premise, a good pace and interesting plot and hugely enjoyable. I felt a true spirit from the central character, I would love for this to be a series and for it to kickstart a much-needed renaissance of older women represented in literature doing all the things they can and do do in real life, that we just don't read about enough.

trigger warning
<spoiler> the dog dies (naturally), attempted child rape, child neglect, family abandonment, gore, mutilation, kidnapping, trauma </spoiler>

Hornclaw worries she might be losing her edge. She is getting old, her body aches constantly where it did not before, she is starting to forget things. Her strength is not what it once was, and she fears she might get fired simply because she's getting old.
Hornclaw is an assassin, so every mistake she makes could be her last.

We start off with the now: Who Hornclaw is, what she does, how she does it. How the life at the agency is these days. Slowly, it drifts to the before, how she got here, and the after: How things might end.

I liked this novel. The pacing was decent, and the length of the novella perfect. There was a certain distance in the writing to the characters and the events that were described, but it fitted to the protagonist and her worldview.
I would read more by this author.
The arc was provided by the publisher.

There was a lot in this book’s description which attracted me. I love the idea of an assassin later on in life, dealing with all of the limitations ageing can impose on us. I also love reading translated books, as I believe it gives an interesting insight into what different cultures enjoy reading. I found myself really looking forward to the moments we learned more about Hornclaw’s relationship with Deadweight. I wanted more of this genuine connection.

All that being said, this book did lack a bit of OOMPH for me. The plot felt strained, and the characters were one-dimensional. I enjoyed the flashbacks, which felt like they were almost on their way to letting the reader know a bit more about Old Hornclaw. I didn’t really ever get much of a handle on this elusive Old Woman, however. A lot of the puzzle pieces just didn’t fit the character.

The social commentary on the ageing population, as well as the poor population, in South Korea was spot-on. For example, Hornclaw remarks on the two types of older people she has observed (to cut a long story short, the offensive smelling, entitled type vs the garishly done up, attention seeking type) : “The former type of elderly citizen evokes disgust, while the latter is so incongruous that onlookers are mortified; regardless, both are one and the same, as people don’t want to think about them.”

The author really has a knack for summing up an entire group’s experience, just like that. Another line I really enjoyed was: “These bored old men can fight over a boast as small as a square of toilet paper. Stories with just a dash of sugar expand like cotton candy until they end up soggy and sticky.” ... dang. That’s a nice little paragraph.

Overall, the plot could have used some tightening up, the characters could have used some rounding out. The writing itself is A-OK!

Thank you, Netgalley, for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book had me stumped. Sitting smug and thinking I had it all thought out, the author put me in my place. Finally we have a thriller that will keep you your toes. As with a number of authors I have been reading recently I cannot believe that this is the authors debut novel! I truly enjoyed myself and will be recommending it to anyone I see for the next few months.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.