The Old Woman With the Knife

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.

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.

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!

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!