Miles from Nowhere

"I love the form of the picaresque novel – a low-born character trying to search out their identity through a variety of different misadventures. Both this book and Funny Boy are playing with the idea of the picaresque, they’re really novels in short-story form. Joon, the runaway in Miles from Nowhere is smart and wise beyond her years. She witnesses the disintegration of her parents’ marriage and this forces her out of her home, into the world, and she discovers beautiful and horrible things about herself. She becomes very good friends with a character called Knowledge who is probably my favourite character in the book. There is a kind of sexual frisson between the two of them and they break out together from this shelter. They do a prison break, but no one chases after them or really cares. They make their way in the world and slowly all the things they promised themselves they would never do, they do. Joon has a slow trajectory toward becoming a prostitute and a drug addict and Knowledge goes from being a drug dealer who doesn’t do drugs to being a drug dealer who does. What ultimately happens with Knowledge is so tragic, but the real beauty and triumph of the book is how Joon eventually rescues herself. This book is a piece of art, it’s not a memoir, but I know the author, Nami Mun, had the experience of being a runaway in New York at a time in her youth. I’m always amazed by the idea of “darkness.” I don’t want to read books that are affirmations of the beauty of the world! In literature, you want to reveal hard truths about the human condition and, the fact is, there are people who struggle every day of their lives. If you’re lucky and privileged enough to read about that, it gives you greater insight. I’ve never been afraid of the dark."