It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan, something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet.
—Henry James, “The Figure in the Carpet”
The search for an enigma catalyzes the revelations of character in “The Figure in the Carpet.” Too often, writers learn not from James but from his character Vereker. They learn not the use of a macguffin to expose character flaws but, rather, that fiction might have a pattern. Likewise, revelation and discovery are key to the novel. The forced manifestation of an imposed pattern is merely boring and academic. Patterns can be put to work, however. Suki Kim’s pattern of Korean immigrants—her delivery truck drivers, pool hall sharks, vegetable stand owners, and over-achieving second-generation kids —creates a fresh New York, one of which we’ve not read much and that, in our daily lives, we take for granted. The Interpreter[1] is Kim’s first novel. In it, Suzy Park has dropped out of Barnard for an affair with a professor, now over, and has been disowned by her family. She is not good at keeping jobs; she works now interpreting Korean for lawyers in court and at depositions. When we meet her, she is early for an appointment. She has overdressed in Manhattan cashmere for a deposition in the Bronx. She is getting a cup of coffee from a McDonald’s.
Time is plenty here. People sit around in all corners. No one dashes out to a merger meeting at the head
