Since my Modern Love essay came out on Thursday, a few people have asked about the recently-completed second book. Here’s the pitch.
Love Love
by Sung J. Woo
A novel about art and athletics, family and adoption, remembrance and forgiveness – and Judy and Kevin, sister and brother.
Judy Lee’s life has not turned out the way she’d imagined. She’s divorced, she’s broke, and her dreams of being a painter have fallen by the wayside. Her co-worker Roger might be a member of the Yakuza, but he’s also the only person who’s asked her on a date in the last year.
Meanwhile, Kevin, an ex-professional tennis player, has decided to donate a kidney to their ailing father — until it turns out that he’s not a genetic match. His father reluctantly tells him he was adopted, but the only information Kevin has is a nude picture of his birth mother.
Told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Judy and Kevin, Love Love is a story about two people figuring out how to live, how to love, how to be their best selves amid the chaos of their lives.
For the last month, I could see the end, that moment when I’d write the last sentence of my second novel. I imagined there would be exaltation, relief, a supreme sense of satisfaction rolled into that single keystroke when I’d tap the period and put an end to this work that began on August 11, 2002.