By Helena Rho
I met A.H. (Ann) Kim for the first time at AWP 2024 in Kansas City. I loved her first novel, A Good Family, a family drama and mystery—it was the funniest novel I’d read in a long time, and certainly the funniest I’d read in 2021 (although it debuted in 2020). I’m very excited to be interviewing Ann about her second novel, Relative Strangers, a “reboot” of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, because my novel, Stone Angels, coming out next year, is a “nod” to Austen’s Persuasion.
Helena Rho: Ann, first, let me say that Relative Strangers is my favorite book of 2024, and we’re only in April! But why Austen? Is Sense & Sensibility your favorite Austen novel? How did the novel take shape in your mind before it materialized on the page as a reboot?
A.H. Kim: Thanks so much, Helena. Kind and generous readers like you are a writer’s dream.
I was inspired to write Relative Strangers when I was trying to find an agent for my debut novel, A Good Family. Anyone who has gone through the querying process knows how awful it is. I’d heard the best way to distract yourself while pitching your first book is to write your next book, but I didn’t have any great ideas. I was drowning my sorrows with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s while watching my favorite comfort movie, Sense and Sensibility, when the proverbial lightning bolt struck. From that moment, I was excited to sit down in front of my laptop each morning and let the reimagined Dashwood sisters reveal themselves to me.
As for my favorite Austen novel, that’s impossible to answer. I can’t choose one. All I can say is it’s definitely not Northanger Abbey!
HR: As a Korean American, a “model minority,” and a lawyer who went to Harvard, how did you create the character of Amelia, the slacker and screw-up, if you will, the equivalent of the impulsive and passionate Marianne of Sense & Sensibility? I’ve only known you a short time, but I’d have thought you’d be more like Elinor, the sensible, older Dashwood sister? Am I wrong?
AHK: That’s so insightful of you, Helena. Yes, I am definitely the Elinor in my family: hard-working, responsible, reliable. I epitomized the model minority growing up and continue to be a “good girl” to this day, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes yearn to be naughty.
It pains me a little to hear you calling Amelia a slacker and screw-up because I am so protective of her, but there is more than a grain of truth to that characterization. In fact, Amelia would be the first to describe herself that way, which is part of her emotional journey in Relative Strangers. I don’t think I created the character of Amelia so much as I tried to channel the lively spirit of Marianne Dashwood and put her into the body of a quirky and modern Korean American woman.
HR: Why did you choose to tell the story from Amelia’s point of view, not an omniscient POV like Austen? And it’s Amelia (after Amelia Earhart, you tell us early in your novel) and Eleanor, not Marianne and Elinor as in the original. Why not from Eleanor’s POV?
AHK: The very first manuscript I ever wrote was a YA novel that went nowhere. No agent, no book deal, nothing. One of the characters in that first manuscript is named Mariane, and even though I’ve given up on it ever being published, I couldn’t bear to give up the name. I wanted the Marianne character to be named after someone with spark and spirit, and Amelia Earhart felt like the perfect eponym.
I started writing my first published book, A Good Family, from an omniscient third-person POV, but I felt oddly distanced from my characters. When I changed the whole thing to dual first-person POVs (Hannah and Beth), the characters came to life. Based on this experience, I knew right away that I wanted to tell Relative Strangers from a first-person perspective. I briefly toyed with the idea of writing from both sisters’ POVs, but I’d already done that with A Good Family and didn’t want to repeat myself.
As you correctly note, my personality is more like Eleanor than Amelia, so it would have been natural to write from Eleanor’s POV, but I chose to write as Amelia for two main reasons. First, even though Austen wrote Sense and Sensibility from an omniscient POV, it always felt to me like Elinor’s narration. I thought Marianne (Amelia) should get a chance to tell her side of the story. Second, as I said before, I yearn sometimes to be naughty. I had a blast writing from bad-girl Beth’s POV in A Good Family, and I thought it would be fun to tell Relative Strangers from Amelia’s playful perspective.
HR: “The Master’s Cottage is sort of a ruin” is a lovely sentence, and exactly what I’d imagine Barton Cottage in Sense & Sensibility would look like, transported to Northern California. But on the other hand, Maggie is a niece to Amelia and not her sister as in the origin story, and the Lucy Steele character is completely reimagined in your reboot. What kind of things did you decide to be faithful to in your novel and what things didn’t make the cut? How did you choose which details to keep?
AHK: Personally, I imagine Barton Cottage as being much nicer that the Master’s Cottage, but maybe that’s because I’ve watched the 1995 adaption too many times. The set designer did such a great job on that movie!
For me, the most interesting part of Sense and Sensibility is not the romantic relationships with Willoughby, Edward, and Colonel Brandon, but the sisterly bond between Elinor and Marianne. I love how the two women are so different yet so devoted to one another, and that’s what I tried to keep at the heart of Relative Strangers. Otherwise, I took a fairly impressionistic approach to Austen’s original. I was less concerned about “retelling” specific elements of the story and more interested in staying true to the guiding spirit of the book. At the same time, I took great pleasure inserting little “Easter eggs” throughout Relative Strangers that I hope will surprise and delight Austen fans.
HR: Can you share one of those “Easter eggs” here?
AHK: Of course not! The pleasure of Easter eggs is in finding them. But I will say this: some of the eggs are nods to the Austen novel, others are winks to the 1995 movie including my favorite behind-the-scenes fun fact.
By the way, I’m happy to meet via Zoom with book clubs to answer questions, including this one about Easter eggs. Just contact me via my website or social media. I just don’t want to reveal any spoilers here. Who knows? Maybe readers will find Easter eggs I’ve forgotten about!
HR: It’s not an accident that Amelia and Eleanor are Asian—well, “half-Korean” to be exact—was it important for you to have Eastern representation in Western literature? In what ways did you choose or not choose to have the sisters reflect their culture?
AHK: Wow, this is a hard question for me to answer in a short space, but I’ll try.
As a young child, all the books I read were by white authors. In high school and college, I was introduced to Black authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, but it wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I read my first book by an Asian American: Amy Tan’s 1989 bestseller, The Joy Luck Club. It took another six years until Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker – the first novel by a Korean American that I ever read – was published in 1995.
As a reader, I am gratified to see so many books today by Asian American and specifically Korean American writers. As a writer, however, I sometimes feel frustrated when people ask me about “Korean culture” in my books. The honest answer is I don’t have much, if any, Korean culture in my books, but I still want them to be considered part of Korean American literature.
Let me explain: I moved to the U.S. from South Korea as a toddler back in the 1960s when there weren’t many Korean immigrants, especially in the Rust Belt cities where I grew up. My parents strongly encouraged me and my siblings to assimilate and speak English to succeed. As a result, I don’t know much about Korean culture or language. I am far more American culturally than I am Korean.
That said, my Korean heritage, growing up with Korean-speaking parents, being seen as “less than” based on my Korean appearance, having children who are “half Korean” – these are all part of my personal experience as a Korean American. In my books, I impart my characters with experiences like mine because I believe we are worthy of being at the center of stories and not relegated to the margins. However, my books are not “about” Korean heritage or language barriers or feeling “less than.” At their essence, my books are about love and loss, mistakes and forgiveness, heartbreak and hope – simply put, they are about being human.
HR: In my novel, a “nod,” as my editor likes to say, to Austen’s Persuasion, I focus on one aspect and reimagine it through an Asian American lens. In Relative Strangers, you reimagine every aspect of Sense & Sensibility. It’s ingenious how you dance with Austen’s novel—the diversity and multiplicity of lives you manage to represent while adding to the suspense and mystery aspects of your novel are phenomenal. What was this process like?
AHK: Most of the books I’ve read in my lifetime have been written by straight, white authors about straight, white characters living in a straight, white world. That is not the world I live in. I’m blessed to have family, friends, and acquaintances of all colors, many ethnic backgrounds, and a rainbow of sexual orientations and gender identities. It is important to me to represent this world in my writing. Again, my books aren’t “about” diversity, but they do embrace characters with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Because Sense and Sensibility provided me with a pre-existing narrative arc, I was able to focus on characterization as a starting point for Relative Strangers. I began by free-writing self-introductions for each of the main characters from their first-person POVs. These mini-bios proved invaluable throughout the writing process because not only did I have a “cheat sheet” to refer to whenever I had a fact-checking question (e.g., how old would Amelia have been when 9/11 happened?), but more importantly, I was able to get into each of the character’s heads to see what made them tick. Once I fully understood the characters, the book practically wrote itself.
HR: How did you research the restaurant and foodie scenes of your novel? Did it involve a lot of eating at Michelin-starred restaurants? And why didn’t you invite me during your “research” on the Pacific coast highway? Do you have a recipe for morning buns or apple-walnut bread you’re willing to share?
AHK: Many of the foodie elements of Relative Strangers are drawn from real life. For example, the watermelon-feta salad that Eleanor makes for lunch in Chapter 6 is based on a salad my friend Erin once made for me. The scene in Chapter 13 where Amelia and her love interest drive along Route 1 to feast on fresh oysters and artisanal cheese and sparkling mead is based on actual food purveyors along that magical stretch of highway. The Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall where the Bae-Wood women eat Christmas Eve dinner in Chapter 21 is based on one of my family’s favorite casual dining spots in San Francisco.
I’ve always loved food – from my mom’s delicious Korean cooking to the latest foodie hot spots – but I’m also pretty frugal. I’ve probably been to just a handful of Michelin-starred restaurants in my life. Living in San Francisco for many years, however, I was able to eat very well without breaking the bank. In a way, you could say I’ve been researching this book my entire life.
As for recipes, I’d suggest you subscribe to my monthly newsletter on Substack. It’s called Hello Lucky! (named after my rescue dog), and I include recipes and book recommendations in every issue. So far, I haven’t included a morning bun or apple-walnut bread recipe, but now that you mention it, I’ll start doing some test-baking.
HR: I was laughing already on the first page of Relative Strangers. Writing humor is one of the most difficult acts to pull off in a novel. Your line, “Are you there, God? It’s me, Amelia,” followed by her thought: When in doubt, try humor, had me laughing so hard I was crying. Your novel balances beautifully on the razor edge of comedy and tragedy—loaded with wry references and yet genuine emotion and heartbreak. Any tips for a writer—say, me—in constructing a smart and funny novel?
AHK: Once again, thank you so much. I grew up admiring my older brother and wanting to be just like him, and he was the funniest person I knew. To this day, if someone is funny, I immediately want to be their friend.
I wish I had good tips for writing humor, but it’s so mysterious. What one person finds hilarious might leave another person scratching their head.
A friend of mine once told me that the secret to humor is repetition, and it is a tactic I employ in my writing. For example, you drop a bit of humor in toward the beginning of the book – maybe an inside joke between two characters or a funny mispronunciation of a word – and then repeat the bit throughout the book. I think part of the appeal of repetition is that you, the reader, get to feel like you’re “in” on the inside joke.
Similarly, I like to include pop culture references – everything from classic movies lines to ’80s song lyrics to Saturday morning cartoon characters – at random points in my books, often when you least expect them. Again, I think readers enjoy the “jolt” of surprise when you recognize a writer’s allusions, and it makes you feel like a member of the “in” crowd.
One of the things I love most about books is how vividly we “see” the images in our minds. In Relative Strangers, some of my favorite humorous moments are simply scenes of inappropriate clothing: Eleanor greeting Jett in her dowdy flannel nightgown, Tabitha gasping as she struggles out of her skin-tight Spanx, Amelia trudging up a sodden hillside in her slinky dress and stiletto Jimmy Choos. There’s nothing like putting your characters in humiliating situations and then amping up the humiliation little by little to bring out the giggle in every reader.
Relative Strangers is available from Bookshop, Green Apple Books, Laguna Beach Books, Magers & Quinn Booksellers, The Ripped Bodice, and Waucoma Bookstore.
Helena Rho is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominated writer and the author of American Seoul: A Memoir. A former assistant professor of pediatrics, she has practiced and taught at top ten children’s hospitals: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh and is a devoted fan of K-Dramas, Korean green tea, and the haenyeo of Jeju Island. Stone Angels, her debut novel, is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing in March 2025.