Your Lovely Small Face

by Jeff Backhaus

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

“Your Lovely Small Face” is the story of an American who's just immigrated to Korea in a risky scheme to resurrect his shattered career, prepare a home for his wife and daughter (who have promised to follow as soon as he lays a suitable foundation), and help his wife launch her own entrepreneurial venture.

The story is told through posts on a fictional Tumblr page, which the couple sets up to share their now-separate worlds. We watch as they communicate and miscommunicate with each other through their posts and photos, as they try to be honest about their lives but end up irresistibly manipulating their own experiences to get what they want.

Author Jeff Backhaus wrote the story based on thirty-nine photos he assembled from the thousands he's taken around the world—thin slices of his past severed from his actual experience to create an illusion, a photofiction, a story. 

Includes a special preview of Backhaus's debut novel Hikikomori and the Rental Sister. 

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 48

Sample

You were right to be skeptical: despite all the agency’s promises, the apartment isn’t ready yet, so they’ve dumped me in this bizarre and frightening Korean invention called a livingtel where they think I’ll be comfortable. (My translator even boasted that “the communal kitchen contains free limitless kimchi.”)

The room is smaller than our closet at home. After one glance I said that I really appreciated the agency’s kindness and limitless kimchi but the seventeen-hour flight had me . . . and there I sort of trailed off because I was too discombobulated to summon the right word. So I just said I’d actually prefer a regular hotel. Then my translator (whose sweetness and enthusiasm don’t quite nullify her suspect English) tried to tell me there are no hotel rooms anywhere in Seoul—which I frankly don’t believe, but nevertheless she insisted, and (bottom line) I have no real choice but to do what s. . .