Review: Inheritance by Jane Park
Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2026
I'm happy to share my review of Canadian Korean author Jane Park's debut novel today! I enjoyed every page and I hope it's a book you'll consider picking up. My review was originally published in The British Columbia Review on July 9, 2026 and you can read it here.
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It’s a wonderful reading experience to pick up a debut novel and find both sophisticated writing and a satisfying story. Jane Park is a second-generation Korean Canadian writer and current UBC MFA student; Inheritance is her first novel.
With that said, on her website she notes writing a book when she was ten, so this is technically her second attempt! If you’re looking for an absorbing book that reads quickly but doesn’t sacrifice serious themes and character depth, this may be the book for you.
Inheritance plays out over two time periods. Over roughly 10 years in the late ’80s to mid-’90s, we meet Anne Kim, an Edmonton-born second generation Korean Canadian girl. Her parents are hard-working immigrants who prefer to look forward and build a life in Canada rather than to discuss difficult events of the past.
Eventually, the family moves to Crow Plains, a small town in Alberta, to run a grocery store. Anne’s older brother Charles shoulders much of the responsibility to carry on the family legacy, and it takes its toll on him. Somewhat devalued as a daughter, Anne struggles to find her own way in these coming-of-age chapters.
The time frames alternate, and in 2014, Anne is a New York City lawyer. Called back to Alberta when her father dies suddenly, she grapples with guilt and trauma from her past and faces a reality that prompts her to reevaluate her choices.
Anne is a dynamic character, constantly adapting to her changing circumstances, many of which are familiar to all readers–getting used to school, moving to an unfamiliar town, making and losing friends, pleasing parents–but often confronting pressures informed by being the child of new immigrants.
As a pre-schooler, she and her brother speak Korean at home. On her first day of school, she can’t make out the classroom English. Not only that, but she’s also given a new name—
As I walk in, the kids peer at me. They’re sitting at their wooden desks, turning their heads and swinging their legs as I walk past them to my seat. I take a quick inventory of the kids with dark skin or black hair: there are none.
My teacher, Miss Duda, is a round woman—her large, owl-like glasses exaggerate the round eyes beneath, rimmed in peacock blue. I look at her in wonder, perhaps with the same curiosity that some of my classmates look at me now…. She pauses, then writes something on a piece of paper and places it on my desk. She’s just written my new name, Anne. It’s been crudely derived from Eun-ah, but I don’t understand the significance of this moment: that I have just been christened with my Canadian identity.
Anne copes with her family situation by over-performing: excelling at school, attending law school, and moving to New York to practice tax law. Returning to Edmonton as an adult, the relationship between her and her brother (who is now lower functioning due to alcohol addiction), cannot be put aside, and I liked the realistic way that Park plays it out. These issues don’t feel overly dramatic; rather, they feel real, difficult, and worthy.
Park’s ability as a storyteller is clear, with a strong sense of character development and excellent pacing. I know a book is working for me when I find myself wanting to come back with my cup of tea in hand, settle in, and keep reading. This is a Canadian story—Korean Canadian, to be sure—but it’s a story that is relevant to all Canadians. All non-Indigenous peoples have played a role in the story of immigration to Canada no matter what generation it occurred in our own families. Of course this is not true of Indigenous peoples, and I was pleased to see the inclusion of the Cree in Park’s narrative. Jim is the Cree Chief of nearby Vernet and visits Mr. Kim’s new grocery store. (“Which country you from?” my father asks. “We’re Cree…You’re standing on my land!” he says with a chuckle.)
Another feature I loved about Park’s writing is the deep empathy that she held for the different characters. Though the novel is from Anne’s point of view, I began to understand each person’s unique vantage. It’s as if Inheritance is Anne’s novel, and I can imagine a whole novel waiting in the wings for several other characters. Her parents’ stories are fraught, and they keep their past experiences locked tightly away: their childhood experiences, their lives during the Korean War, and their family members left behind when they came to Canada. When her father unexpectedly brings up the past during dinner one evening, the young Anne feels overwhelmed by it:
These stories of suffering and sacrifice I can’t grasp, nor can I compete with. The impoverishment is too great, the stakes higher than anything I will likely face in Crow Plains. I resent knowing these past trials that diminish my life as trivial because I don’t have war wounds to flaunt or great sacrifices to make….
Her father works hard, wants the best for his family, and is very abusive. Though Park doesn’t ask the reader to condone his behaviour she allows room to understand it.
Anne’s mother, softer in spirit but also closed off from her children, begins to tell her story near the end of the novel: part of Anne’s “inheritance” of the past. Charles is a prominent figure in this story, fully realized in all his rebellion, and understood in his adulthood addiction. The empathy was to some extent also true for Anne’s white friend Meredith Sweeney and the Sweeney family, recognizable in their ‘90s privileged Canadian modernity, happy and unhappy in their own particular ways.
As the novel comes to a close, the hidden events of the past are resolved, particularly between Anne and her brother Charles. They don’t magically disappear, but they no longer hold the power of shame and guilt that they once did. Once those tethers are cut, both siblings are able to move forward in a much more self-directed way, both respecting family and cultural heritage, but making space for individual choice. Anne’s transformation is so satisfying, and hard won.
Jane Park’s debut is a thoughtful and timely delight. Though Inheritance is written about a Korean Canadian family’s immigration journey and speaks loudly to that unique story, the themes are nonetheless universal. This is a story for everyone, particularly those of us who make up this messy, wonderful, sometimes dysfunctional but very necessary place we call home.
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