문학과 지성사

A haunting literary mystery that unearths the long-buried,
unspoken story between a mother and daughter.

She is a part-time lecturer at a university and occasionally earns a living by translating Japanese children’s storybooks. Her husband, who has worked at an entertainment agency for over ten years, is an ordinary man with no particularly distinguishing traits. Her life, too, is quiet and uneventful—until one day, a long-forgotten memory of the neighborhood where she briefly lived as a child resurfaces.

It was a small, secluded neighborhood, rarely visited by outsiders. There, she was known as “the girl from the brick house”—a nickname stemming not only from the rare brick structure of her home but also from how her family remained completely disconnected from the rest of the community. Her mother was obsessively protective; she feared any joy her daughter might find on her own and strongly disliked the idea of her drawing attention. At the time, none of this felt strange; her mother was her whole world. But as an adult, looking back on those years, she begins to realize just how unusual her family truly was.

After reconnecting with her father—whom she hadn’t seen since her parents’ divorce—she learns that many of the disturbing stories her mother once told her, including the tale of a brother who died before she was born and a great fire that supposedly swept through the neighborhood, were entirely fabricated. Having experienced the world solely through her mother’s voice, she begins to question how much of her childhood was ever real.

Why did her mother hide the truth? What really happened? The past, once accepted without question, begins to unravel, and she becomes consumed with the task of piecing together the puzzle of her history.