Jung Yun: "All the World Can Hold"

Let the Great World Spin meets The White Lotus when three passengers from wildly different backgrounds board a cruise ship bound for Bermuda shortly after 9/11 and learn en route that they can’t outrun their regrets about the risks not taken.

It’s Sunday, September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have traded in their elegant Park Avenue co-op for a suite on board the Sonata, a once-glittering cruise ship with a complicated history now long past its prime. Though they’re not “cruise people,” Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s seventieth birthday, or chilsun, a major rite of passage celebrated by Korean families. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close, and it is surreal—even wrong—to be on a cruise as the death toll from the attacks on 9/11 continues to rise.

Also on board is Doug, an aging actor and former star of Starlight Voyages, the hit Love Boat–style television series famously filmed on the Sonata. With few professional prospects, a now sober Doug has reluctantly joined his former castmates on a reunion cruise for fans of the show, but he dreads the dark specter of his past misdeeds. Meanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise during the height of recruitment season. Lucy’s impulsive decision reflects her growing ambivalence about the tech companies that are trying to hire her, including a new one with a strange-sounding name, Google.

All the World Can Hold beautifully explores how we balance our needs and our wants, as well as the regrets we live with and the chances to set them right. And though it’s not a 9/11 novel, it does remind us that while the great world spins, the interpersonal dramas don’t cease, even as more dire ones play out in the larger world.

Jung Yun will be joined in conversation by novelist Jane Delury.

About the Author:

Jung Yun was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. She is the author of O Beautiful, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a New York Times Group Read, and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year. Her debut novel, Shelter, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. She is an associate professor of creative writing at the George Washington University and serves on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

About the Moderator:

Jane Delury is the author of the novels Hedge and The Balcony, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her short stories have appeared in publications including Granta, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and The Yale Review and have won a PEN/O.Henry Prize and a Pushcart Prize. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Baltimore, where she directs the BA in English.

About the Program:

• Doors will open to registered attendees at 6 pm.
• A local bookseller will be on-site and have books available for purchase.
• Free parking vouchers are available to program attendees who park at the Franklin Street Garage (15 W. Franklin Street) after 4pm. Ask Pratt event staff for your parking voucher prior to or after the program.
• There is no registration required for virtual attendance, simply visit the Enoch Pratt Free Library's Facebook or Youtube page.

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