The expatriate experience is often typified as one of transition. While many settle down in their new homes, others use the time abroad to make a turning point in their lives.

But a new novel by Giacomo Lee, written while he was an expat here, looks at the ultimate transition -― death.

The story follows Soobin Shin, a doughnut shop worker looking to step up in the world. She has little luck in her job hunt, until a customer unexpectedly asks her to join him in a service offering funeral experiences for people who need reassurance in life.

Success follows as their clients, mostly from entertainment and the corporate sector, rave about the service.

Shin’s new job takes her into the world behind the scenes of Korean entertainment, only to find the people involved in showbiz are as cynical about it as she is. 

As she gets pulled further in, she uncovers a conspiracy on the scale of a paranoid fantasy.

Lee said he was aiming for a post-“Gangnam Style” take on Thomas Pynchon’s 1960s novel “The Crying of Lot 49.”

“Like that book, (‘Funereal’) asks questions about people in power, and our hero Soobin may be seeing more to things than are really there,” he said.

“Paranoia comes when your world is turned upside down, and that’s what happens to Soobin Shin halfway through the book. She begins to question everything around her, for better and for worse.”

This idea is based on the real “fake funeral” service offered in Korea, often as part of corporate bonding events.

Lee describes the idea of being buried alive as a primordial one, and the idea of contemplating mortality is what draws his characters in.

“My characters have requested fake funerals because they are all too human. They’re suffering, and they‘ve got to a point where they need this extreme resolution to make sense of things,” said Lee.

But, while he thinks it may be meditative, he doubts the long-term benefits.

“It wouldn’t be therapeutic, not in a long-term sense. That’s where psychiatry should come into play,” he said.

Ultimately the book is about transition, frustration with one’s circumstances and, paradoxically, a fear of change.

“I must have put my own anxieties in there subconsciously, and let them spread to the other characters in the book,” he said.

“Each of them has what Soobin doesn’t ― status, security, family ― and yet they are in exactly the same place as her, uncertain of what‘s around the corner, trapped in yet another transition. Isn’t that what life is for all of us?”

Giacomo Lee’s “Funereal” is available through major online bookstores. For more information on the author, visit giacomolee.com.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)