Club Nine Tails

Club Nine Tails follows Connor Carby, a wealthy biracial Korean American student whose twenty-first birthday turns into the beginning of a chaotic journey across the United States. What starts as a family financial scandal gradually becomes a story about Connor’s estrangement from his Korean identity, his uncertainty about his sexuality, and his relationship with his maternal uncle Moses, formerly Hyun-Woo Yang. Interwoven chapters narrated by Moses reveal the painful history that Connor’s mother, Yun-Hee, has hidden from her son.

Connor is travelling from Princeton University to his parents’ luxury Manhattan apartment on the evening of his twenty-first birthday. He dislikes birthdays and has agreed to go home mainly because his mother, whom he calls Umma, asked him. The train journey is crowded and humiliating, culminating in an enormous Irish wolfhound named Justinian knocking Connor down and licking the inside of his mouth.

Connor is already emotionally unsettled. His girlfriend, Lena Choi, has recently told him that she intends to move to San Francisco after graduation and does not want to continue their relationship. Connor has not yet told his parents. He also notices that his father, Richard Carby, has failed to call him on his birthday.