Light creates truth — but only within its beam
Louisa edits the brightness of her photos to decide which father the world remembers.
Book summary
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Flashlight
by Susan Choi
A daughter spends decades chasing the light that vanished with her father off the New England coast.
Published 2025
Topics
Family SecretsMemoryOceans & CoastlinesIntergenerational TraumaComing-of-Age
Reading companion
How to read Flashlight with Readever
Read Part I (Witness) aloud or via Readever’s audio mode to feel the clipped testimony. In Part II (Exposure), switch to dark mode so photos and nautical diagrams pop against the screen, mirroring Louisa’s contact sheets. End with Part III (Afterimage) using Readever’s Compare View to line up multiple witnesses’ timelines.
Things to know before reading
- The book contains depictions of drowning, panic attacks, and xenophobic harassment; enable Readever content flags if needed.
- Flashbacks jump across 40 years; pin each decade in Readever’s navigation drawer so you can jump back instantly.
- Nautical terminology and Korean folktales appear without explanation—use inline glossaries to balance literal data with myth.
- The final reveal is interpretive rather than factual; write down your theory before reading Louisa’s last dispatch to savor the ambiguity.
Brief summary
Flashlight in a nutshell
One night in 1987, Louisa and her Korean father walk the breakwater near their Rhode Island town. He carries a flashlight, refuses to swim, and disappears moments later. Louisa is found soaked and mute on the sand. Decades later she’s a photojournalist still haunted by what she can’t remember. Susan Choi braids police transcripts, therapy notes, nautical legends, and Louisa’s reportage to reconstruct the night and the long ripples it created across her American mother, younger brother, and the fishermen who claimed ownership of the shore.
Flashlight is as propulsive as a mystery but ultimately about perception—how light, weather, and grief bend the story you tell about your family.
Key ideas overview
Flashlight summary of 3 key ideas
Flashlight argues that what we see is entangled with who claims the story.
Myth fills gaps official records ignore
Local fishermen insist the sea keeps what it wants, echoing Louisa’s halmeoni’s folktales.
Grief becomes vocation
Louisa’s dedication to documenting refugee rescues stems from being the child who couldn’t save her own parent.
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Follow the beam through fog, myth, and memory
Choi won the National Book Award for Trust Exercise; here she deploys similar structural daring with higher emotional stakes. The novel is rich with coastal detail, queer subplots, and forensic photography—perfect for readers who annotate imagery and motif.
Deep dive
Key ideas in Flashlight
Key idea 1
Light creates truth — but only within its beam
Louisa edits the brightness of her photos to decide which father the world remembers.
As a photographer, Louisa manipulates exposure to either sanctify or complicate her father’s memory. The technique becomes metaphor: controlling light lets marginalized families fight erasure, but it can also sanitize the messy parts they need to face.
Remember
- "Adjust Readever’s highlight colors to mirror the novel’s palette—cool blues for doubt, warm ambers for clarity." - "Truth is an angle, not an absolute."
Key idea 2
Myth fills gaps official records ignore
Local fishermen insist the sea keeps what it wants, echoing Louisa’s halmeoni’s folktales.
Police reports contradict immigrant rumors, and neither fully explains the drowning. Choi shows how marginalized families survive by blending folklore with fact, creating meaning even when institutions fail.
Remember
- "Use Readever’s note templates to log myths vs. documents—it’s the only way to see how both shape the outcome." - "Communal storytelling can be more healing than legal closure."
Key idea 3
Grief becomes vocation
Louisa’s dedication to documenting refugee rescues stems from being the child who couldn’t save her own parent.
By photographing other disappearances at sea, Louisa turns private trauma into public witness. The novel interrogates whether that service heals or reopens the wound.
Remember
- "Track Louisa’s assignments in Readever’s timeline to see how each job mirrors a childhood scene." - "Service work without self-care risks becoming re-traumatization."
Who should read Flashlight?
"Readers who loved Trust Exercise or Celeste Ng’s mysteries of family history." - "Anyone drawn to coastal fiction, diaspora stories, or hybrid forms mixing transcripts with prose."
Book clubs wanting layered discussions about memory, blame, and forgiveness.
About the author
Susan Choi is the author of five novels, including the National Book Award–winning Trust Exercise and the Pulitzer-finalist American Woman. She teaches at Yale and often writes about performance, surveillance, and adolescence.
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"Grab the Flashlight coastal map overlay to follow every harbor and jetty mentioned without leaving the app." - "Enable the ‘Long Exposure’ reading journey to pair Flashlight with One Boat for a maritime double feature."
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