Jenny Han Author Novels & Stories

Dravyn mocked Han as he stared at the floor, watching the scattered papers. "Guess I have learned my lesson now," Han sighed, placing a hand on his waist. Without wasting another second, he began picking up the papers slowly, arranging them back into the right order. Dravyn closed the book, raised his legs, and rested them on his table. "So tell me, Han, what is the next thing Jane has to work on?" "Getting investors and suppliers, sir!" Han called out from the floor. "Which will she meet first, and when?"

she said, smiling into her cup, “is the interesting part.” I waited, but she let the silence sit there between us, clearly pleased with herself. It would have irritated me if I had not known her well enough to hear the excitement underneath it. Jenny loved many things intensely and briefly, girls, guys, theories, comics, passing obsessions, places she had no business going after midnight, but stories were different. Stories she pursued with a strange kind of devotion. Not the neat, polished ones people handed you willingly. The buried ones. The ones that resisted.

They were a team in raising Hannah, and they both had their own way of explaining things to her. Hannah wasn’t the kind of kid that would let it go if she didn’t understand something, or if they told her that they weren’t ready for her to know about a specific topic, and they both knew it. When she was six, Julie found a book about midwifery in her room. When she asked Hannah what that was all about, she reminded her that she asked her where babies came from and Julie told her she needed to wait till she was older, so when they went on a school trip to the public library, she checked it out.

“Last time I checked, she was still sleeping. That was two and a half hours ago.” “I need to see her.” “You can't. The mayor strictly prohibited your presence near her.” I expected that. What took me off guard was Jenny’s composure. This woman was alien with words like ‘peace, tranquility, serenity, calm, peace,' and every other word that was associated with the same meaning. Jennifer Hart was the definition of aggression and ready to pull your hair when it was totally unnecessary. Part of the reason she became one of the beloved right-hand women of my father.

“It’s more complicated than my stories.” The older woman stared at her for so long that she squirmed. “More complicated than your books? That’s something, since all your stories are twisty,” Leah said. A smile landed on Hana’s lips. Asides from her kid sister, Leah was the only one she allowed to read the words she bled into paper. She wasn’t ready to share her books with the world. Well, she was, but she couldn’t afford an editor or cover designer. “Give me a call when you get home, alright?” “I will, I promise.” They hugged over the counter, and Hana slowly let go of the woman. On some days, she felt closer to Leah than she did with her mother. “Bye-bye, Leah. Send my greetings to Gerard.”

“I’m a girl, and I read. Yes.” Jenny set her book down and stood up from the couch. “Babe,” I said matter-of-factly. She smiled awkwardly, but I didn’t correct myself. “There’s a statue of you. You know, at the exhibition where Brian and I went—the one where we saw you interpreting.” Jenny blushed and looked flustered. She knew exactly what we were talking about. Susy calmly picked up the booklet and started flipping through it, clearly uninterested in the topic.