Full transcript of “Mocktail Recipe Book Review: Four Verdant Mothers (THE MELANCHOLY OF UNTOLD HISTORY by Minsoo Kang)”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:01 Hi, welcome to Barcart Bookshelf, a video series about books and the drinks they inspire. My name is Elias and today we're talking about The Melancholy of Untold History by Minsukang. The Melancholy of Untold History is a metaphictional uh speculative fantasy novel. It came on my radar after reading two anthologies earlier this year. Uh if you follow my other social media accounts, Instagram and Blue Sky, you might know that I read a short story every day, uh as a way of, you know, engaging with short fiction as well as long. Uh short fiction I really enjoy reading, but it doesn't always lend itself to a drink. You know, we need a novella or a novel where there's
0:48 just a little something more going on to really find that that drink. But I genuinely I love reading short fiction and so I take the time every day to read a short story. And two of the anthologies that I read this year were New Sons and New Sons 2 published by our friends over at Solaris Books and edited by Nissi Shaw. And Minsukang has short stories in both of those anthologies. and though they were highlights for my reading on uh both of them. It's just a a a wonderful He's a wonderful author thinking about storytelling and thinking
1:35 about the uh interesting ways you can play with narrative, with memory and uh with history, with myth while retaining this powerful emotional center. uh this sort of like the Santra Pompedum in um in Paris you see all of the external stuff uh the wiring and the the duct work of the building on the outside and it's all the cooler for it. It's thinking about art in a very conscious uh and uh observed way that I was absolutely
2:24 entranced by in these short stories and so I had to read the novel as well. You know, all very different stories, but dealing with these same metaphictional ideas and these same ideas of shaping a narrative and um what gets preserved and how do we do the work of scholarship, do the work of historioggraphy or mythmaking or uh authorship. And so that's that's a very roundabout way of talking about the melancholy of untold history. Um, but that's sort of the way that you you need to talk about it. It's the story of an historian and a storyteller
3:11 um and the national mythmaking and um mountain gods who are constantly reincarnated and in conflict with one another. and um the sort of pain of loss and thinking about what it means to grieve and how to find ourselves in work in grief and find ourselves absent work and what it means to go on. And it's just a a a lovely and very emotionally effective novel.
3:58 Um just deeply moving and and as just powerful stuff. If you are interested in having footnotes and discussions of the um text as it is happening and the progression of a national story and a personal and a deeply human story, I think you're really going to enjoy the melancholy of untold history. And so, of course, as I did, we need to have a drink. Our drink today is a mocktail. It's the four verdant mothers named for the mountain.
4:44 You can see here uh on the cover of the book and for the four mountain gods whose conflict uh forms one of the the pillars or the backbones of the novel. We've got four mountain gods who in this sort of storytelling mythmaking have uh lived a top this mountain with four peaks for a long time for time eternal cuz they're gods and they are good friends and then they get drunk and uh have some delightfully ribbled and scatological humorous moments uh and find themselves in conflict lict with one another and the peace between them is
5:30 broken and generation upon generation they uh wage war against one another and this [Music] um way of thinking about the world um or the way of thinking about some stories acts as a through line through the novel as well. this mountain sort of loom over the narrative uh even when it's focused on on different aspects. And so it felt appropriate that this is where we'll begin. They are a red god, a blue god, a yellow goddess, and a green goddess. And we're going to sort of play with those ideas with our ingredients here. We're going to start
6:16 with, as you can see, just rocks glass here. Going to get some crushed ice down in there. Perfect. Get my handy dandy stainless steel straw stir stick. Nice thing for summer. Just having everything built in the glass. We're going to start with an ounce and a half of peach shrub. The source of this conflict between these mountain gods is a miraculous peach from the heavens. And so we'll let that be our largest. And it's sort of red. And it's sort of yellow. And we're just a little wibbly on that. And that's okay
7:02 because we've got this sort of bleed through in some parts of our our narrative. So an ounce and a half of peach shrub. It's a fruit syrup made with vinegar. Really nice for summer. great uh you know just by itself or mixed into cocktails and mocktails. And then we'll get the remainder of our ingredients here. We're going to get for a sort of bluish red half an ounce of blueberry grenardine and half an ounce of matcha syrup. Very green. This sort of tea syrup. Lovely. bringing a sort of earthiness, a sort of floral green grassy brightness to our
7:50 mocktail. And then we'll get half an ounce of lime juice to keep things brightened up. Give this a stir to combine. Fantastic. Get all our crushed ice there. And then because it is a bittersweet story, we're going to top this all off with a little bit of tonic water. Lovely. As you can see, it's almost like a purple cloud, which if you've read the book, you'll come to appreciate as well. We've got a a purple cloud with red lightning
8:37 that also forms part of the the backdrop of this history and mythmaking here. And so there you have it. This is the four verdant mothers, a mocktail inspired by the melancholy of untold history by Msuku Kang. The melancholy of untold history is available now. I've got a link to Snag It in the description down below, as well as a link to purchase my book, Cocktails and Consoles, 75 Cocktails and Mocktails inspired by the Wonderful World of Video Games. I hope you'll check it out and uh enjoy that as well. We've got links to various forms of social media, including Blue Sky and Instagram, where there is always a written version of today's recipe. Try the drink. Let me know what you think in the comments down below. Hit that like button. It makes me so so happy when you
9:23 do and it really helps us to figure out what sorts of books you'd like to see here on Barcart Bookshelf. Subscribe if you haven't already so you never miss an episode and until next time, cheers.
