Shanna & Languages

Of translation, books, languages and me

Korean (한국어)

Review: Love in the Big City

Wow, just wow. There’s something about Love in the Big City that just makes you glued to it and I read it in two sittings (I’m human, I need sleep). It also cured me of my laziness when it comes to writing book reviews. Right after finishing the last page, I feel so compelled to type out jumbled thoughts on why I love love love the book so much, hoping to make some sense of why I’m so attracted to it.

Love in the Big City is Sang Young Park‘s English-language debut. This book has such a magnetic personality, only a translator who is equally cool and charismatic can make it work. I’ve always been captivated by translator Anton Hur‘s voice in his translations, and it just shines through in this book. There are many snarky lines that I love and highlighted in the e-book and gosh, some are just gold.

There’s something about living vicariously through flawed characters that are so open and honest about their thoughts, whether it’s in the narration or in the dialogue. The narrator Mr Park (also sometimes referred to as Mr Young) takes the words out of my mouth sometimes, and I marvel at how he dares to say things that I’ve always thought (but not voice out).

I also love how the book is so raw and real when it comes to families. I don’t know about others, but at least people around me (including myself) don’t openly discuss family and growing up, I felt like I was living in a fantasy world where everyone else’s families are “normal”, for lack of a better word. Mr Park’s relations with his mother truly hit home for me, especially the part about how he truly wants an apology from his mother and that his acute awareness that it’s not going to come.

Beyond the emotional rollercoaster—from the highs of snarky retorts to the lows of breakups and loss—that the novel brings, there are also many important issues nestled within. Youth unemployment, homophobia, alcoholism, to name a few.

One thing I love about ebooks is that it’s easy to see what I’ve highlighted and bookmarked, and this novel contains more highlights that my textbooks.

This is my favorite line in the book.

Because, whatever it was or wasn’t, you were you.

It takes so much for a person to tell that to someone else, and I hope I would one day meet someone who I would say that to.

A couple of other personal favorites.

To me, love is a thing you can’t stop when you’re caught up in it, a brief moment you can escape from only after it turns into the most hideous thing imaginable when you distance yourself from it.

An excess of self-awareness was a disease in itself

There are many many more (snarky) lines I love, but will keep them to myself and for you to discover the gold.

Kudos to Tilted Axis Press who emailed print subscribers with the ebook link 🙂 It’s just so nice to get a chance to read it hot off the press. If not, I would have been hounding my mum (who’s in charge of getting the mail) every day.

I still can’t wait for the physical copy to come and go on the ride once more. Definitely looking forward to seeing more of Park’s work in translation.

Synopsis from Tilted Axis Press

You’re in for a treat with Love in the Big City – energetic, joyful, and moving, this novel depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after.

matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they suppress their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and freezer-chilled Marlboro Reds. Yet in time even Jaehee settles down, leaving Young alone to care for his ailing mother and find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life.

Purchase links

Titled Axis Press (UK) | Grove Atlantic (US)

While you are at it, I highly recommend the Tilted Axis yearly subscription. I subscribed to both the 2020 and 2021 editions. I was late in getting the 2020 one, which is kinda great, cos they will send the whole year’s books at one shot. Nothing beats having 6-7 books at your doorstep at one go. But I’m also enjoying having the books trickling one by one as they are published this year 🙂 Love in the Big City is part of the 2021 sub!

[Review] I’m Waiting For You and Other Stories

I’m Waiting For You and Other Stories comprise of two pairs of stories from Korean science fiction writer Kim Bo-young, translated by Sophie Bowman and Sung Ryu. In the title story I’m Waiting for You (tr. Sophie Bowman), a man writes a series of letters to his fiancee, as both of them undertake their separate journeys in the galaxy, making use of the concept of relativity, to return to Earth at the same time to get married. His journey gets increasingly difficult as the delays in the galactic journey costed him years on Earth and he battles isolation and the losing hope of ever reuniting with his fiancee. On My Way to You (tr. Sophie Bowman), the last story, complements it perfecting with his fiancée’s own galactic journey. In contrast to his lonely journey, she is always travelling with others, but we learn that isolation in the midst of company is sometimes much harder to bear.

Family’s not a big deal, you know. When it comes to family, you can always make a new one. That’s why the world has this great thing called marriage. (…) I’ll become four times more your family than your first family was.

On My Way to You

This is my personal favourite line in the book. I’ve never thought of marriage this way and it makes me wonder if I’ll meet someone who can be that family for me 🙂

While in essence a love story, I love how it also deals with several philosophical questions on time and space. Is the concept of time and space tied together, and if we return to the same space years later, can we say that it’s the same place which we left?

It feels like a fitting read in the midst of the pandemic, where we are isolated from the places we want to go and people we wish to meet again. Time seem to fly by faster than I can remember, and when we finally return to (some form of) normalcy, are we really in the same space which we left behind pre-COVID?

Nestled in between is the second pair of stories The Prophet of Corruption and That One Life (tr, Sung Ryu), where we are introduced to the world of godlike beings, where everything on Earth (and Earth itself) is their creation and extension of their will. The afterlife is being positioned as the “reality”, as we learn that The Lower Realm (Earth) is just a place that the beings reincarnate over and over again as part of their learning. During their time on Earth, they forget about their true selves, but when they go back to The Dark Realm, they retain all the memories (learnings) on Earth. This pair of stories is a harder read, given that it deals with philosophy, mythology and in some aspects, religion. I marvel at the stellar translation (which didn’t feel like one) and I could only imagine how difficult it must have been to deal with the abstract concepts and the pronouns.

It’s interesting that the two stories are sandwiched in the middle. I was swept away by the emotions in the first story, and in the next two, I find myself thinking about how minute human life is in this vast galaxy, and perhaps, somewhere, there could really be higher beings out there. Perhaps all that we felt so keenly, all that we held in utmost importance, is probably nothing but a passing moment to them. But that doesn’t mean that what we feel are not real. And in the last story, I felt that the author is trying to tell us that even a past memory can be real to us in the present moment. I’m not sure if I’m “getting” the stories right, but that was my interpretation and takeaway.

Reading the stories feels like watching a breathtaking movie, one that I will go back to time and again. I’m so glad that the readers are given an extra gift at the back, in the form of notes from the author, translators and the original readers of the pair of stories (I’m Waiting For You and On My Way to You).

In the author’s notes, Kim writes about the initial inspirations for the stories. I was surprised to find out that I’m Waiting for You was commissioned by a fan who wanted a story he could use to propose to his girlfriend. I wouldn’t have imagined it be a proposal story (and how romantic is that!) but reading the notes made me look at the story in a new light and now I can see how perfect it is for the occasion. It is also lovely to see the couple’s notes on both stories and it adds another layer to my own interpretation.

The translators’ notes are my favourite part of the book! I love how the notes take the form of several exchanges of letters (mirroring the format of two of the stories!), where they discuss their translation approaches. It offers some much appreciated insight to what goes into the translation process and how it is like for them, to work on stories on isolation, longing and hope in the midst of a pandemic. The friendship is just so sweet. The correspondences draw several parallels between the stories and their lives and it is so nice to see them discuss their interpretations and how they breathe life into the translations. It definitely contributes to the whole experience of reading the book 🙂

Get it at Harper Voyager.

Review: Shoko’s Smile

Shoko’s Smile: Stories, a collection of seven long-ish short stories, is Korean writer’s Choi Eunyoung‘s English debut, deftly and beautifully translated by Sung Ryu. I’m only on my fourth story, but already, I’m dying to write about how much I love it.

Shoko’s Smile: Stories is one of those books that I want to share with everybody, but at the same time, part of me wants to keep it as a hidden gem. I see myself in all the four stories that I’ve read thus far, and it’s taking a lot of restraint on my part not to highlight almost the whole book. So many parts where I found myself nodding, and feeling the same emotions as the characters inside. I bought the e-book version, so I feel very liberated to do all the annotations and highlighting I want without thinking about sullying the book! 🙂

There’s something magical about Choi’s stories, brought to life in English by Sung Ryu. It felt like the book saw through me on so many levels, and there were many moments in the books where I thought I saw myself in the characters – a similar moment in my past, my thoughts, the deepest and, sometimes, darkest ones). While I read pretty fast in general, I’m taking my time with this book, partly because it takes me a couple of days to fully digest the stories, and my own memories/past that the story awakened. I had to unpack and digest that as well.

The language used (at least in the English version) is simple and plain – no flowery and convoluted metaphors, no dreadfully pretentious bombastic vocabulary, nothing too abstract. Yet, it gets me right in the heart (gut). I’ve come to the conclusion that both of them are probably keen observers of life, because I have no idea how else they can write (and translate) some of these moments/thoughts that I feel (and struggle to put in words) in such simple, plain and effective language. I’m in awe, really.

Each story forces me to confront a part of myself and I find that oddly comforting and liberating. It’s as if the book helped me put in words, or to realise, what I’ve been feeling (deep down).

I thought of writing a review for the entire book, but my thoughts on Shoko’s Smile (the first story) is fast becoming a convoluted mess of thoughts that I thought I’ll put it out here first. Yes, and to encourage you to get the book sooner than later 🙂

There will be some spoilers in the review below, so if you are looking for a non-spoiler version, please do not read beyond the line break.

Get it from Penguin Random House.

I found myself in the title story Shoko’s Smile and there were so much that I could relate to. To me, the story was centred on the raw and vulnerable sides of being human and the desperate desire to upkeep an appearance of normalcy despite it all. We try hard to mask ourselves, but yet fail to see that others are also doing the same and we continue to judge them for who they are on the surface.

Soyu’s vulnerability and her need to feel that odd sense of superiority over her friends and peers stood out to me. It’s not a great trait, but instead of despising her for it, I felt that I could empathise with her and I found it oddly comforting to have a character that felt so.. human. While we don’t like to admit it, I think this is true that instead of recognising our own vulnerabilities, we (sometimes) try to cover for it by revelling in a warped sense of superiority and feeling the need to feel justified and comforted that our choices are “better” than the others.

Another part that stood out for me was when at the start, the readers are told Shoko always said “someday”. It foreshadowed that Shoko would not be able to achieve any of those goals set out, but the readers are in for a surprise when it turned out that Shoko did achieve them in her own way and pace, even though the road was not smooth.

It seemed to me that the strangest of strangers were family.

Soyu, the narrator of the story, found herself bewildered by the positive ‘change in characters’ of her usually socially awkward, lethargic grandfather and mother at the arrival of Shoko, a visiting student from Japan who would be their homestay guest for two weeks. Her feelings of hurt and slight resentment mixed with jealousy felt so real to me, and it reminded me that it was also jarring to see my own family (and perhaps myself) behaving in a much nicer way to strangers and outsiders. It felt so frustrating to see that I’m the only one seeing the ugly side of things (and people) while everyone’s else would be saying “wow your family is so nice / you’re so lucky”. But now that I think of it, family is the only place where we can be unreserved in unleashing our rawest self, and that is something that is fortunate and unfortunate at the same time.

I found myself somewhere in the story, and oddly, I feel very comforted by it.

It’s definitely gonna be a story that I will return to every now and then.

Get it from Penguin Random House.

Review: Almond by Sohn Won-pyung

I bought the Korean novel 아몬드 weeks ago because I was intrigued by the title and the bold cover illustration of a boy with unfeeling eyes. I love its clean cover. I am glad the publisher kept the cover plain instead of including words like “Bestseller”, “No.1” etc, despite the book being already on its 90th print (first print in Mar 2017).

I ended up reading the English translation first, with the same title “Almond”, translated by Sandy Joosun Lee.

This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. 

One of the monsters is me.

Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that—but his devoted mother and grandmother provide him with a safe and content life. Their little home above his mother’s used bookstore is decorated with colorful Post-it notes that remind him when to smile, when to say “thank you,” and when to laugh.

Then on Christmas Eve—Yunjae’s sixteenth birthday—everything changes. A shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him alone and on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation, until troubled teenager Gon arrives at his school, and they develop a surprising bond. 

As Yunjae begins to open his life to new people—including a girl at school—something slowly changes inside him. And when Gon suddenly finds his life at risk, Yunjae will have the chance to step outside of every comfort zone he has created to perhaps become the hero he never thought he would be.

Synopsis: HarperCollins

The novel explores what it means to be different and how the different ways people perceive and approach differences make a hell lot of difference. I love how most, if not all, our characters manage to subvert our expectations. It is as though throughout the whole novel, the author is calling us out on stereotypical mindsets and attitudes.

I love that how the word “monster” takes on an affectionate and endearing tone. Granny called Yunjae a monster during their first meeting, “the most adorable little monster”. The meeting of Yunjae and Gon is called “a meeting between monsters”. The word “monster” becomes normalised in the story.

The making of monsters is also very much a product of how people are treated and we see how the warmth that people around Yunjae treated him had made the difference in his life. Gon, unfortunately, did not quite get the same from his father. While we see that his father missed him a lot over the years, he had already started on the wrong foot with Gon by asking Yunjae to pose as his long-lost son in front of his ailing wife. By denying Gon the only chance to meet his mother, he essentially had denied Gon’s identity as his son.

While Yunjae may not be able to understand / feel emotions, he perceives his world in his own way – his views are simple, logical and often incisive. Through the short, sharp prose, the readers get to understand him and sees the world from his eyes. I find that Korean sentences have a tendency to be long so I’m keen to find out if the stylistic choice is on the part of the translator or also the writer.  

I would have loved to see more scenes between Yunjae and Gon. The introduction of Dora turned the story into a more typical love story and for some reason, it didn’t quite appeal to me. It would have be interesting if the story went deeper into how Dora had affected the relationship between Yunjae and Gon but it was glossed over quite quickly.  

I love the unlikely friendship that blossomed between the two special boys. It is a good reminder that friendship is not about finding people similar to you, and often, we are all just waiting for someone to reach out to us, to accept our uniqueness and that will make all the difference.

Definitely a book that will remain on my mind for a while. Can’t wait to delve into the Korean original.

Review: Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories by Kim Young-ha

Captivating. Provoking. Mind-blowingly good.

I cannot heap higher praise on this collection of 4 short stories, which is right up my alley. I love a good psychological thriller (closer to the psychotic kind) and I always feel that Korean cinema does this genre really well – think Oldboy, I saw a Devil, The Neighbours, Hide and Seek. I’m pleased to say that three of the four stories gave me the same tingling sense of trepidation and kept me on the edge throughout.

Only three, as I didn’t quite get the last one. Bizarre is the word for it.

Diary of a Murderer is the strongest and most well-developed story of the four. A tale of an old serial killer diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease who struggles with his degenerating memory and the urgency to save his daughter from a man whom he believes is one of his kind. I found myself picturing the movie, k-film style, in my head and even as I had expected to find twists and turns in the story, the story managed to exceed my expectations. I’m super pleased to find out, belatedly, that the story had been adapted for the big screen. YASS. I hope it’s as good as the one I had in my head.

Experts only look like experts to me when they talk about things I know nothing about.

Diary of a Murderer

His comment on crime experts rings true for most so-called experts too.

The writing’s sharp and it was as if all the sentences were made concise as there was simply no room / memory to waste on unimportant words. It makes me curious about the original Korean novel. Korean sentences tend to run several lines and its grammar system allows many details to be stacked into one sentence. I wonder if this stylistic choice is also present in the original or only in the translated.

Most reviews of the book focuses on the title story, but I found myself enjoying The Origin of Life and The Missing Child a lot. In particular, The Missing Child paints a bleak (and arguably more realistic) picture of what it means to lose a child and find him/her years later. It’s a thought provoking story and I find myself thinking and having no answers to the following question. What happens if the thing that you wished for (for years) came true? Is it a happily ever after ending,? Can life just return to normal? And more unnervingly, are you really happy to get what you wished for?

The last story The Writer was bizarre and sorry, I just couldn’t get it. If someone can explain to me about what’s with the cob of corn, I may appreciate it a little more.

A page-turner that I would read again (maybe not that last story) and I’m already thinking of getting the Korean original.