Shanna & Languages

Of translation, books, languages and me

Book Recommendations | Reviews

Review: Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I picked up this novel simply because I was intrigued by the title. What’s going to happen after the coffee gets cold? What kind of tales can we expect? Somehow I’m always drawn to stories set in cafes and train stations – people come and go, but everyone has a story to tell. I hadn’t realised that this was actually the sequel novel to Before the Coffee Gets Cold, but even without reading the first novel, the sequel can be enjoyed very much on its own too.

A cafe that allows you to travel back / forward in time once, with a set of rules in place. Amongst them, there is a rule where you won’t be able to change anything in the past or future.

Why then, do people still want to travel back / forward in time, despite knowing that it’s a futile attempt? The novel teaches us a very valuable lesson, that even with the same outcome, there can be a very different way to which we approach the situation.

In face of loss, we are often overwhelmed by regret, anxiety, guilt and self-reproach that we forget how it is not what our loved ones would wish for us. We forgot that we are deserving of happiness and that it is what our loved ones would want us to be. The time travel may not have changed the events in time, but it definitely changed the lives of those who had made the attempt. My favourite quote in the story:

We can never truly see into the hearts of others. When people get lost in their own worries, they can be blind to the feelings of those most important to them.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Tales from the Cafe

The novel is of the most poignant reads of the year so far and I love that despite not having a dramatic plot or climax, it manages to tug at our heartstrings with its simple prose. Sometimes I tend to shy away from Japanese dramas as I find that they tend to always end off each episode with a morale of the story that’s spelt out in our faces, but I like that the writing here in the four stories are a lot more subtle. It gives the reader space to think about it and form our own thoughts on what’s there to be learnt from each story.

Despite not having read the Japanese original, I do love the style of the translation by Geoffrey Trousselot. It reads smoothly, but I still feel the vibe that I do when I read a Japanese novel. It’s hard to describe, but I felt that the translator did a good job in retaining the quaintness, subtlety of the original. I feel that this is the appeal of translated fiction. It has to read smoothly for sure, but yet I don’t want to get the feeling that I’m reading an “English story” set in Japan with Japanese names or the characters.

All in all, a poignant read that makes me think about life and death and what it means for those who live on.

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.

Review: The Law of Lines by Pyun Hye-young

The Law of Lines follows the parallel stories of two young women whose lives are upended by sudden loss. When Se-oh, a recluse still living with her father, returns from an errand to find their house in flames, wrecked by a gas explosion, she is forced back into the world she had tried to escape. The detective investigating the incident tells her that her father caused the explosion to kill himself because of overwhelming debt she knew nothing about, but Se-oh suspects foul play by an aggressive debt collector and sets out on her own investigation, seeking vengeance.

Ki-jeong, a beleaguered high school teacher, receives a phone call from the police saying that the body of her younger half-sister has just been found. Her sister was a college student she had grown distant from. Though her death, by drowning, is considered a suicide by the police, that doesn’t satisfy Ki-jeong, and she goes to her sister’s university to find out what happened. Her sister’s cell phone reveals a thicket of lies and links to a company that lures students into a virtual pyramid scheme, preying on them and their relationships. One of the contacts in the call log is Se-oh.

Like Hye-young Pyun’s Shirley Jackson Award–winning novel The Hole, The Law of Lines an immersive thriller that explores the edges of criminality in ordinary lives, the unseen forces that shape us, and grief and debt.

Source: Arcade Publishing

At the heart of the story, it’s about two women’s struggles to come to terms with the death of a family member. Se-oh found solace and the will to live through malice. She blamed his father’s death solely on the debt collector Su-ho, even though she knew it was irrational. Her obsession with stalking Su-ho and finding that moment to strike became her sole motivation to live on.

Malice gave Se-oh something to do. It swept away her grief and lifted her out of bed in the morning.

The Law of Lines

On the other hand, Ki-jeong was focused on finding out the truth behind her half-sister’s death. She went to extreme lengths in doing so, including hiring a PI and even trespassing Se-oh’s goshiwon room in her absence.

In the epilogue, readers are cued in to what mourning / grief is about. The first step to grief, and recovery, is to acknowledge our sadness, to cry and to admit that we miss them. Something that both Se-oh and Ki-jeong failed to do.

It’s a simple truth, but honestly, while I knew that there was something wrong in the way Se-oh and Ki-jeong approached deaths, I could not pinpoint what was amiss, especially in the case of Ki-jeong. Perhaps, flawed as I am, I did not know how to approach grief and in my own warped way, I might have caused hurt to myself and others in the process of mourning. I’ve read a couple of reviews that lamented the underwhelming turn in the narrative when Se-oh and Ki-jeong finally met, but I did not mind that the story seemed to fizzle out towards the end and that readers were left hanging as to why and how Ki-jeong’s sister had died. There’s more realism to a story with loose ends untied and that lingering regret is what made me think about the novel long after I’ve finished reading it.

What Pyun excelled in was really the nitty gritty details of the story and her vivid and realistic portrayal of the characters. There were several parts that spoke to me, and there were some scenes where I felt called out. I found myself highlighting numerous quotes here and there. One of my favourites:

In Ki-jeong’s view of things, life was a weed. If you didn’t tend to it, it would grow out of control and spread and shove its branches into everything. If you did tend to it, it would be restrained and trimmed and plucked, and if you did really well, it could even have a shape to it.

The Law of Lines

I felt called out for this one. One thing led to another. That is how I would describe my life and upon reflection, I am leaving life to its own devices. Deep down, I know that it was probably I never quite recover from the hurt of not being able to control life’s direction when I tried to, and now I stopped doing so.

随遇而安. To let things be, to take things as they are. Admirable as that could be, it also means that I’m leaving life to its own devices, without quite caring where it brings me.

Within the greater narrative of death and grief, a pyramid scheme bound several characters together and created much of the conflict. The readers were not privy to the specifics of the scheme, but rather, the focus was on the impact of the scheme on its members This is not the first time I read about a pyramid scheme in a novel, but it is probably the first one which wrote about a victim-turned-member. Truth be told, l’ve never quite considered the perspective of someone who had joined the scheme unwittingly and ended up selling it to others while being fully aware of the lies told in the process. I always thought that the ones who stayed believe in their own spiel. It was all the more unnerving when the team leader told Se-ho that she had tried to run away herself and was now spying on others to make sure they don’t do the same.

Mi-yeon’s meeting with Se-oh (to bring her onboard the scheme) reminded me strongly of the number of times that friends asked to meet to “catch up”, while ending up trying to sell me something or to rope me into some form of scheme. That overly enthusiastic smile, fake friendliness, ramblings on how they were making good money, how there was an excellent opportunity too good to miss… and you know what’s the worst thing? – when they used my aspirations / dreams that I had shared with them and turn them against me. To insinuate that I wasn’t working hard enough to achieve my dreams if I pass on this opportunity to fund my goals.

Having a good friend did that to me made me resented the person so much. I basically fled and cut off all contact with said person for a while.

She’d also known that the time she spent in the pyramid would be lopped off, severed from the rest of her life as if those months had never happened. But instead of being discarded and forgotten, they would weigh over her forever.

The Law of Lines

Was this how my friend felt too?

I wondered if my friend had believed wholeheartedly in the spiel, or if he/she was knowingly roping me into something that he/she wanted to exit from (the person did exit after a while).

I wonder.