A review by fonkun
To the Warm Horizon by Jin-Young Choi
4.0
TO THE WARM HORIZON is the first queer Korean novel to be translated into English.
TO THE WARM ON THE HORIZON is a subtle book that will have you navigating a sea of emotions as you turn the pages. The book was first published in Korean in 2017, long before the COVID-19 outbreak, but there’s just something about the way that Choi depicts the collapse of civilization in the aftermath of a pandemic that feels eerily familiar, yet hard to swallow. Coming out of the novel felt like emerging from a fever dream brought on by Choi’s simple, delicate, and elegant writing.
“Even in happy moments, I couldn’t scrub away the melancholy that coated me like a second skin or blow away the fog that separated me from the world.”
This is a character-driven book told from multiple POVs. We get to read about people’s ‘core’, their psyche, shown by their different reactions to a world ravaged by the pandemic. Personally, I grew attached to the characters, and that’s why it was horrible to read at times because of what they have to endure just to survive. This book may just have been the darkest book I’ve read so far, but there are slivers of hope offered, with the characters holding on to each other and their dreams.
The thing is the book is not just a pandemic novel - it’s also a queer love story.
Full review on Instagram @movedbyprose
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTEvhT9h7_Y/
TO THE WARM ON THE HORIZON is a subtle book that will have you navigating a sea of emotions as you turn the pages. The book was first published in Korean in 2017, long before the COVID-19 outbreak, but there’s just something about the way that Choi depicts the collapse of civilization in the aftermath of a pandemic that feels eerily familiar, yet hard to swallow. Coming out of the novel felt like emerging from a fever dream brought on by Choi’s simple, delicate, and elegant writing.
“Even in happy moments, I couldn’t scrub away the melancholy that coated me like a second skin or blow away the fog that separated me from the world.”
This is a character-driven book told from multiple POVs. We get to read about people’s ‘core’, their psyche, shown by their different reactions to a world ravaged by the pandemic. Personally, I grew attached to the characters, and that’s why it was horrible to read at times because of what they have to endure just to survive. This book may just have been the darkest book I’ve read so far, but there are slivers of hope offered, with the characters holding on to each other and their dreams.
The thing is the book is not just a pandemic novel - it’s also a queer love story.
Full review on Instagram @movedbyprose
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTEvhT9h7_Y/