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A review by vcods
A Most Ambiguous Sunday and Other Stories by Jung Young Moon
3.0
With the back cover promoting Jung as Korea's Samuel Beckett, I set out to read this book with as much enjoyment as I get from Beckett's plays. However, it took me several month to finish this book because reading it felt like pulling teeth to me.
More than being difficult to read, the introspective, self-reflective nature of the short stories kept pushing me into my own introspective thoughts and make me read while not absorbing anything. It is a strange quality in a book rather than to pull the reader in, to push them so deep in themselves they can't remember what they've just read on the page.
Out of the short stories, I can't really recommend a favorite. I kept confusing plots and characters because none of them had names and often spoke/thought in the same tone of voice. Sometimes I was convinced that some of the characters were the same from one story to another, but there were no clues confirming or denying this assumption.
I would not recommend this book as an introduction to Korean literature because it has only vestiges of 'Koreaness' in the stories. It is much more about the mental state of the Author and his characters than trying to convey Korean culture. Be that as it may, it is an interesting book, but just not well suited to me. I think if I wasn't so determined to finish it, I would have given up in the middle of a couple of the stories and skip on to the next one.
More than being difficult to read, the introspective, self-reflective nature of the short stories kept pushing me into my own introspective thoughts and make me read while not absorbing anything. It is a strange quality in a book rather than to pull the reader in, to push them so deep in themselves they can't remember what they've just read on the page.
Out of the short stories, I can't really recommend a favorite. I kept confusing plots and characters because none of them had names and often spoke/thought in the same tone of voice. Sometimes I was convinced that some of the characters were the same from one story to another, but there were no clues confirming or denying this assumption.
I would not recommend this book as an introduction to Korean literature because it has only vestiges of 'Koreaness' in the stories. It is much more about the mental state of the Author and his characters than trying to convey Korean culture. Be that as it may, it is an interesting book, but just not well suited to me. I think if I wasn't so determined to finish it, I would have given up in the middle of a couple of the stories and skip on to the next one.