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A review by brogan7
I'll Be Right There by Kyung-sook Shin
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.5
This book is hard to categorize. It is bleak in so many ways. The language itself is bleak (perhaps because in translation)--flat.
In spite of this, I did care about the characters and I wanted to follow the story, except that it keeps moving in such tight circles, (the chronology is endlessly mixed up)--instead of enchanting I found this narrative structure dizzying and eventually boring.
I think the author had a lot to say...that the Korea she is writing about is a broken Korea....and that means that its people are broken, too.
I couldn't tell sometimes if the story she is telling is wishful thinking...you know books have those moments in them where it's more fantasy than reality? And it felt like that, only perhaps because of certain cultural and literary conventions, the fantasies weren't familiar to me? (The descriptions of the landscape and snow-laden trees, thetragic/impossible/un- consummated love story, even the way she writes about the cat, as though it's a mannequin of a cat and not a real cat? The way you might write about a cat if you'd never had one, or write about a child if you'd only ever had a doll.)
I found these elements confusing and not all that pleasant, but I think that may be culture clash, and so I find them kind of interesting even if they didn't feel good.
And then there were details I loved so well, like the story of St Christopher, and this line right near the very end:
"Whenever I find myself in one of those moments where the past seems to be repeating itself in the present, I stop thinking of time as moving in a straight line." (p.307)
The narrative certainly doesn't move time forward in a straight line. The sad part is, it does move inexorably towards a kind of melancholy nostalgia in which the past is romanticized but never really was that great, and in which the present is full of grief and disappointment.
I've heard it's hard to like a book when you don't like the protagonist, but it's also hard to like a book when the setting is so emotionally ruinous.
In spite of this, I did care about the characters and I wanted to follow the story, except that it keeps moving in such tight circles, (the chronology is endlessly mixed up)--instead of enchanting I found this narrative structure dizzying and eventually boring.
I think the author had a lot to say...that the Korea she is writing about is a broken Korea....and that means that its people are broken, too.
I couldn't tell sometimes if the story she is telling is wishful thinking...you know books have those moments in them where it's more fantasy than reality? And it felt like that, only perhaps because of certain cultural and literary conventions, the fantasies weren't familiar to me? (The descriptions of the landscape and snow-laden trees, the
I found these elements confusing and not all that pleasant, but I think that may be culture clash, and so I find them kind of interesting even if they didn't feel good.
And then there were details I loved so well, like the story of St Christopher, and this line right near the very end:
"Whenever I find myself in one of those moments where the past seems to be repeating itself in the present, I stop thinking of time as moving in a straight line." (p.307)
The narrative certainly doesn't move time forward in a straight line. The sad part is, it does move inexorably towards a kind of melancholy nostalgia in which the past is romanticized but never really was that great, and in which the present is full of grief and disappointment.
I've heard it's hard to like a book when you don't like the protagonist, but it's also hard to like a book when the setting is so emotionally ruinous.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Suicide
Moderate: Eating disorder, Sexual assault, and Death of parent
Minor: Death of parent