A review by misspalah
I'll Be Right There by Kyung-sook Shin

5.0

We each get one life that is our own. We each in our own way struggle to get ahead, love, grieve, and lose our loved ones to death.
- Kyung-sook Shin, I'll Be Right There
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Whenever i picked up a korean novel, its always about a big ball of sadness and pain that protagonist have to go through. The angst and the loneliness just overflowed that i felt i need to take a breath before i could continue reading this. This book is about Jung Yoon and how she befriended with Miru and Myungsuh when she got back to university after taking a break due to her mother’s death. She also reconnected back to Dahn , her childhood friend. She’s not sure whether she loves Dahn the way Dahn love her but she just follow the flow although it is frustrating seeing Dahn did not know how to comprehend rejection and sometimes overstepped his boundary. Professor Yoon comes into a picture when Jung Yoon volunteered to become his typist and find that the given tasks did help her in the study. When Jung Yoon finally letting down her wall and got close to Miru, only then she knew why Miru has that scar on her hand. Through Miru, she saw the memory of Mirae (whom Miru often mentioned whenever she missed her). Overall, this is not a happy novel. It ask you to confront your loneliness and your fear of relationship. Does telling people close to you your own secret is a wise decision or bottled
it up and put a mask so that people didnt know is better? How does one grieve over time? Do we simply get over it or we just put it aside knowing its there but we never dwell on it? How do we mend broken friendship realizing while
it may get fixed but nothing stays the same? So many questions were being raised but the way you answer it depends on which characters you felt connected with. Hence i would only recommend it if you are in the right space of your mind.
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Reading this book make me appreciate more some of the classic literature that mentioned in it. I dont read classic much but Naming a beloved cat Emily Dickinson after the favorite author and poet is utterly adorable. Interesting discourse by Jung Yoon about love and hate based on her observation of Dahn arachnophobia is something that i cannot forget. I am also scared of Spider and would literally pissed my pants off if i ever saw a huge spider on the wall. At the same time, i know major type of spiders and why i crossed Australia from my country to be visited list. Thats right because they have a hunstman spider and i dont think i can travel freely knowing that i was in the same land of those creatures. Thus when Jung Yoon make a comparison on how Dahn know so much about Spiders even though he scared of it, i truly feel called out