A review by leahkrason
Pavane for a Dead Princess by Amber Hyun Jung Kim, Min-gyu Park

emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I can't say I loved this book. It follows three friends, and more specifically the romance between two of them-- an incredibly handsome man and the "ugliest girl to ever have existed". Right from the start, I'm feeling potential for lots of cliché. And that is exactly what we got. Heavy handed tangents about the woes of capitalism (always viewed as some sort of cultural phenomenon) and beauty standards and how women are just fundamentally different what with their gossiping. Many attempts to be meta, fourth wall breaks, crazy plot twists that fuck with your understanding of what actually happened, and constant footnotes, mostly about the billion cultural references. I think I get what this novel was trying to accomplish, and I definitely learned a bit about post-war Korea, but it just didn't work. Felt like an attempt on a cool Murakami group of outcasts, but they just fell flat to me. Just about everything this novel attempted fell flat for me. sorry!