'I'll Be Right There' by Kyung-Sook Shin

There aren't many rules around Tony's Reading List, but one informal guideline that has developed over the years is that it's always fair to give a writer a second chance, even if I didn't think much of the first try.  It's not always easy, though, especially when you're so disappointed first time around - which is why today's post should be taken as evidence to support the rule, even when the first book was a real stinker ;)

*****
Shin Kyung-sook's I'll Be Right There (translated by Sora Kim-Russell, review copy courtesy of Other Press) is an excellent novel set in and around Seoul in the 1980s.  It all begins when a middle-aged lecturer, Jung Yoon, receives a call from a former boyfriend, in which she finds out that her favourite teacher from her university days is close to death.  As she gazes out of the window, with snow starting to fall slowly on the city, her mind drifts inevitably to her time as a student.

We follow Yoon back to the start of her student days, where she encounters several people who are to have a dramatic impact on her life.  The first is Professor Yoon, a slightly eccentric English Literature lecturer who appears out of place in the turbulent political environment of the Eighties, a man who kindles his students' love of poetry.  The second is Myungsuh, a boy who spends half of his time at the university and the other half demonstrating on the streets of the capital, and through him Yoon gets to know Miru, a young woman scarred by events of the past.  Together, they have to make their way through both young adulthood and a critical time in Korean history...

Let's get this out of the way now - I loathed Please Look After Mother.  However, I'll Be Right There is a far, far better book.  It's a story which as well as portraying those pivotal, magical years bridging childhood and adulthood, touches on a fascinating period of Korean history, where students demonstrated on the streets, in a way unimaginable now for us in the West, in an attempt to change the hardline right-wing government.

Initially, it seems as if the wider political protests, as the writer suggests in her comments on the book, will stay in the background, but when Yoon walks home from class one day, she suddenly finds herself caught up in the troubles:

"Just then a tear gas canister exploded overhead, and a huge crowd of protesters surged into the underpass to try to avoid it.  I was shoved forward with them..."
p.77 (Other Press, 2014)

What, up to this point, has been an abstract, theoretical political issue, suddenly becomes frighteningly real.  Shin switches the tempo superbly, from a casual, steady walk through a quiet city to a heart-stopping, full-speed flight for survival.  From this point on, even when the political side stays in the background, we know that it's there, waiting to play a role in events again.

On the whole, though, I'll Be Right There focuses on the micro, rather than the macro, and much of the story is centred on the small group of young adults, each of whom has their own issues to work through.  Perhaps the most fascinating figure is Miru, shy to the point of abstraction, a woman who writes down what she eats in a journal, always wears the same skirt whatever the weather - and has unsightly scars on her hands.  Despite her shyness, she builds up a close friendship with Yoon, one which helps both of them in their attempts to leave the past behind.

Strangely enough, though, this friendship threatens the blossoming relationship between Yoon and Myungsuh, as the ghosts of the past prove trickier to ignore than they had all hoped.  The structure of the novel, with Yoon's narrative chapters being followed by short extracts from Myungsuh's journal, allows the reader to see the way the two can act at cross-purposes, never quite getting to where they would like to be.  For every step they take towards each other, there always seem to be a few steps back, either because of the troubles or because of Miru.

One of the central themes of the novel is this lack of communication, or a surplus of miscommunication, which Myungsuh is quick to blame on society:

"A society that is violent or corrupt prohibits mutual communication.  A society that fears communication is unable to solve any problem.  It looks for someone to shift the responsibility to and turns even more violent." (p.158)

Sadly, each of the characters (including Dahn, Yoon's childhood friend, a man who struggles to communicate his true feelings to her) seems trapped inside their own thoughts and emotions, unable to reach out and help others - or get help themselves.  This is symbolised by the constant phone calls in the middle of night, which either go unanswered or have no one on the other end...

I'll Be Right There is an excellent read, and it has the potential to do very well for Shin in the Anglosphere.  Sora Kim-Russell's translation was excellent, balancing on the tricky tightrope between literality and over-westernising without toppling to one side, and Charles Montgomery (over at Korean Literature in Translation) does a great job of highlighting this in his review.  It's a book which you need to keep reading, and want to get back to after you've stopped; more importantly, it's also a book which stays with you long after you've finished.

Whether this will be a welcome comparison or not, I'm not really sure, but for a J-Lit fan like myself, there are obvious parallels with another big hit in translated fiction, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood.  This begins with the first scene, where a middle-aged protagonist is whisked back to memories of their glory days, but there are far more similarities than that.  The setting of a time of student unrest, the gloomy undertones of a depressed generation, the hours of walking through the big city - all are reminiscent of Murakami's hit.

However, I'll Be Right There is a lot more than just a copy of Norwegian Wood.  Where Murakami leaves the political side in the background, having Toru avoid the university while it's going on, Shin confronts it head on, pushing her characters onto the battlefield, refusing to allow them to hide away in safety.  While Yoon, Myungsuh, Miru and Dahn also seek refuge in the arts, unlike Toru their escape isn't Jazz, but literature, and mentions abound of Emily Dickinson, Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge and even Natsume Soseki.  Yes, there are echoes of Murakami's Bildungsroman here, but this is most definitely Shin's own story - and it's a very good one.

It would be nice to think that this might be another big success, both for Shin and the wider translated fiction community - it certainly has the makings of a popular novel.  While some (like me) might be more intrigued by the historical and social aspects, most will be pulled in by the human element, and the troubles of youth:

"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.  There are no exceptions for anyone - not for me, not for the man who had called me, and not for Professor Yoon.  Just one chance.  That's all." (p.13)

Sadly for the characters of the novel, this idea of carpe diem more often than not gives way to fatalism.  It's no coincidence that some of the most common words in the novel are 'some day'...

I really enjoyed I'll Be Right There, and I'm confident that most people will too; it's definitely one to put on your list for future reference.  And as for Please Look After Mother...

...well, let's just pretend that it never happened ;)

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number One

It's #translationthurs on Twitter again, and what better way to celebrate than by kicking off a series of IFFP 2012 posts?  None, that's what ;)  And, to make things even better, I have been asked to be a late addition to the Shadow IFFP Panel - I feel extremely honoured :)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am planning to make my way through nine or ten selections from the longlist for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize before the shortlist is announced, so I thought I might get the ball rolling by rounding up the opinions of the ones I've already read and commented on.  No full reviews here - I've already examined the books in more (and, in one case, exhaustive!) detail elsewhere.  For full reviews, please click on the hyper-link on the book titles.  Shall we?

*****

1Q84 (Books One and Two) by Haruki Murakami (translated by Jay Rubin)

What's it all about?

Haruki Murakami is one of the heavy hitters on the longlist, and his book, 1Q84, is not exactly light either.  A story of a man and a woman, whose love must overcome such obstacles as parallel worlds, sinister cults and weird little people, Murakami's novel brings together ideas from all of his life's work and attempts to blend them into one cohesive story.

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?

Possibly not.  I have a much more positive view of the book than many out there, but I still don't think Murakami quite nailed the landing with this one.  There are too many unresolved issues and passages of tedium to make this a success.  I would also say that not having Book Three here actually hurts its chances as I thought it was the best of the three - although not everyone agrees...

Will it make the shortlist?

Again, no.  The reviews of 1Q84 have been fairly negative, and I would be very surprised if it were to make it any further in what is a very competitive contest.  The fact that it wasn't included in the seven-book longlist for the Man Asian Literature Prize is another indicator that it isn't going down well with the people who make these decisions.

*****
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (translated by Anthea Bell)

What's it all about?

An ageing academic wakes up one morning to find his beloved wife slouched over scattered pieces of paper - dead.  As he attempts to come to terms with the shock, and before grief has even had the chance to set in, he notices the writing she was doing before she died - and starts reading.  The pages he sees contain a very different view of his relationship with his wife, one which destroys the image he has been carrying around in his mind for decades...

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?

Absolutely.  This was one of my favourite books of last year, and it is yet another of Peirene Press' little gems.  It's a cleverly-constructed cat-and-mouse game, carefully deconstructing the protagonist's life and laying bare the true state of his relationship with his darling wife.  One cautionary note though - I did read the original German, not the translation :)

Will it make the shortlist?

Possibly not.  There are a few big names on the longlist, and the cynic in me thinks that familiarity breeds shortlisting.  Politycki is not well known in English-speaking circles, so that may count against him.  Having said that, of course, translator Anthea Bell is extremely well known and respected - hopefully that will be a positive point!

*****

Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin (translated by Chi-young Kim)

What's it all about?

An elderly country woman goes missing on a trip to the Korean capital of Seoul.  As her family members frantically try to find her, a few of them relate their memories of her, only realising now how much she meant to them.

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?

Nonononononono.  No.  This book is definitely one which polarises opinions, and I'm on the side which believes that it is a pile of melodramatic rubbish.  Badly written, badly translated, sentimental clap-trap which may well turn out to be my least favourite book of the year.

Will it make the shortlist?

Probably - life's cruel like that.  There are a lot of people who liked this book, so there's a fair chance that some of them will be among the judges.  Now if there's a judge there who shares my view, that will make for a very interesting discussion indeed ;)

*****
Three down, many to go - watch this space...

How I Lost Your Mother

I am a fairly placid sort of blogger, one unwilling to lay into novels in the way some reviewers do, but there are some books which, for some reason or other, just annoy me.  Let's leave it there for a while...

Kyung-Sook Shin's Please Look After Mother (translated by Chi-Young Kim) is a Korean million-selling novel, due to be published in twenty-three countries and short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize.  It's a story in five parts, told from the points of view of the titular mother's family members after her disappearance on a visit to Seoul to see her family.  She becomes separated from her husband at the city's main train station and, despite the family's best efforts, cannot be found.

However, the novel is less about the search for the mother than a reevaluation of her life, seen through the eyes of the people who have taken her for granted for so long.  As they begin to share stories, they realise that the picture they had of her is deeply flawed, and each of them realises just how much she meant to them - if only too late.  It's also an allegory for the situation of the nation as a whole, one which may have sacrificed its past in order to ensure a prosperous future.

Before you start thinking that this is a wonderfully heart-warming story though, one you might want to look for on your local library database, let me give you a piece of advice - don't bother.  Please Look After Mother is a piece of trashy kitsch, a giant guilt-trip of a book which has probably sold its million copies simply by virtue of making middle-class Koreans uncomfortable about not having called Mum much recently.  I am amazed that it made it onto the Man Asian short-list (ahead of Murakami's 1Q84!), and I am crossing my fingers that the panel aren't short-sighted enough to actually give it the prize.

So what's wrong with it?  To be honest, there isn't much right with it, but I'll list a few of my concerns.  The way the book is structured, using first-, second- and third-person viewpoints, is gimmicky and pointless - the idea adds nothing to the story being told.  The actual story itself is repetitive: once you get past the first section, it's the same old story of whining, sibling squabbles and hand-wringing.  The characters are wooden and unlikeable, especially the men (which could be a cultural thing or merely bad writing), and shout at each other at the drop of a hat.  I think you've got the idea by now that I'm not a huge fan.

What was probably a very average novel in the original though has undoubtedly been made worse by a sub-par translation.  Please Look After Mother reads like a clichéd translated novel, clumsy, with unnatural sentence structure and over-formal language (meant to reflect the original Korean, no doubt, but out of place in a translation).  There were also several errors with pronouns, forcing me to go back and find out who exactly was supposed to be talking to whom, and an obsession with repeated relative clauses, which just looked strange in English.

It's sad because the idea behind the novel is a good one.  The premise of an old woman's disappearance serving as a reflection on the price paid for the rapid societal progress South Korea has made over the past few decades is a very interesting one.  We get to see how Seoul has developed in the space of a generation, and the way in which the population has shifted from a rural to a mainly urban one in a matter of decades.  However, Shin's treatment of these issues is superficial and fleeting, as is her attempt to portray the effect of the mother's disappearance on her family.  Sadly, I really didn't care about any of them.

As I am nothing but fair though, I'll finish by pointing you in the direction of a few more reviews.  The team behind the Shadow Man Asian Prize have nearly all reviewed this book, so why not have a look at what they had to say?  I'm sure it'll be more entertaining than the book itself...