Reviews

Tower by Bae Myung-hoon

guitarpotato's review

3.0

Bae’s collection of intertwined short stories paint a caricature of capitalist society. Life in the Beanstalk (the name of the tower) is full of political movements, turmoil, corruption and dogs who own apartments. I especially enjoyed the first short story which dealt with analyzing the flow of gratitude. The story about the Elephant who nearly became a Buddha was also fascinating. However, I did find that the last short story had an unnecessarily islamophobic undertone.

Why did Cosmomafia have to be connected to Islamic loans?

 

Overall, Bae took absurd and satirical scenarios and turned them into criticism of advanced society. A neat read and I’m curious enough to read more of Bae’s works. 

caesura_19's review

adventurous funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

nvrrrdie's review

dark lighthearted reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

The author develops an interesting world to analyze certain social and political concepts. Creative, but not really anything I will think much more about after having finished reading.

yousless's review

medium-paced

3.5

Intriguing idea having short stories in a shared world. But it doesn’t really go very far and is generally quite shallow

youshouldreadthisif's review

funny lighthearted slow-paced

4.5

arkinpoof's review

funny reflective medium-paced

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

3.5

ovspianist's review

2.0

The best part of this book is the cover.

There are one or two stories I quite liked from the collection but the others are just waste of time. Again I feel like this is one of the cases where an author found a super intriguing central idea but wasted every drop of potential in it.

qwertyqwerty's review

funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.75

Quirky read. It was fun to piece together information about the tower and the living conditions. As every chapter is so different, some are more interesting than others.

evecaroline98's review

informative mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

sydneymckinstry's review

adventurous funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I loved this book. It was a recommendation on StoryGraph and took a while to track down a physical copy and I’m so glad I did. I loved that it explored the characters’ lives in exciting and mundane ways. I loved how much thought and time was spent on talking about the logistics of Beanstalk - it was all things I thought about while reading and it was fascinating and realistic and covered what I would’ve asked about. Just a great collection of stories.