Reviews

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

anpu325's review

5.0

There are books that you happen to read at the perfect moment in your life. Those magical instances make you feel like as you read, another person is reading what is written in your heart right back to you. Reading this book gave me a puzzle box for all the scattered pieces of my broken heart. I still have a lot of putting back together to do, but after reading this book I feel like I have the picture on the box to guide me and a container to keep the pieces in so that they don't rattle around my life. This is all to say, this book as a mediation on what love means was what I needed to read at this moment in my life. This book made me laugh out loud and actually break down sobbing. I loved it and the characters and I can't recommend it enough.

ellamai's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

celsius273's review

2.0

I do not have the patience to appreciate this. It’s very… literary but trying to be hip

procrasti_reader's review against another edition

3.0

3.5?? Some very good parts nestled in rather trite insights and prose. Clever overarching structure though. Need to process the experience

paulataua's review against another edition

3.0

You have to root for any novel that addresses modern society’s obsession with beauty , wealth, and status, but this tale of a handsome young man’s relationship with a much less than beautiful woman just doesn’t quite hit the target. There are three strands in the novel. The first, dealing with the relationship, is the most successful, especially in the first wonderful chapter. This strand suffers a little later from the problem the author seems to have between objective and subjective ‘beauty’ or more relevantly ‘ugliness’, so it never sustains the sincerity felt in that first chapter. The second strand deals with the wealth and status aspect, a strand which is a little too much exposed by in your face examples of people screaming because they can’t park where they want or having outbursts over rules being applied to them. The third strand is found in the man’s friend, who adds both the humor and many of the inspirational thoughts. Unfortunately, the inspirational thoughts in the book are most often less than inspirational .

"What defines a successful life? A successful life is one in which more time is spent loving someone than is spent sitting on the toilet".

Despite the above comments, the novel is readable and has its moments, and on one level is a welcome critique of modern Korean society, and of course, of our own. I just kept thinking it could have been so much better. I wonder if any other reviewers got the feeling that there is a Murakami influence somewhere in both the style and structure. Let me know.

dreamy_lia's review

reflective sad medium-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

jrl6809's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

I started out really enjoying this story. I liked the quiet atmosphere and appreciated the contemplation of beauty standards and misogyny in Korean society. The book quickly devolved, however, into an overly simplistic and immature meditation on the topic. I did not love  the implication by the author that basically the only reason the main female character has a personality is because she is ugly and therefore had no choice but to develop one. And that pretty girls are all boring, vapid, and incapable of holding a conversation about anything other than their own beauty. I thought maybe the author would subvert this towards the end with the arrival of the beautiful character "dumplings"  and was deeply disappointed that he did not take that opportunity. I did appreciate some of the commentary on class, education, and general "outsider-ness", but didn't like the stylistic choice to offer up most of this commentary in the form of highly forced monlogues during conversations between characters. None of it rang true to how young people speak to each other. I do KIND OF get it in the context of the final twist, but I dont know if that's enough to fully justify it for me. Park Min-Gyu also uses excessive, repetitive metaphors and similes in this book which often didn't really make sense (maybe that was because of the translation?) and ultimately became quite tedious and annoying to read. 

There were things I enjoyed about this book, though. I was interested in the characters and the storyline. I thought that the love story itself was well done (if a little melodramatic, I'll forgive that since the characters were so young) and packed a genuine emotional punch. The meta-elements and the ending revelation added an extra layer to this that was sad and interesting-although it's been done before and while reading I immediately thought of one particular very well-known book/movie with a very similar twist. Overall, this book isn't doing anything particularly new or nuanced but there were enough interesting moments and passages to keep me going. 

leahkrason's review

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!

naked_lunch's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.5

girlabyss's review

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.5