Reviews with content warning for Death - I'll Be Right There

if the word 'wistful' was a book, it'd be this one. there's not much plot, and it took me some time to get into the story, but oh does it hurt to suddenly have it all end AND NEVER be able to experience this for the first time again.

a couple of songs by YOONA to listen to while reading this book: 'When The Wind Blows' & 'To You'

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linlinlin's review

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

finished this and decided to go off my ssris

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vilde_a's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Took me a while to get into it, but mainly because there’s some switching between who’s pov it’s told from, and that not being obvious. It’s beautifully written, although you always miss out on details when reading a translation. It may not be a page turner, but it felt very complete.

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sentientketchup's review

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dark 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? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book is filled with characters who are incredibly broken and flawed. We watch them through Jung Yoon (and Myungsuh's) eyes as they bond over their grief and lean against eachother to get through the turbulent times of 1980s in South Korea.

Though the pain this book caused me was not enough to make me cry, it did cause me to pause and reflect. I wonder how I would handle this kind of grief.

How could one go on after losing a parent, a childhood friend, a best friend, and a lover? Would I be as stunted and delusional as Jung Yoon? Would I lock myself up because I couldn't face the truth? Would I still love Dahn despite what he did? Yes, most probably.

Jung Yoon felt like a real person. I could feel her pain through the pages. Watching her wander through the world made her feel like she existed. There probably is a Jung Yoon out there in this world. And if they truly exist, I wonder where they stand now.

PS, Emily deserves the world

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ankitarmy's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense 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

4.5

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brogan7's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.5

This book is hard to categorize. It is bleak in so many ways. The language itself is bleak (perhaps because in translation)--flat.
In spite of this, I did care about the characters and I wanted to follow the story, except that it keeps moving in such tight circles, (the chronology is endlessly mixed up)--instead of enchanting I found this narrative structure dizzying and eventually boring.

I think the author had a lot to say...that the Korea she is writing about is a broken Korea....and that means that its people are broken, too.

I couldn't tell sometimes if the story she is telling is wishful thinking...you know books have those moments in them where it's more fantasy than reality? And it felt like that, only perhaps because of certain cultural and literary conventions, the fantasies weren't familiar to me? (The descriptions of the landscape and snow-laden trees, the

tragic/ impossible/unconsummated <\spoiler> love story, even the way she writes about the cat, as though it's a mannequin of a cat and not a real cat? The way you might write about a cat if you'd never had one, or write about a child if you'd only ever had a doll.)
I found these elements confusing and not all that pleasant, but I think that may be culture clash, and so I find them kind of interesting even if they didn't feel good.

And then there were details I loved so well, like the story of St Christopher, and this line right near the very end:
"Whenever I find myself in one of those moments where the past seems to be repeating itself in the present, I stop thinking of time as moving in a straight line." (p.307)

The narrative certainly doesn't move time forward in a straight line. The sad part is, it does move inexorably towards a kind of melancholy nostalgia in which the past is romanticized but never really was that great, and in which the present is full of grief and disappointment.

I've heard it's hard to like a book when you don't like the protagonist, but it's also hard to like a book when the setting is so emotionally ruinous.

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