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A review by ccmontgom
Pavane for a Dead Princess by Min-gyu Park, Amber Hyun Jung Kim
5.0
Nobody, in a slow and deliberate love story, can as savagely attack the narrowness and superficial nature of society as fashioned by capitalism as Park Min-gyu. If [b:Is That So? I'm a Giraffe|23437331|Is That So? I'm a Giraffe (Modern Korean Literature 034)|Min-gyu Park|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1414025041s/23437331.jpg|43002102] laid bare the era in which people were merely input - cogs in a machine and treated that way - Pavane does an even more flaying job on the skin-deep nature of of a world in which money has been aestheticized and aesthetics, in the traditional sense, are judge only by monetary worth.
Pavane is about a triad of friends: Yohan the man who can make seemingly anything into a metaphor or argument against the superficiality of the world; The handsome young man, the son of an actor who left the family for success; and "the ugliest woman in the world."
The latter two fall in love, and the rest of the book is combination of their biographies after a horrible circumstance separates them, memories of the times the three friends spent together, and conversations that go to places you would never expect (e.g. how rectum folds would become incredibly important in a world in which everyone was attractive).
As usual in Park's work, while all is gloom in the world as it exists, better possibilities are out there, and Park, in a kind of "director's cut(s)" of an ending shows how this might work.
Park's style is deft, hard-hitting, and brief, all of which makes reading Pavane quite easy despite its oftentimes grim subject matter.
[b:Pavane for a Dead Princess|22344205|Pavane for a Dead Princess|Min-gyu Park|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1402054117s/22344205.jpg|41743010] is in direct competition with [b:No One Writes Back|17591572|No One Writes Back|Jang Eun-Jin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1379899813s/17591572.jpg|24532485] for the best book of the Dalkey Archive / LTI Korea series, and it makes me extremely eager to see what excellent books await us next year.
Pavane is about a triad of friends: Yohan the man who can make seemingly anything into a metaphor or argument against the superficiality of the world; The handsome young man, the son of an actor who left the family for success; and "the ugliest woman in the world."
The latter two fall in love, and the rest of the book is combination of their biographies after a horrible circumstance separates them, memories of the times the three friends spent together, and conversations that go to places you would never expect (e.g. how rectum folds would become incredibly important in a world in which everyone was attractive).
As usual in Park's work, while all is gloom in the world as it exists, better possibilities are out there, and Park, in a kind of "director's cut(s)" of an ending shows how this might work.
Park's style is deft, hard-hitting, and brief, all of which makes reading Pavane quite easy despite its oftentimes grim subject matter.
[b:Pavane for a Dead Princess|22344205|Pavane for a Dead Princess|Min-gyu Park|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1402054117s/22344205.jpg|41743010] is in direct competition with [b:No One Writes Back|17591572|No One Writes Back|Jang Eun-Jin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1379899813s/17591572.jpg|24532485] for the best book of the Dalkey Archive / LTI Korea series, and it makes me extremely eager to see what excellent books await us next year.