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A review by tyto_alba
City of Ash and Red by Pyun Hye-young
4.0
Believe it or not, this book was basically everything I hoped it would be. There is no real storyline here; like the author's other book, The Hole, the story mostly involves the introspection of a man who slowly realizes he is not as good of a person as he thinks he is (though most of this realization belongs to the reader, not necessarily the character, who brushes upon it but never truly accepts it). Unlike The Hole, more is actually happening to the man as the story progresses.
The atmosphere here is extremely gritty and dirty, but still dreamlike. The man is somewhat distant from everything that happens to him, never quite accepting himself as "real." There's always some previous time in his life that he is thinking about, to the point that he had not been living his life even in these memories. He kept trying to force things into his daily life that existed only in his mind, like his wife's supposed infidelity or the justifications of his own horrible behavior. During the scenes occuring in the "present," he lives almost exclusively in the past, mostly as a coping mechanism to avoid both the misery of his current conditions and the realization that he alone is responsible for what is happening to him.
His identity is so heavily tied into the company, that he remains unnamed for the entire book, his name only appearing "off screen" when used by people who are associated with the company. Only they are allowed to know and use his name, because his identity lies only with them, and without them to affirm he is a person, he simply is not. The crush of the "capitalistic grind" reaffirms how important his job is to his identity, because in the setting of the epidemic, people are still chugging away at work, becoming severely overworked as people become sick. However, this loss of identity is not only catalyzed by the "misunderstanding" that leads him to live on the streets, but the fact that he was transferred to a new country, whose language he is unfamiliar with and where all of the landmarks and people are unfamiliar and unfriendly. He can no longer see himself or his past in his surroundings, which leads him to reach obsessively towards them in his attempts to contact his manager and eventually trying to prove, maybe to himself, that he even worked at the company.
A very interesting aspect of this book--besides how terrifyingly accurate it was in its depiction of daily life amid an epidemic--is the theme of rats. Rats are a constant presence in this book, both physically and metaphorically. Then man lives in fear of them, yet makes his living in exterminating them. He often compares human beings to rats, being unkillable and refusing to die off entirely. Thoughts of rats are juxtaposed over people he hates, like his coworkers. Then, there's his brutal slaying of rats, despite how much he hates killing them and how much he fears them. He is compelled to do it to prove to himself that he's better than the rats, though throughout the entire book he is essentially becoming a rat. Then, there is his violence towards women, which--without spoilers--can be overlaid with his view of himself as a rat that makes him need to hurt others to be "better" than them. The rats tie into his lack of identity because they are not people, just creatures living for survival only and, according to the man, strongly bound to repeating old habits and keeping to familiar paths. The man himself must fight, in a physical sense, against the rats to convince himself that he isn't one of them, when he believes that all the signs point to him being nothing more than a rat.
At the same time, the rats are a strong part of his identity. In the idea of rats, he sees the bad inside himself--his abhorrent behavior, the fact everyone seems to hate him, the violence towards them and his fellow humans he is capable of that surprises even him--he sees his company logo with a red line through a picture of "an evil looking rat," and he sees his present conditions where rats are a constant. Throughout most of the book, he denies this part of him, that he's abhorrent, that he is a slave to his habits, that he's useless, etc., while also denying other unsavory things about himself, like the possiblity he murdered his wife, that he was to blame for the dissolution of his marriage, that he is infected with the virus. If he could possibly reestablish his previous identity that he had with the company, than he could prove to himself that he isn't the rat he suspects and fears he is.
The ending of this book is abrupt and provides no answers--at least, no answers for the man. It's easy to fall into thinking that there are no answers at all, since we are in the man's point of view, but as a reader, really, what questions still need to be answered? By the time the last page is finished, we know everything that the man doesn't want to know, all our questions are answered. The man is still "up in the air," but the important things are wrapped up. There is no sense of closure, of course, but it so beautifully emulates the emotions of the man, feeling like dust on the wind. The things that are left unknown to the reader are not important, and they are rather easy to surmise, given the context of the epidemic and the odd political circumstances of Country C.
So, if I were to boil this book down into a single sentence, it would be: awful man metaphorically becomes a rat. If that interests you, I would highly recommend it. If you need books with either 1. Plots or 2. Likeable characters (or both), then I doubt you would find this book enjoyable.
The atmosphere here is extremely gritty and dirty, but still dreamlike. The man is somewhat distant from everything that happens to him, never quite accepting himself as "real." There's always some previous time in his life that he is thinking about, to the point that he had not been living his life even in these memories. He kept trying to force things into his daily life that existed only in his mind, like his wife's supposed infidelity or the justifications of his own horrible behavior. During the scenes occuring in the "present," he lives almost exclusively in the past, mostly as a coping mechanism to avoid both the misery of his current conditions and the realization that he alone is responsible for what is happening to him.
His identity is so heavily tied into the company, that he remains unnamed for the entire book, his name only appearing "off screen" when used by people who are associated with the company. Only they are allowed to know and use his name, because his identity lies only with them, and without them to affirm he is a person, he simply is not. The crush of the "capitalistic grind" reaffirms how important his job is to his identity, because in the setting of the epidemic, people are still chugging away at work, becoming severely overworked as people become sick. However, this loss of identity is not only catalyzed by the "misunderstanding" that leads him to live on the streets, but the fact that he was transferred to a new country, whose language he is unfamiliar with and where all of the landmarks and people are unfamiliar and unfriendly. He can no longer see himself or his past in his surroundings, which leads him to reach obsessively towards them in his attempts to contact his manager and eventually trying to prove, maybe to himself, that he even worked at the company.
A very interesting aspect of this book--besides how terrifyingly accurate it was in its depiction of daily life amid an epidemic--is the theme of rats. Rats are a constant presence in this book, both physically and metaphorically. Then man lives in fear of them, yet makes his living in exterminating them. He often compares human beings to rats, being unkillable and refusing to die off entirely. Thoughts of rats are juxtaposed over people he hates, like his coworkers. Then, there's his brutal slaying of rats, despite how much he hates killing them and how much he fears them. He is compelled to do it to prove to himself that he's better than the rats, though throughout the entire book he is essentially becoming a rat. Then, there is his violence towards women, which--without spoilers--can be overlaid with his view of himself as a rat that makes him need to hurt others to be "better" than them. The rats tie into his lack of identity because they are not people, just creatures living for survival only and, according to the man, strongly bound to repeating old habits and keeping to familiar paths. The man himself must fight, in a physical sense, against the rats to convince himself that he isn't one of them, when he believes that all the signs point to him being nothing more than a rat.
At the same time, the rats are a strong part of his identity. In the idea of rats, he sees the bad inside himself--his abhorrent behavior, the fact everyone seems to hate him, the violence towards them and his fellow humans he is capable of that surprises even him--he sees his company logo with a red line through a picture of "an evil looking rat," and he sees his present conditions where rats are a constant. Throughout most of the book, he denies this part of him, that he's abhorrent, that he is a slave to his habits, that he's useless, etc., while also denying other unsavory things about himself, like the possiblity he murdered his wife, that he was to blame for the dissolution of his marriage, that he is infected with the virus. If he could possibly reestablish his previous identity that he had with the company, than he could prove to himself that he isn't the rat he suspects and fears he is.
The ending of this book is abrupt and provides no answers--at least, no answers for the man. It's easy to fall into thinking that there are no answers at all, since we are in the man's point of view, but as a reader, really, what questions still need to be answered? By the time the last page is finished, we know everything that the man doesn't want to know, all our questions are answered. The man is still "up in the air," but the important things are wrapped up. There is no sense of closure, of course, but it so beautifully emulates the emotions of the man, feeling like dust on the wind. The things that are left unknown to the reader are not important, and they are rather easy to surmise, given the context of the epidemic and the odd political circumstances of Country C.
So, if I were to boil this book down into a single sentence, it would be: awful man metaphorically becomes a rat. If that interests you, I would highly recommend it. If you need books with either 1. Plots or 2. Likeable characters (or both), then I doubt you would find this book enjoyable.