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A review by gracie_reads_everything
City of Ash and Red by Pyun Hye-young
4.0
Pyun uses the nameless protagonist to explore isolation in the work environment, through language barrier, and in marriage. Our tendency to avert our eyes from what is horrible, the abject, plays into her use of setting and symbol in the novel. The man is symbolically a rat just as he is the rat killer. He is ostracized by his coworkers for being chosen to transfer, so their treatment of him mimics how they treat a rat that shows up at their dinner party. His social faux-pas of killing a rat with his coworker’s designer purse only further contributes to his isolation, as does his transfer to a position in Country C, which causes his coworkers to badmouth him and complain about him receiving the position above anyone else.
The trash that coats City Y is also demonstrative of the horror of the climate crisis and consumer culture. Our tendency is to look away from these things by putting them in landfills far from us, even in other countries, but the irony of City Y, built to be a place of luxury, is it’s discovered to be a landfill, leading its prospects to plummet when people realize the ugliness that’s underneath. The vagrants in Country C also are reminiscent of homeless populations and the desperate measures people must go to to survive. The horror of the living situations of these vagrants is animalistic and rat-like as well. As the man sinks to this level, his true nature is revealed. The pandemic that is present too seems to reveal something about the man as a whole, though I’m not sure what.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, but felt a bit conflicted about the ending. The ending doesn’t really seem to wrap anything up or conclude in anyway, but perhaps that is the point, the man just continues on, surviving out his days, unnoticed by anyone. I enjoyed the psychological vagueness of the book and how the man is simple and complex all at once. The power of ideas to spread in our minds like a virus, like rat poison, demonstrates the man’s mentality and the seeming randomness behind many of his actions.
The trash that coats City Y is also demonstrative of the horror of the climate crisis and consumer culture. Our tendency is to look away from these things by putting them in landfills far from us, even in other countries, but the irony of City Y, built to be a place of luxury, is it’s discovered to be a landfill, leading its prospects to plummet when people realize the ugliness that’s underneath. The vagrants in Country C also are reminiscent of homeless populations and the desperate measures people must go to to survive. The horror of the living situations of these vagrants is animalistic and rat-like as well. As the man sinks to this level, his true nature is revealed. The pandemic that is present too seems to reveal something about the man as a whole, though I’m not sure what.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, but felt a bit conflicted about the ending. The ending doesn’t really seem to wrap anything up or conclude in anyway, but perhaps that is the point, the man just continues on, surviving out his days, unnoticed by anyone. I enjoyed the psychological vagueness of the book and how the man is simple and complex all at once. The power of ideas to spread in our minds like a virus, like rat poison, demonstrates the man’s mentality and the seeming randomness behind many of his actions.