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A review by thephdivabooks
The Band by Christine Ma-Kellams
4.0
Christine Ma-Kellams’s whip-smart, darkly funny, and biting debut, The Band, follows a psychologist with a savior complex who offers shelter to a recently cancelled K-pop idol on the run.
This book was completely unexpected! I’m not sure what I expected though–perhaps a literary drama. This is much more of a satire, which delighted me. I love that biting, dry humor that layered just under the surface. I am actually not a huge K-Pop fan, though I find the popularity of K-Pop to be fascinating. I think this book could replace K-Pop with [celebrity] and still work, and the story is only about K-Pop on the surface and speaks much more about how celebrity “talent” is used like a piece rather than a person.
The story reads a bit like fan fiction, in a fun way. It felt like a love letter to K-Pop fans. It seems to me like the author and narrator blend together at certain points in the story, as though Ma-Kellams wrote herself into the K-Pop world and imagined playing a small part in it. The story centers around Sang Duri, a cancelled Korean boy band member who caused an uproar among the public after releasing a controversial solo.
Duri hides from the public outcry in the mansion of a Chinese-American woman he meets in Los Angeles. Ma-Kellams writes the narrator as a psychologist with a savior complex (and I’ll say as a psychologist myself, this type of unhinged savior complex is sadly not uncommon in our field). The relationship between the narrator and Duri is at the center of the book, but it’s also only one small piece of the broader story. The book weaves together many related stories—the Band’s producer and his attempts to work with a girl group, the other members of the Band dealing with the fallout from Duri’s departure and cancellation.
The narrator is a bizarre character, and I do love a character that is boldly strange. Her relationship with Duri is unclear—the book hints heavily at a sexual relationship between the two. The spotlight is on the narrator but also on the reader. Aren’t we all guilty of being too interested in the salacious and private details of celebrities’ lives? Don’t we all sometimes feel entitled to know intimate things about these idols, as though they don’t deserve privacy because of their career?
The book is written in a freeform style that was exactly what a story like this needs, but also may not appeal to every reader. I think in part that’s because it’s hard to get a concrete grasp on the story. It’s very dream-like in the way it unfolds across the page. There isn’t a dull or extraneous moment—for such a loosely flowing narrative, Ma-Kellams kept it tight in presentation.
Duri’s struggles with mental health in the wake of his scandal felt authentic. This is a man whose entire identity for years became what the public saw him to be, and not who he truly was. The very same public and fandom cancelling him begs the question if Duri can find himself again and not take on what others think of him. Fellow people pleasers out there will have a small moment of comradery with this aspect. How do we learn to not see ourselves by someone else’s definition of who we are?
A book for the K-Pop fans out there, but really for anyone who appreciates a novel approach to storytelling and a broader message about obsession, celebrity, and fandom, and the toll those can take on the person at the center of it.
Thank you to Atria Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.
This book was completely unexpected! I’m not sure what I expected though–perhaps a literary drama. This is much more of a satire, which delighted me. I love that biting, dry humor that layered just under the surface. I am actually not a huge K-Pop fan, though I find the popularity of K-Pop to be fascinating. I think this book could replace K-Pop with [celebrity] and still work, and the story is only about K-Pop on the surface and speaks much more about how celebrity “talent” is used like a piece rather than a person.
The story reads a bit like fan fiction, in a fun way. It felt like a love letter to K-Pop fans. It seems to me like the author and narrator blend together at certain points in the story, as though Ma-Kellams wrote herself into the K-Pop world and imagined playing a small part in it. The story centers around Sang Duri, a cancelled Korean boy band member who caused an uproar among the public after releasing a controversial solo.
Duri hides from the public outcry in the mansion of a Chinese-American woman he meets in Los Angeles. Ma-Kellams writes the narrator as a psychologist with a savior complex (and I’ll say as a psychologist myself, this type of unhinged savior complex is sadly not uncommon in our field). The relationship between the narrator and Duri is at the center of the book, but it’s also only one small piece of the broader story. The book weaves together many related stories—the Band’s producer and his attempts to work with a girl group, the other members of the Band dealing with the fallout from Duri’s departure and cancellation.
The narrator is a bizarre character, and I do love a character that is boldly strange. Her relationship with Duri is unclear—the book hints heavily at a sexual relationship between the two. The spotlight is on the narrator but also on the reader. Aren’t we all guilty of being too interested in the salacious and private details of celebrities’ lives? Don’t we all sometimes feel entitled to know intimate things about these idols, as though they don’t deserve privacy because of their career?
The book is written in a freeform style that was exactly what a story like this needs, but also may not appeal to every reader. I think in part that’s because it’s hard to get a concrete grasp on the story. It’s very dream-like in the way it unfolds across the page. There isn’t a dull or extraneous moment—for such a loosely flowing narrative, Ma-Kellams kept it tight in presentation.
Duri’s struggles with mental health in the wake of his scandal felt authentic. This is a man whose entire identity for years became what the public saw him to be, and not who he truly was. The very same public and fandom cancelling him begs the question if Duri can find himself again and not take on what others think of him. Fellow people pleasers out there will have a small moment of comradery with this aspect. How do we learn to not see ourselves by someone else’s definition of who we are?
A book for the K-Pop fans out there, but really for anyone who appreciates a novel approach to storytelling and a broader message about obsession, celebrity, and fandom, and the toll those can take on the person at the center of it.
Thank you to Atria Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.