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A review by literarycrushes
I'll Be Right There by Kyung-sook Shin
3.0
I’ll Be Right There by Shin Kyung-sook is a story of love and grief set in the tumultuous riots of 1980s South Korea. The book is told as a memory, and each character has a sort of ghostly quality about them that feels more like a romanticization of the idea of a person rather than a real person, but in a purposeful way.
Jung Yoon lost her mother a year ago, but her pain and loss remain at her surface, unprocessed and so indigestible that she is often rudely awakened to that fact as though it had just happened. She haunts her city and her life, spending the majority of her days walking its streets as if in a trance, until she encounters Myungsuh and Miru in Professor Yoon’s class. She becomes obsessed with them, allowing them to occupy her mind almost constantly, and we quickly learn, by switching intermittently to Myungsuh’s perspective for short bursts, that they are equally (if not more so) obsessed with her. What follows is the sort of all-encompassing relationship between the three of them (though not in a thrupple situation, lol) that feels like it can only happen in university, where they quickly become each other’s entire lives. Then, the book takes quite a dark turn as mysterious backstories and shameful secrets are revealed, and relationships grow and evolve.
I picked this book up after loving Please Look After Mom, by the same author, and while this had much of the same fantastic writing and a character who feels detached yet relatable, I found this plot difficult to follow, especially in the second half of the novel. Still, if you don’t allow the semi-melodramatic turns to distract you, the excellent characters and their heart-breaking inner lives are very much worth the read!
Jung Yoon lost her mother a year ago, but her pain and loss remain at her surface, unprocessed and so indigestible that she is often rudely awakened to that fact as though it had just happened. She haunts her city and her life, spending the majority of her days walking its streets as if in a trance, until she encounters Myungsuh and Miru in Professor Yoon’s class. She becomes obsessed with them, allowing them to occupy her mind almost constantly, and we quickly learn, by switching intermittently to Myungsuh’s perspective for short bursts, that they are equally (if not more so) obsessed with her. What follows is the sort of all-encompassing relationship between the three of them (though not in a thrupple situation, lol) that feels like it can only happen in university, where they quickly become each other’s entire lives. Then, the book takes quite a dark turn as mysterious backstories and shameful secrets are revealed, and relationships grow and evolve.
I picked this book up after loving Please Look After Mom, by the same author, and while this had much of the same fantastic writing and a character who feels detached yet relatable, I found this plot difficult to follow, especially in the second half of the novel. Still, if you don’t allow the semi-melodramatic turns to distract you, the excellent characters and their heart-breaking inner lives are very much worth the read!