A review by jayisreading
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

adventurous challenging informative mysterious medium-paced

4.25

Same Bed Different Dreams is one of those books that I feel would be an even better reading experience the second (or even third) time around due to Park’s very experimental approach. This is such a complex novel with its three interwoven narratives, which, ultimately, resulted in a very surreal experience. The first narrative to follow is about a Korean American, Soon Sheen, and his personal life. The second narrative is a book-within-a-book situation and is about the manuscript that Soon comes across that is about the Korean Provisional Government, and it is an unfinished novel that extensively explores history and culture. The third narrative is about a Black science fiction writer and Korean War veteran. I’m not entirely sure how, but Park managed to deftly weave all of these narratives together to show the ways in which lives and histories are inextricably connected, no matter how well-known or obscure they might be.

Park starts the novel with a question that seems simple: What is history? And it’s a question that repeatedly comes up throughout Same Bed Different Dreams. I think what I liked about this question and its ties to the themes of this novel is how Park reveals the incredibly subjective nature of history. Twentieth-century Korean history in particular proved to be a great point to explore this question, given how frequently the peninsula had to deal with foreign intervention, the Korean War being the apex of it all. Park speculates an alternative history for Korea through the KPG, should they have continued to exist after WWII, filled with dreams and what ifs.

I won’t lie, I don’t know if I fully understood most of this book, haha. There were so many ideas, themes, characters, and the likes that I (and I’m sure many other readers) had to juggle. Furthermore, Park does very little hand-holding, leaving it up to the reader to decide how much of what he wrote is going to be pieced together. Fiction and fact are blurred, there are layers upon layers upon layers found in this novel, all of which make for a strange and chaotic novel. I absolutely stuck around for the vibes, because everything was so fascinating to me. This is definitely a novel I’d love to revisit, especially with hopes of better understanding things.
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