A review by jayisreading
The New Seoul Park Jelly Massacre by Cho Yeeun

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

2.75

I wanted to like this novel more than I did, though I will say that I did enjoy the absolutely bizarre imagery that leaned into the horror. It would be more accurate to describe this novel as a collection of vignettes that focus on an event that took place at a theme park, as each chapter switched between different characters’ perspectives of what happened. (Quick side note: I’m keeping things deliberately vague to avoid spoiling the event for any readers.) I initially didn’t mind the switching, but by the fourth or fifth chapter, I found it frustrating. I didn’t feel that questions that kept building up were being answered, instead, leaving the reader to sit with vague ideas of what happened. As a result, I found myself rather unsatisfied by the end of the book.

There’s something to be said about the themes that Cho was gesturing toward, which I found interesting but underdeveloped. I was able to get the sense that she wanted to provide commentary on matters such as consumerism and relationships, but I felt more could have been said (and perhaps even more explicitly) to make clear to the reader her observations. With that said, I can’t help but wonder if there might be a translation issue, as I found the prose a bit stilted and clunky. Relatedly, I wonder how much experimenting that seemed to be happening impacted the delivery of these themes (e.g., not sticking to one particular genre).

Ultimately, I would have loved more depth in this novel and some time to sit with each character, and the pieces were definitely there. Unfortunately, it just felt as though I was floating in murky water, not ever really knowing where things were going or what the author wanted to get across. It’d be interesting to read the original and see how it compares to the translation though, as I felt something was missing.
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