At turns raw and piercing, dreamy and surreal, Kim’s latest import…is a pressing indictment of today’s too-often onerous transition toward uncertain adulthood.” —Booklist, Starred Review
“Best friends are especially important for those who have no family to understand them, and South Korean writer [Kim Sagwa] tells the eerie story of what can happen when those friendships are cut off. It's a familiar picture of teenage pain, despite the faraway setting.”—Glamour, “The Best Books of 2020 (So Far)"
“Readers looking for fresh, new voices will want to pick up b, Book, and Me, a story about two friends struggling to move into adulthood in a South Korean town…It’s a perfect novel for lovers of translated fiction and coming-of-age stories alike.” —Book Riot, "Most Anticipated Books 2020"
“A haunting and complex portrayal of teenage angst in today’s modern society…Kim skillfully probes the relationship between the dangerous and existential angst of adolescents and the pressures of trying to survive in a globalist-capitalist world.” —Korean Literature Now
“…the text is broken into short, sometimes-dreamlike sections that capture [the characters’] teenage angst and moods… A dark, dystopian view of South Korean adolescence, hopelessness, and the cruelties children are capable of inflicting on each other.” —Kirkus Reviews
“[Kim's] polemics lurk rather than pounce…she wants us to feel not only the immediate hurt but the dread of pummeling to come. This, Sagwa implies, is what we’re all in for unless the word ‘unless’ stops sounding absurdly impossible.” —On the Seawall
“Surreal and luminous.” —Foreword Reviews
Praise for Mina
"Kim Sagwa is South Korea’s young, brilliant, fearless writer." — Don Mee Choi, author of Hardly War
"Award-winning Korean author Kim’s first novel to be translated into English is a powerful portrayal of teenage angst. . . . [It] will keep readers rapt until the end." —Booklist, Starred Review
"[Kim] is an expert, crafting an unsettling, deeply felt, and ultimately devastating depiction of the turmoil of youth." —Publishers Weekly
"The novel is full of such vivid details, difficult to read and more difficult to forget. . . . A startling, disturbing portrait of teenage friendship." —Kirkus
“Mina gets to the core of Korean teenagers. Kim Sagwa’s fragmented rhetoric stands for a generation that has no choice but to set imitation as its standard. The novel, which points out a universal desire for unattainable genuineness, focuses on teenagers while at the same time shining light on Korean society at large. Readers open their eyes wide to the agonizing violence of a character torn up by the inability to bear self-deception.” —Han Yujoo, author of The Impossible Fairy Tale
2019-11-25
In this coming-of-age novel by South Korean author Kim (Mina, 2018, etc.), two high school girls navigate violent bullies and absent, uncaring parents in an unnamed city on the coast.
"The city we lived in was ridiculous," Rang announces to the reader, "because it was a city that imitated Seoul." "Everybody who lived there was pretty much the same....Except there was one kid who wanted to be a fish." This is Rang's best friend, b. Rang points out that being a fish would mean having scales and being ugly, but b sticks to her guns: "I'll go into the water and I'll never come back out." Rang's parents show no interest in her while b's are overwhelmed by poverty and her sister's illness. Rang's beloved Grandma is drifting toward senescence. Don't ever get lost, she insists, or you'll wind up at the End, a place north of the hill where "the abandoned people" live. Rang and b play at the beach, struggle to fit in at school, and hang out at a cafe called Alone ("Adults thought the name was ridiculous...b and I thought it was cool"), where they meet a bookish loner. Rang is targeted by bullies at school, boys identified only by their baseball hats who regularly kick and hit her until she bleeds, and no one but b ever steps in. The girls are straddling childhood and young adulthood without guidance or help. And when Rang inadvertently exposes b's poverty, their friendship ends with devastating abruptness and pushes them separately toward the dreaded End. Told alternately from Rang's and b's points of view, the text is broken into short, sometimes-dreamlike sections that capture their teenage angst and moods. "I feel agony and I'm getting even more boring." "I was incredibly hungry."
A dark, dystopian view of South Korean adolescence, hopelessness, and the cruelties children are capable of inflicting on each other.
