Shoko's Smile: Stories
Ratings6
Average rating3.8
A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers. In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar," a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret," the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother. In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson--writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience--Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.
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One sentence synopsis... Generational, political, and cultural differences express themselves through the experiences of South Korean women in this collection of short stories.
Read it if you like... clean, precise writing which is probably true of most short stories but feels particularly noteworthy in this case. Most of the characters have trouble expressing their emotions which makes the style impersonal in the extreme.
Further reading... for Korean fiction I preferred ‘Kim Jiyoung, born 1982' and for impersonal characters/writing style obviously Sally Rooney.
This book was a little dry and the pacing was a bit meandering at times, but the characters were layered and complex and beautiful. I really enjoyed the commentary on relationships and culture, and especially loved Shoko's Smile, A Song From Afar, and Hanji and Youngju.
