The Impossible Fairy Tale

It's been back to back reads with strange meta-narrative, mobius plot threads (I followed this one with Bats of the Republic)

The Impossible Fairy Tale is weirdly unsettling and moves ahead with a grim inevitability following the intertwined lives of two 12 year old girls. The language skitters off on strange tangents and plays with words in a way that must have proven a unique challenge to translate. Violence and death constantly linger in the periphery but the tangents pulled me out of the story making me wish for the relentless energy of Samanta Schweblin's David in Fever Dream, who kept the narrative on its creepy track.

The novel then shifts it's focus halfway through and the book becomes something else entirely. I just couldn't get invested enough to truly follow along and make the necessary connections. And I was frankly still catching my breath from the ending of the first half. Inventive and challenging, it just wasn't what I was after.

It’s hard to decide if I liked this book or not. It starts out exciting and suspenseful, and ends with some very interesting and original metafiction. However, the beginning of part 2 feels completely disconnected, and the book does not end with a clear conclusion. It was interesting to read the translator’s note and learn about some of her choices when translating from the original Korean text. It could be that some of the nuance and symbolism was lost in translation - nevertheless I think plot wise some loose ends could have been tied better for a more coherent reading experience.