The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness

Picqueir/France, sold to Pegasus Books WEL , hardcover publication in US –September 2015, Nha Nam/Vietnam.

This novel starts on an early snowy morning, with the phone ringing for writer Chong Yun. It is Myong-so, who was her boyfriend in college, which was the most exciting and intense time of her life. This one phone call instantly transports Yun to her youth.

Kyung-sook Shin explores the meaning of love and youth through four young people named Chong Yun, Myong-so, Tan, and Mi-ru, who have reached adulthood amid political turmoil. As if to fight back against the dark times, the four build love and friendship for one another, sharing scars and dreams as they walk through Seoul, read books, and write together. In class, their favorite teacher, Professor Yoon, talks about Saint Christopher, who crossed a swelling river in the middle of the night with Christ on his back. Professor Yoon encourages his students to become one other’s Saint Christopher and Christ as they battle toward adulthood. This idea—that everyone must sometimes rely on, and sometimes help, others as they make their way into the world—becomes a cornerstone in I’ll Be Right There.

Yun, Myong-so, Tan, and Mi-ru become inseparable—whenever life becomes unbearable, each says without hesitation, “I’ll be right there.” But not everyone passes through youth safely: two are unable to do so. Tan, who grew up with Yun, loved her, and dreamed of becoming an artist, enters the military and dies under unexplained circumstances. Mi-ru, who had been traumatically involved in her sister’s death, moves into the country home her grandmother left her and starves herself to death. As Yun and Myong-so grapple with the two deaths, their love for each other deepens, but ultimately they grow apart, unable to deal with it all.

Eight years later, Myong-so, who had traveled the world as a photographer, informs Yun that Professor Yoon is ill. This phone call revives their turbulent college years for Yun. Depicting youth as an unforgettable time in life, filled with passion, love, dreams, friendship, and loss, Shin details Yun and Myong-so’s undying love despite the era and circumstance. Through the four friends’ dedication to their community and love for one another, Shin explores the tension and deep connections of twenty-somethings against the backdrop of the military dictatorship and the division of Korea. Here, Shin showcases youthful beauty and passion that thrive despite societal pressures, and through Mi-ru’s sister’s shocking suicide, she questions the meaning of love and sacrifice. In the end, humanity triumphs in the face of the repressive South Korean political landscape.

Professor Yoon leaves on his students’ palms the following words:

Thank you for journeying with me, my Christophers. Don’t be sad. There is an end to everything: to youth, to pain, to passion, to emptiness, to war, to violence, just as a flower fades after it blooms. I was here and I am leaving now. Look up at the sky; there are stars. They will be sparkling there, even when we look at them or forget about them or after we die. You, each and every one of you, please become stars that are unique in the world.

After Professor Yoon’s funeral, Yun flips through Myong-so’s notebooks he gave her eight years ago.  She discovers a sentence that says, “I want to grow old with Chong Yun.” Underneath that sentence, Yun writes, “I’ll be right there.”

This novel  is a coming-of-age story and a love story, an exploration of the meaning of love and youth through four friends in transition to adulthood during tragic times. It is also a poignant portrait of a bygone era and a dedication to young people everywhere who are searching for the meaning of life. 

Reviews

“Shin writes about a time and setting that may seem remote to many Americans, but in many ways her specificity is universal; we all have a monster that has no face, and which we try to avoid. Shin paints her own monster for us.”
- New York Times Book Review

“Kyung-sook Shin's work often inhabits the space between story and reality. Though the autobiographical novel is a well-worn genre, Shin handles it with the sort of effortless ruthlessness a story like this requires, without letting either the narrator or the reader rest easy about the line between truth and fiction. It's no wonder that despite being grounded in signposts of the everyday, The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness has the tenor of a ghost story. Shin anchors her narrator in vivid details rather than narrative absolutes. A haunting, remarkable novel.”
- NPR

“In The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness, Shin opens her nation's transition and her people's struggle to the world that looked away for all those years. Please Look After Mom, Ms. Shin's poignant examination of how Korea's evolution has impacted the different generations, gave birth to these other translations. But her later works are still more profound. While South Korea is but a whisper of its former self, Ms. Shin's writing grabs hold of those memories and brings them loudly to the surface.”
- The Economist

“Intimate and hauntingly spare. A raw tribute.”
- The New York Times Book Review

“Shin's unemotional delivery and understated yet devastating perspective on her country's expectations and norms are familiar from her earlier novels, but this book's grim glimpse into the lives of factory girls is notably haunting. There's a hypnotic quality to this melancholy coming-of-age story described as 'not quite fact and not quite fiction.' Allusive and structurally sophisticated, it melds Shin's characteristic themes of politics, literature, and painful experience into a mysteriously compelling whole.”
- Kirkus Reviews

“This work stands the test of time. Isolation and suicide among young adults worldwide have only tragically multiplied, making The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness urgently auspicious. Described at beginning and end as “not quite fact and not quite fiction,” this book is essential reading.”
- Library Journal, starred review

“Affecting. How does an author write about a troubled land when her sorrow is so great? Shin's novel provides a powerful record of the time.”
- The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The most moving and accomplished, and often startling, novel in translation I’ve read in many seasons. Every sentence is saturated in detail.”
- The Wall Street Journal

“Haunting. The novel’s language, so formal in its simplicity, bestows a grace and solemnity.”
- The Boston Globe

“A moving portrayal of the surprising nature, sudden sacrifices, and secret reveries of motherhood.”
- Elle