I'll be Right There by Kyung-Sook Shin

So. My first post. I’m very unsure about how to format this, how much to write, etc, so I’ll likely be playing around with it a lot as I go. I did really love this book, so wanted to get it up while it was still fresh. Enjoy!

Title: I’ll Be Right There

Author: Kyung-Sook Shin

Translator: Sora Kim-Russell

Published: 2010

Type: Fiction

Pages: 325

My mother's death, which had been drifting out of reach all that time, sank in at once, and a wave of loss washed over me. I was not prepared for it. Of all the things, why did the fact that I would never see my mother again, a fact that had not yet sunk in despite my walking around with her ring in my pocket, have to hit me then and there? Mama's dead. I may as well have heard drums beating and a herald delivering the news... As I stood in the middle of the city, I brought both hands up and covered my face. The heat drained out of me, and my body turned as cold as ice.

In brief:

Really beautifully written — tender and melancholy and sharp, a powerful reflection on grief and love and resistance. I do wish the characters were more believable, but overall it was breathtaking.

Rating: 4.3

Synopsis:

I’ll Be Right There begins with a phone call from an ex. Not an auspicious start, to be sure. This time it’s different though – the ex Myungsuh is calling after eight years of silence to tell our narrator Jung Yoon that a former, beloved professor is near death. Their conversation is painful and curt, while Jung Yoon flashes through memories with Myungsuh and the professor. There’s an immediate sense of longing and loss, a tone that permeates the entire rest of the novel.

The book jumps back to recount Jung Yoon and Myungsuh’s university experience, as well as the lives of Jung Yoon’s childhood friend Dahn and Myungsuh’s childhood friend Miru. Though Jung Yoon narrates, the story is also told through journal entries from Myungsuh and letters from Dahn. There’s not so much of a plot, just loosely follows the four’s lives as they intertwine, bind tightly, and fall apart through shared grief and loss. Though it takes place in South Korea in the ’80s, during a time of protests and extreme upheaval, the specific politics aren’t addressed directly. The characters do protest, and some are disappeared while others commit suicide, but the emphasis is on the effect of the trauma and violence on young people struggling to mature, overcome their grief, and come together. 

Where I’m At:

I read this book at the end of the year, 2019. It was the 40th and final book I read that year. I was mostly at home in Carlsbad for the holidays, though I also read a chunk while visiting my high school friend at the restaurant she works at, Jeune et Jolie, and some more while waiting at the airport for my flight back to Oakland, after nearly three weeks of being away. While at Jeune et Jolie, I took notes on the feeling of it:

“Reading at Jeune et Jolie, 9:40pm, 12/29/19: Strange, the feeling of being alone in a room full of strangers. It’s where I seem to feel the calmest, anxieties just sort of floating away among the hum of laughing and chatter. There’s a beautiful couple across the bar — attentive but nervous with one another, so it must still be early. He’s dark, she fair. The lighting is low but fine to read, the pastels — coral and green — just so lovely. The smell of butter and spice, grounding me in the now… I can’t stop looking at this couple. His hair is tightly curled, cut close. Glasses on a strong nose, fingers fiddling with a fork. She seems a bit stiff, long dark blonde hair, strikingly lovely face — maybe forced laughter. But they look happy. They don’t pause, don’t look away from each other. Who are they? How’d they come to this little place in this little town?”

I read it as a relationship is ending: the person I’ve been with since the end of college is moving to the east coast and it’s hard to see what comes after that. 

I read it less than three years after graduating from university myself, from a school known for its affinity to protest.  

I read it together with Human Acts, which I’ll get into next time, for my much-loved Book Club, which has been with me since my second year of college.

Getting into it:

One of the things that struck me most about the book was how it related memory in a really beautiful and artistic way, while still being very convincing. In the beginning, the narrator spends some time dwelling on the inconsistencies of memory:

“The future rushes in and all we can do is take our memories and move forward with them. Memory keeps only what it wants. Images from memories are sprinkled throughout our lives, but that does not mean we believe that our own or other people’s memories are of things that actually happened. When someone stubbornly insists that they saw something with their own eyes, I take it as a statement mixed with wishful thinking. As that they want to believe.”  

This sort of sets up the rest of the book, which sort of meanders through her memories, looking back through a lens of both love and pain. It explains the inconsistencies, some time jumps, and the unreliable nature of the narrator in a way that feels very believable. I certainly don’t remember all the details of events in my life, nor exactly the order in which they happened. Like the narrator, I shy away from memories that hurt too much, might prefer to remember what came after. The interspersed letters and journal entries are also very cleverly used towards this end, as it resolves some of the inconsistencies and gives an outsiders perspective, which is, of course, notably absent from Jung Yoon’s memories.

I also personally appreciated the choice to omit details of the politics. The author addresses this directly in the epilogue saying:

“However, in this novel, I do not specifically reveal the era or elucidate Korea’s political situation at the time. This was a deliberate decision on my part as a writer, because I believe that what happens to the characters in I’ll Be Right There is in no way limited to South Korea. Everything that happens in this novel could happen in any country and in any generation. I believe that no matter how rough the world becomes., there will always be teachers and students learning from each other, and even when savage and violent powers obstruct our freedoms, there will always be earnest and heartfelt first loves and friendships being formed.” 

I found this intention to work out beautifully. I remember how it was to protest at Berkeley — the strong sense of injustice that motivates you, the faith in the community shouting around you, even the aspect that maybe you’re doing it in part just because that’s what everyone else is doing. That’s part of being young. And even though the actual events of the ‘80s in South Korea were far more horrifying than anything I’ve experienced, and learning more about that later on put a gap in the relatability, it worked for me while reading.

It seems to me that this book isn’t about the specifics of the protest, of politics – it’s about the lives that are affected by that, how people still fall in love and hurt each other, still go apple-picking in their free time, still have lives when it’s all over. It isn’t all-encompassing, there are still private lives, private struggles throughout. Jung Yoon says: “We often laughed at nothing at all...We would laugh for a bit, and then the mood would turn strange, and our laughter would die out…Was it okay to laugh like that?”  

I’m interested in private lives more than politics, so I found this aspect of the book really compelling. I can learn about politics in a non-fiction books or on the news and get all my insight there. Of course, novels can also introduce you to political or historic events, as this one did for me, which I do appreciate. But what I really love about fiction is the way that it gives insight into humans, into our hearts. As a very emotional book, I think I’ll Be Right There achieved that beautifully. 

That said, I do wonder if the author assumed more background knowledge, having written the book in Korean and maybe mostly for a Korean audience — and I wonder how the context might have changed the experience.

As ever, it frustrates me to no end that I can’t live all lives. 

There were things that didn’t work for me about this book, of course. The professor, for instance – he is portrayed to be a Very Important guiding figure, but I never quite understood why his students loved him so much. It’s never really explained, we’re just told that they love him – yet he only appears in roughly 3-5 scenes throughout the book, one of them his death scene, so he just isn’t able to anchor the story in the way he’s meant to, and that loss wasn’t as sharp as it could have been. 

Additionally, early on, the professor tells the story of Saint Christopher carrying the child Christ across the river. He tells them they must be Christophers to each other, carry each other through turbulent times, and trust in art/literature to give them the strength to do so. I do appreciate the message, and it was referred to continuously throughout the book, but I never felt like there was much of an expansion – just a parable to obliquely point at to make a point. There seemed to be some message about the students’ shared love for literature, for its influence in the face of the politics, but that also never seemed particularly well drawn-out to me. 

Last criticism: Tied to my issue with the professor, I often had the feeling that the main characters weren’t very believable. It’s like the author would dip a toe now and then into Murakami-esque absurdism, without committing to it. Dahn suddenly reveals a deep fear of spiders and launches into a winding monologue giving miniscule details about their evolution. A cousin casually mentions leaving his soul behind on a plane trip. One character writes down everything she eats in a notebook. Small things, but enough to pull me out of the narrative, jar me a bit while reading. 

A few other thoughts: 

I adored the way Shin captured first love: how ridiculous it could be, how exciting. Myungsuh notices every detail about Jung Yoon – he helps her find her missing shoes and bag, and can recite all the details about them. She asks him how he knows, and he simply replies, “Because they’re yours.” Maybe it’s creepy, but it’s earnest, too. As my relationship ends, it felt sort of sweet to be dwelling on the beginning, remembering the thoughtfulness of when he’d play Frank Sinatra for me, or find a way into an art museum he himself would have hated, or ceaselessly search for a restaurant with knafeh years after I mentioned loving it.   

“You’re different from the others,” Myungsuh tells Jung Yoon. A cringey line, but I remember him laughing and watching me sip a neat whiskey: “You’re not like other girls, Allie Gordon.” 

As I’ve said a few times, I’m also really impressed by the reflection of grief in I’ll Be Right There. My favorite quote, highlighted in the top of the post, really hit me hard. Though I’ve never experienced loss in the way Jung Yoon does, I know how it is to be suddenly hit by an inexplicable sadness, to cry in the most inappropriate places from a loss you can hardly name. Grief hits you unexpectedly, the sudden feeling of loss whooshing in your stomach like a missed step. And you grab onto other people, as Jung Yoon does with Miru and Myungsah, they give you some respite – but at the end of the day the grief is yours, and no one can share it with you, no matter how much they love you or try. 

This was my first holiday at home without two of my grandmas. There were parties, lots of laughing with family. But I’d glance at a couch that maybe one of them would be sitting on, a baby they might coo over. I’d remember their smile and feel something seize at my heart and I’d think She’s not here. Sometimes I would step away, but other times I would just turn around, force a smile, laugh again at something a cousin said. And the moment would pass, would fade, but the loss is still there. They’re still gone. 

Yikes that was a bleak way to end.

Overall: I liked this book. My book club was split on it, some preferring Human Acts, which goes into much more detail into the politics. I wouldn’t recommend I’ll Be Right There if you prefer books driven by plots, because this one isn’t –  it’s driven by philosophizing, dwelling on human emotions and relationships. It’s about experience rather than events, which for me was beautiful and compelling and really worthwhile.