Son Bo-mi (1980 — ) is a South Korean writer. She has consistently written stories that cheerfully scrutinize the coincidental and incomprehensible nature of life while simultaneously expressing a solemn message. They are characterized by a refined writing style that gives off a slightly awkward translated tone reminiscent of British and American novels or dramas, theatrical and elaborate structures, and parallel universes and analogous realities as her works are connected with each other.
1. Life
Son Bo-mi was born in 1980 in Seoul, South Korea. When she was young, she frequently read mystery novels and manhwa comic books, while in her twenties, she watched many films and American dramas. During her time in college, she avidly read the novels of Raymond Carver and John Cheever. Believing that her own life was not special enough to be considered worthy of writing about, she developed early on the habit of avoiding the first-person voice in her novels. 1)
Because she enjoyed reading more than writing, she majored in Korean Language and Literature in college, and even in the Creative Writing Group that she joined with her friends, she was never told that she was particularly talented at writing. After winning the 21st Century Literature New Writer’s Prize (21세기문학 신인상) in 2009 with the short story, “Chimmuk” (Silence), she went through a creative slump. After revising a novel she had written long ago, Damyo (담요 Blanket), for a period of one month straight, she submitted it to the Dong-A Ilbo New Writer’s Contest and won in 2011.2)
With the publication of her first short story collection in 2013, Geudeurege rindihabeul (그들에게 린디합을A Lindy-Hop For Them), she won the Kim Junseong Literary Award (김준성문학상) which is given to outstanding first books by emerging authors. Apart from this, she won numerous awards such as the Munhak Dongne Young Writers’ Award and the Daesan Literary Award. Her novel, Dieo ralpeu roren (디어 랄프 로렌 Dear Ralph Lauren) was published in 2017 and her short story collection, Uahan bamgwa goyangideul (우아한 밤과 고양이들A Graceful Night and Cats), was published in 2018. In 2013, she married writer Kim Jongok, who was her senior in college. She has stated that during the time she was active in their college literature club, he was practically the only senior that complimented her rough drafts.3)
2. Writing
(1) General Characteristics
Son Bo-mi’s stories generally concentrate on examining the mysterious underside of middle-class families’ superficially stable lives. Though the world encompassing the characters are meticulously and sophisticatedly constructed, she creates a unique atmosphere by remaining silent on any decisive clues on its background. Moreover, she skillfully overlaps the worlds between her short stories, imbuing them with the same effect as omnibus films. By frequently using foreign characters or places, she intentionally uses sentences that carry the tone of an awkward translation.
(2) Representative Works
Geudeurege rindihabeul (2013)
Geudeurege rindihabeul is a short story collection that concisely encapsulates Son Bo-mi’s general writing style. It is characterized by an ambiguous narrative that deftly arranges reality and fiction, making it unclear as to what is real and what is imaginary. The eponymous short story, “Geudeurege rindihabeul,” follows the story of a director who is producing a film of the same name and uses a variety of fictional secondary texts in order to narrate the story as if it were true. This kind of writing technique forms the author’s unique writing style, in which the mystery of the world is constructed through novels.4) “Gwahakjaui sarang” (과학자의 사랑 A Scientist’s Love) takes the form of a fictional translated submission piece that traces the life of an imaginary character named Dr. Gordon Gould. This technique allows for the novel’s universe to be treated as if it were reality, while also effectively depicting space and time in an ambiguous manner.5)
Dieo ralpeu roren (2017)
Her first novel, Dieo ralpeu roren, unfolds in an analogous reality similar to “Gwahakjaui sarang.” As the protagonist reminisces about an old friend that collected clothes from the Ralph Lauren collection, she traces the life of Ralph Lauren. Through this process, she discovers entirely new truths about Ralph Lauren, and finds answers about her own life. The world inside the novel is constructed as a parallel universe to our own.6)
Uahan bamgwa goyangideul (2018)
In comparison to her first short story collection, the stories in her second one, Uahan bamgwa goyangideul, are more loosely connected because she wrote them over a relatively long period of time. 7) By focusing on depicting the fissures that erupt between the incomprehensibility of daily life and the truth hidden within, the collection offers a glimpse into the writer’s constant thematic consciousness. The collection of stories unfolds through the incidents or beings that abruptly trespass upon daily life. “Mudan chimipan goyangideul” (Trespassing Cats) demonstrates how helpless we are in the face of the abrupt beings that invade our lives. Moreover, the short story “Sanchaek” (산책 Stroll) portrays how a family’s hidden secret is exposed through something as innocuous as a divorced father’s stroll.
(3) Critical Reception
Critics have noted how her adaptation of motifs from American and British novels that treat middle-class life from a postmodern perspective and her writing style that intentionally gives off the tone of an awkward translation have expanded the category of the Korean novel and created a new writing style. 8) However, there are also critics that view the effectiveness of such a style with some skepticism. 9) Critics have also pointed out her works’ structure of leaving the narrative’s decisive point as an open gap and creating a subjective aesthetic significance, 10) while also highlighting the lack of compositional subtlety.11) She holds the record as the writer nominated the most number of times for various Young Writers’ Awards.
Reference
1) “Breaking Away from Gravity.” Cine21, 15 December 2015.
http://www.cine21.com/news/view/?mag_id=82406
2) “Four Young Writers, Meeting Spring.” Maeil gyeongje [The Economic Daily], 28 March 2014. https://www.mk.co.kr/news/special-edition/view/2014/03/485693/
3) “The Writer Couple Kim Jongok and Son Bo-mi: ‘If there are problems between us, we solve them through novels.’” E Daily, 4 August 2016.
https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=103&oid=018&aid=0003601918
4) “Conveying Life’s Fundamentals Through Absence and Silence.” Seoul Shinmun. 13 August 2013. http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20130814021003#csidxca42a18ed03841da27f383cccfd3fb5
5) “The Brilliant Imagination of a Writer Born in 1980… Like Reading Mead.” Dong-A Ilbo, 17 August 2013.
https://www.donga.com/news/article/all/20130817/57067030/1
6) “‘If Parallel Universes Existed, then Ralph Lauren Would Have This Life…’” Geumgang ilbo, 21 May 2017.
http://www.ggilbo.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=372694#0BJz
7) “Son Bo-mi: ‘Writing Novels Isn’t Like Sports Where It’s a Game with Records.’” BOOK DB, 20 September 2018.
http://news.bookdb.co.kr/bdb/Interview.do?_method=InterviewDetail&sc.mreviewTp=1207&sc.mreviewNo=87044&Nnews
8) Sin Sujeong. “Confronting the Gravitational Pull of Novels and Soaring Away.” Geudeurege rindihabeul [Commentary], Munhak dongne, 2013, pg. 244.
9) Gang Gyeongseok. “Outside the World of Legos.” The Quarterly Changbi 41(4), 2013, pg. 430-432.
10) Cha Miryeong. “The Birth and Evolution of a Storyteller 3: On Son Bo-mi.” Munhak Dongne Magazine 20(3), 2013, pg. 1-3.
11) Han Gwangtaek. “The Hesitation of Novels, the Hesitation of Criticism.” Oneurui munye bipyeong [Today’s Literary Criticism], June 2018, pg. 179-188.
