*Longlisted for 2016 Writer of Today Award “A book about perfect"

* Unremarkably but steadily, our daily lives are carried on and scattered away.

ㆍI hope you hear what I say

ㆍAs always, the reader is lulled into a continuous flow before being jolted out when least expected, while spaces are not defined as past, present, future, but something else.

- Lee Dongjin (“Bbalgan Chaekbang” Podcast)

The novel is told from three perspectives: ‘I,’ a first-person narrator, and two other characters named Woo-kyung and Byung-joon. First up is the story of ‘I,’ an aspiring author working on their father’s stories of their grandmother, trying and failing to get them right. Byung-joon is in intensive care after a terrible accident. On the wall of the room in which he lies is a map of the world dotted with the names of other patients in intensive care across the planet. The map serves as a reminder of the whereabouts of these patients, which city they are currently in or passing through. Meanwhile, Byung-joon is visited by Woo-kyung, an ex-girlfriend who broke up with him five years ago. Woo-kyung has no idea how she became Byung-joon’s emergency contact person; she knew he was estranged from his family, but she had had no contact with Byung-joon for years, either. Woo-kyung comes to visit him every day, the man lying unconscious “without a trace of personality, capability, malice, or pettiness,” unsure of her own motivations, for while she “no longer felt as moved by him as before, it was not as if she had no feelings for him either.” Woo-kyung decides to spend the weekend using an old map of Byung-joon’s to trace his steps, starting with a small neighborhood in Busan.

Headfirst, Slowly is the story of “those who drift away” like roaming dots on a map, not knowing where they stand. They are not bothered if their trajectories never cross; for them it is enough that they exist in their stories. Truth be told, it feels incongruous to throw around hefty words like “generation” or “era” in relation to Bak Solmay’s writing. 

The characters in her novels live everyday lives, uninhibited by tense, place, or time. People and objects pop up like shop signs or epitaphs, their memories a testimony to their personal histories and places in time and space, all presented in clear sentences remarkable for their “completely ordinary and level” quality—this is what marks Bak Solmay as a truly contemporary writer.

Bak Solmay 

Bak Solmay made her literary debut winning the Jaeum & Moeum New Writer’s Award in 2009. She is the author of the short story collection Then What Shall We Sing? and novels Eul, I Would Like to Write About It All, and Time in the City. Her appeal to younger readers is evinced by her focus on the reality of a generation cut adrift and without hope. She is the recipient of the 2014 Moonji Literary Award and the 2014 Kim Seungok Literary Award.