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An Ode to the Wounded: I'll be Right There by Shin Kyung-sook scrap

by Kang Gyesookgo link October 23, 2014

Author Bio 작가 소개

신경숙

Shin Kyung-sook

Shin Kyung-sook is a writer. Born in Jeongeub, North Jeolla Province in 1963. She made her literary debut in 1985 when her novella A Winter Fable won the Munye Joongang Literary Award for Best First Novel. She is the author of seven short story collections, including The Blind Calf, The Sound of Bells, Unknown Women, and Moonlight Tales, and seven novels, including An Isolated Room, Lee Jin, Please Look After Mom, and I'll Be Right There. She has received a number of prestigious literary awards at home and abroad, including the Yi Sang Literary Award, the Dongin Prize, the Hyundae Munhak Award, Prix de l'Inapercu, and the Man Asian Literary Prize.

Youth is beautiful because it is a past from which we cannot return. But the irreversibility of time is not the reason we remember youth so fondly. It is rather all the firsts we experience in the process of becoming adults and the tantalizing excitement or detrimental unfamiliarity associated with new experiences. Youth is also a paradoxical time governed by a brilliant darkness. Gestures of passionate love, the unbearable pain of breakups, scars from betrayals, coping with unexpected deaths, and other incidents all make up the history of youth. Unchecked passion, embarrassing mishaps, and irrevocable mistakes are carved into this history, so it is difficult to look back on those days without regret and wistfulness.

Shin Kyung-sook’s first book since Please Look After Mom, which sold 1.4 million copies, I'll be Right There, is a characteristically sophisticated and even portrait of the days of youth one cannot look back on without bracing oneself. For the main characters, Yun, Miru, Myeong-seo, and Dan, the age of 20 is a time when the sordidness of real life manifests itself in the form of unreasonable violence and leaves deep cuts in their souls. They depend on each other, lend each other a shoulder to cry on, and push on forward through the darkness of life. Their sincere friendships and warm compassion give them the strength to survive the dark times when the influence of autocratic rule reached every nook and cranny of life. Armed with sincerity, they pulled through their youth. But the innocence of youth cannot help but remain powerless in the face of reality. Contrary to their wishes, their lives continue down a forlorn, tragic path. Written in the form of retracing the source of scars through recollections, this novel narrates the meaning of growing up and the significance of the hope and sadness associated with it.

Writer 필자 소개

Kang Gyesook

Kang Gyesook

Kang Gye-Sook is a literary critic and professor of Korean literature at Myongji University. She received the Changbi New Critic’s Award in 2002. Her publications include the critical essay collections Mi-eon and The Light of Depression.

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