Book title : Love in the Big City / 대도시의 사랑법
Author : Sang Young Park; Anton Hur (translator, kor-eng)
Publisher : Tilted Axis Press
ISBN : 978-1-911284-64-2 (ebook)
Year of Publication : 2021
Pages : 231 pages
This novel consists of 4 chapters. Each tells a different story from different phases of the narrator’s life throughout his early adulthood. While writing this rant/review, I tried to recall the name of the main character/narrator of the stories, because the book is being told in the first person, and I felt like his name didn’t mention much. Also, the writings of these 4 stories are pretty descriptive without having too many dialogues between the people. Some scenes/bits of the story also feel like a memoir, even an autobiographical one. However, I did recall one syllable of the narrator's name, Young.
Part one of the book—the first chapter, is titled “Jaehee”, and tells the story of his undergraduate year majoring in French literature and he happened to meet, befriend and eventually become best friend and roommate with a girl named Jaehee. I would say that this chapter is probably the most easily digested read among other chapters in this book, which means it’s not as depressing as the other 3 chapters. This chapter covers the dynamics of friendship between a gay man and an ally cis-heterosexual woman during their college years navigating the transition phase from their teenage self into a young adult, living their best life while maintaining their academic study and societal judgments. I truly love how their platonic friendship going, how they basically each found their chosen family in each other and being each other’s ride-or-die. I want to say that this chapter, is truly a good introduction to Young’s character. His sassiness and cynical attitude towards the world are well-written because despite how cool and frankly opinionated he is, personally, this guy is just like anyone else. Having prejudices even over Jaehee, well obviously, before he gets to know her better, and then has his prejudices challenged and broken. And, that’s what’s making it real because as a gay man in a considerably conservative country, in a time when its society still at its peak of hating the idea that there’s a sexuality other than heterosexual, Young held the hope of being accepted without prejudice meanwhile he, himself having all sorts of prejudices. And reading how he developed into someone who adored Jaehee like a sister was pretty heartwarming. My favourite scene would be the abortion clinic scene, how the receptionist/nurse helps Jaehee find other clinics that will perform the procedure and how he takes care of Jaehee after she did the abortion (AND I PRAY TO GOD TO NOT BOMBED IT IN THE ADAPTATION I SWEAR). I love this chapter so much, I didn’t see that the next chapter would turn me upside down.
The book's second chapter is about Young's first experience falling in love. And he fell in deep. Even after the relationship ended, he felt he wouldn’t be falling in love with another person as much as he loved this guy. This guy in question was 12 years older than Young. So, it’s very interesting to see the dynamic of a man in his 20s, with his understanding of the world, opinionated trying to connect with a closeted, homophobic middle-aged man. My heart breaks for Young in this chapter. Because in this chapter he is not only dealing with his love life but he is also in the phase in his life that he has to take care of his cancer-stricken mom. He has to face the history of being admitted by his mom into a psychiatric hospital during the summer holiday in his school year to deal with disapproved “sexuality” and how he just wants his mom to apologize to him. I don’t know what’s wrong with the week I eventually read and finished the book, because all the media I consumed that week talked about how there will be some tectonic shift in the children that live and caring sick and ageing parents, and this chapter is one of them. And boy I didn’t see it coming. I mean, how could I when the title of the chapter is “A Bite of Rockfish, Taste the Universe”
The third part of the book, where the title of the book came from, is titled “Love in the Big City”. In this chapter, the readers just found out that Young has ‘Kylie’. Kylie is a name he used to call his condition, AIDS. Having AIDS, and as a gay partygoer in Seoul, he met Gyu-ho—whom Young will claim as the great love of his life. Even when he doesn’t believe in love anymore (after breaking up with his last boyfriend, the 12 years-older-than-him guy). In this chapter, we see how Young deals with many opportunities that came in his life being fettered because of his condition. Even his love life.
The final chapter, “Late Rainy Season Vacation” of the book is the part where he tried to accept who he's developing into. Every part of him that makes him, him. Set in Bangkok, the second time he visited the city, having a nostalgia for the last time he visited Bangkok, trying to reach some clarity of his reality AFTER. Let’s end it at that, because that would be a big spoiler and I still haven’t moved on from it.
Although I mentioned that this book covers each 4 different phases of Young’s life, there’s an invisible thread in the narrative that the reader probably won’t catch up with after reaching the 3rd chapter, the timeline of the stories itself overlaps and eventually makes one compact, solid, whole book, wrapping up monumental life events of a South Korean gay man in his 20s navigating adulthood in the 2010s. And there’s something that I curious about how it panned out because it wasn’t expressed in the book (Heads up, SPOILER! How Jaehee would’ve reacted that her best friend contracted HIV, because somehow after he was discharged early from the military service due to the diagnosis, and Jaehee got married, she disappeared from his narrative. I had a hard time believing it. I mean she came up once but that’s about it.)
My main issue with this book is probably the translation. It’s not a bad translation, at all. But what makes it a little harder for me to read it is that Anton Hur—the translator, is using so many difficult English words that not even Google Translate could translate. So, I have to go to Oxford dict. and Merriam Webster dict. But, that’s the art of translation, isn’t it? When you’re translating a literary work, you’re not just translating the word, but you translate a whole language which means you have to translate context, cultural and history of time. Hur did a good job, it’s just my problem. The book will worth your time but if you’re expecting full-on feel-good reading, you might want to read something else.
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