I'll Be Right There: A Novel

I think the first thing I should say about this book is: it's a slow burn. There will be things happening even up to around two thirds in that'll leave you going "what?" Little hints and suggestions that won't make sense until the last quarter or so, where the book ties it all together.The book itself is focused on three characters, with a sort of ancillary fourth. Connecting all the characters is Professor Yoon, who acts as something like a guiding influence on the characters, even if he himself appears relatively infrequently.The narrator, Jung Yoon, is a literate, educated South Korean, who, at the beginning of the book, is returning to university from a hiatus after her mother's death. Her love interest is Myungsuh, a man she meets in Professor Yoon's class. Miru, Myungsuh's childhood friend and suffering a powerful psychological burden due to a family tragedy, audits Professor Yoon's class beside Myungsuh, having withdrawn from the her own university. Brought together under Professor Yoon's intense, idealistic tutelage, the three develop a close, almost familial bond.Meanwhile, Jung Yoon's childhood friend Dahn nurses a long-standing love of Jung Yoon, one that Jung Yoon is both hot and cold to, seemingly unable to definitively piece out her relationship with him.The structure of the book is mostly centered on Jung Yoon's later recollections of the era, separated by somewhat interstitial entries from Myungsuh's journal which provide his perspective on things. A certain chapter of the book becomes quasi-epistolary, though the import of this is made clear toward the end of the chapter.The book itself is partially a love story, but extends further than that. Yoon, Miru, and Myungsuh very much form a mutually-supporting unit, something more akin to a family than a romance. Indeed, Yoon and Myungsuh's romance seems almost platonic: as far as I can recall, their romance is deeply felt, but largely limited to admissions of love. In many ways, each character seems like they are more searching to figure out their own problems and issues, with the other two slotting into the painful gaps in each other's lives.This isn't to say that the relationships aren't touching or are badly done: they're very obviously heartfelt and sincere and their affections run deep. But they're affections proffered and received by very wounded, imperfect people who struggle not only to come to terms with themselves, but with the love, romantic or platonic, offered to them. They seem, often, at a loss as to how to accept (or even offer) that affection.Technically, the book occurs in the midst of South Korea's transition to democracy and the constant protests that brought about the fall of the military regime under Park Chung-hee. However, the author notes - and it's very clear in the book - that the demonstrations and unrest are never really solidly linked to that era, and the book forswears discussing politics or the issues of the day in order to focus on the lives of these three. In many ways, the chaotic and, really, unexplained demonstrations reflect the chaos and turmoil of the characters themselves as they try to come to terms with first loves, tragedy, adult life. Linking the demonstrations temporally and solidly to the anti-Park demonstrations would undermine the universality of them, so, for most of the book, they're "background noise" of sorts.For them, as for the demonstrations, the uprising is a double-edged sword of the blossoming of youth, a release of energy that serves both to brush away the old and make way for the new, but doing so in a way that's a long, hurtful process that we can never really live down. Just as the pro-democracy protests in South Korea (or 60s America anti-war protests, for that matter) live on in the national consciousness, so too do those painful transformations we face when entering adulthood, when we discover love, when we first begin to build our own tribes or families from friends and lovers.As I said, many of these things, and the character motivations, become clear only toward the end of the book. For much of the work, the author appears to lay the groundwork of characterization, a slow ramping up. Things occur in the book, or characters do or say things, that will only make sense in the last quarter, when they're tied together or sufficient backstory is given.Stick with it, and the book will tie things together at the end.

Myungsuh tells Jung Yoon "Let's remember his day forever". This book then is the story of her regret that she didn't say, "I'll be right there." Living in the political unrest of 1980's South Korea, Yoon's losses nonetheless less are only mirrored by the uncertainty around her. Three friends, Yoon, Myungsuh, and Miru live the regrets of love not grasped tighter or seen for the gift it had been. Each has lost deeply, one dramatically in the backlash of the Revolution.Yoon and her friends are literate and self exploratory. This book highlights the fears of their lives being meaningless. Their struggles with grief are expressed beautifully and deftly in a way that fully engages the reader. Yoon's mother's death is highlighted in her haunting shadow of loss memory. She had been sent away by her mother who did not want Yoon to witness her painful death. Instead Yoon finds herself drawn to the cocooning and insulation of sharing losses with friends. The world's violent intrusions into their lives serve to deepen but stress the strength of their ties.Still each friend believes that he/she has failed in "being there" in some key way. Strikingly, they had in fact given all they could give as flawed humans. The chaos of the setting serves in a bit of perversity to highlight the universality of feelings as they force their way to consciousness. The author has a gift for returning the reader to the storm of young adulthood while avoiding maudlin overstatement. This is a fine young writer living up to the promise of her first book. Her work is lovely.

I always enjoy grabbing something by someone, when I know little of either and leaping right into the book. I'll Be Right There did not disappoint, bore, confuse or annoy, always an added bonus.The tale is somewhat of a controlled meander, and at times throughout I worried that I would lose interest among the woven story-lines and occasionally long chapters. Nope. Shin somehow manages to pull interest even though her tale does not contain the typical dramas authors use to make you turn the page. Even stranger is that I usually prefer a dose of cheesy suspense to maintain my interest, but found myself buried in this book without obvious motivations.I'll Be Right There is drenched in philosophy without being overblown, and while tragic in its own right, I would say is less tear-jerker and more thoughtfully sad. As hinted before, timelines and perspectives dance around in this novel, something which usually throws a doofus reader like myself, however I rarely ever felt like I lost my way through the book, and when I did not for long.Shin shows a unique talent in being able to tell a story where the depth of the characters experience plays dominates the front of the novel, rather than melodramatic events. I'll Be Right There, while admittedly sounding like a shallow romance is anything but.

Kyung-Sook Shin has crafted a beautiful coming-of-age novel in "I'll Be Right There." The story is told through the memories of the main character, Yoon, and the journal entries of her college boyfriend. Through their eyes, the reader can see the political unrest in South Korea in the 1980's, the struggle of the characters in finding a place where they belong, and how one person can influence your life.Yoon and her friends meet in a college class and are quickly inseparable. They connect over poetry and philosophy, and struggle together through hardship and loss.I found the style of reading easy to read. While the story didn't move fast, it wasn't so slow that I felt bored. I was continually drawn in to read the next chapter, and I ended up finishing over the course of two days. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a story full of emotion.

Great book. As you get into it, it develops into a superb novel about a tight nit group of university students (and post university) during the korean troubles in the 80's and early 90's. So good i started rereading as soon as i finished it

Una de mis lecturas favoritas de este año. Este libro te atrapa desde la primera página y sin duda voy a leerlo cada año para volver a Seúl en los años 80 junto a sus personajes a los que le cogí mucho cariño.

Best book of Kyung Sook Shin. Interesting plot and story line. And realised that there are so much to understand about history and life in South Korea.

This was quite a strange story especially for someone who doesn't know much about Korea. That said, it gave me an idea of what Korea was like during the 1980's. The storyline itself is rather poetic.

I love this writer. A beautiful melancholy book which opens up Korean culture and events.