Book Review: Love in the Big City is the first book published in English by this new South Korean author. Being bad Buddhists there's much we want from the world, but life ensures we don't get what we desire, and when we do we may fail to accept it. That thought remained after reading this novel about love: love of friends, family love, love of lovers. While Park's focus is clear, effective, and valuable, the story is more simply about people, human beings, those entities we try constantly to understand. Anyone will find some tugging of the heart: a mother dying of cancer, a feeling unspoken, recognizing a kindness. The honest and straightforward presentation of the four interrelated stories worked well in this brief coming of age story. The protagonist matures, realizing that people are beautiful because we love them, we don't love them because they're beautiful. While reading I wondered what This Side of Paradise would've been like if Fitzgerald could have written with the simple honesty of Love in the Big City. There's a hint of the "gay love is bad love" feeling, but isn't it just that for everyone love doesn't work out until it does. Any love can be miserable. Life is a series of failed relationships until one doesn't. This is a book I could read again in a year and find more to value. I thought I had some knowledge of Korean culture, but Love in the Big City required several searches for background, although it's wonderfully translated by Anton Hur. [4★]
No comments:
Post a Comment