Ok, so I saw this on display at a bookstore, and I knew it was a big hit in South Korea, and the title is winsome, and it’s quite short, and it’s translated by Anton Hur, who also did Cursed Bunny (which is great) and is very charming on Twitter, so why not, I checked it out on audiobook. The preamble explains that the narrator/author has struggled with depression her whole life and the book is a transcript of her sessions with her therapist and I was like, ok, sure, interesting idea for a novel, but then it turned out that it…wasn’t a novel.
I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed it, exactly. But if the point of literature is to train your moral capacities by making you sympathize with people you otherwise wouldn’t (I don’t believe this, but some people do), then reading this book is a good exercise. It describes the struggles of a person I found largely unrelatable and quite unsympathetic — self-absorbed, shallow, self-destructive — who is seemingly trying to change, and is certainly quite miserable. So one ought to have fellow-feeling and sympathy for this person. It’s not so easy to do, often.
It’s sort of interesting to listen in on the therapy sessions, because therapy is interesting, but it’s also not that interesting, because it’s mostly fairly predictable. And somewhat maddening that people need someone to talk them through why they shouldn’t care so much about whether their boyfriend’s friends think that they’re attractive. But they do! And if reading this book helps other people with similar problems: great!
But what does this book do for me? It makes me somewhat annoyed at my fellow humans, and then feel guilty for my uncharitable feelings. Maybe something I should talk to my own therapist about 😆
I wish the book invited more reflection on how society feeds, and fosters, these various pathologies, but that’s not what therapy does, is it? But it could be what books like this do, if they wanted to. Why don’t they want to, I wonder.
Kasia Reads 