Years and Years, Hwang Jungeun, tr. Janet Hong

This is a real slow burn of a novel. Very short (only 116 pages!) but it feels like a gradual buildup, layering different perspectives and moments in time. It was a fascinating contrast to another novel I read recently and was blown away by, Mikołaj Grynberg’s Poufne: both are stories of multiple generations, and how they weather various historical traumas. But where Grynberg’s novel is a marvel of austerity, Hwang Jungeun’s has a more bustling quality. Not cozy, not crowded — I’m struggling to think of the word. It’s like, if Poufne makes you conscious of the distance and separation between people, Years and Years makes you aware of all these bodies in proximity, jostling each other, existing side by side. An intimacy of proximity, rather than emotional or intellectual communion. It’s significant that where the Polish novel rarely, if ever, uses any characters’ names, the Korean novel uses them all the time — remarkable what a difference it makes.