Thank you publisher for the approved copy. Unfortunately, the font and format in both kindle and in-app versions are hard to read. I decided to check it out when it officially comes out, but thank you again for the arc!

Thank you so much, @netgalley and the publisher, for the ARC of Table for One: Stories by Yun Ko-Eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler.

The book was a collection of 9 stories and it was truly a rollercoaster ride of emotions.
One word in which I would describe this book is; obsession!

All the stories follow a specific theme and they are mostly about extreme level of obsessions about any particular thing in question. The idea of escaping the routine and monotony of the daily life and how the protagonists focus their energies in following those hobbies or interests quite obsessively until the plot twists happen is absolutely intriguing and it keeps the reader hooked.

I couldn’t make sense at some points but this book was such a different one from the other books.

The human emotions of loneliness, boredom, passions, burn-out from the strict jobs and routines and relationships are portrayed in a unique way.


Table for One: an unknown narrator becomes an expert at eating alone. This reads like a documentary at times but is also very relatable to everyone who is afraid of eating or doing stuff alone.

Sweet Escape: the obsession with bedbugs was a bit too much and it leaves you claustrophobic but the twist was a good one.

Invader Graphic: It was another tale of being obsessed with invader graphics to escape the routine but the ending got me confused.

Hyeonmong Park’s Hall of Dreams: this was truly weird. But also the concept of too much competition and the war between the original creators and the ones that came after was all too real. The idea of selling dreams or in fact selling just about everything that exists was quite interesting.

Roadkill: To be trapped in a Motel in a snowstorm was truly apocalyptic. The element of magical realism was just too good. It gave me the creeps for real.

Time Capsule 1994: This got me nostalgic with the concept of burying a time capsule with all the things that happened ages ago. But I couldn’t get the ending.

Iceland: The obsession with Iceland was literally on another level in this story.

Piercing: This broke my heart. It had its share of violence and the idea of patriarchy and how men want to control literally everything and consider women’s bodies as objects was scary, to say the least.

Don’t Cry, Hongdo: this is very relatable especially how everything with the word “organic” sells these days. It is also about a child’s loneliness because of constantly being misunderstood. It touches many intense themes.

Like her novel, "The Disaster Tourist", Yun Ko-eun's stories are captivating Kafkaesque tales. In one story, a woman enrolls in a course to learn how to eat alone in restaurants; in another, a man wears the pajamas of his customers and sells them dreams when they return; a man becomes trapped in a blizzard and is forced to stay in a seemingly empty motel stocked with hundreds of vending machines, where he cannot get in contact with any manager but still somehow receives traffic fines in the mail for his illegally parked car stuck in the snow; after taking an online quiz which tells her she only has a 2.3% match with her home country of Korea but a 42% match with Iceland, a woman joins an online fan group and memorizes every detail of the culture and geography of this Nordic island. Ko-eun's characters are often alienated and lonely—divorced mothers, orphaned children, disaffected workers, unemployed job-seekers, who sublimate their existential angst into petty paranoia: in one story, a man loses his job and, instead of applying for a new one, becomes increasingly worried about a potential invasion of bed-bugs in his apartment complex; in another, a mother rails against junk food in the school, carcinogenic chemicals in her cosmetics, and anyone wearing a hat—a potential kidnapper. The characters are desperate to find some authority who can give them advice and certainty: a woman watches an expert who can order beef stew by herself and even dares to ask for a fan to be turned on; another woman attends the lectures of an expert on Iceland, someone who lived there, and asks her everything (every topic from its glaciers to pizza joints).

Yun Ko-eun's characters are all anxious—worried about hidden dangers and imminent catastrophe—and yet, in each of the stories, their neurotic angst is paradoxically both a product of modern society and a precondition for the community they construct. The woman who has no one to eat with during her lunch-breaks ironically finds purpose and belonging in a school for people nervous about eating alone; the man who worries about bed-bugs ironically gets to know his neighbors better and become more involved in their lives; the woman afraid of the dietary risks of processed food joins an informal parents' association which agitates for organic food. In her comic, surreal style, Yun Ko-eun shows how loneliness and insecurity are a powerful basis for affinity with other lonely, insecure people who can indulge their paranoid fears. The remedy for neurosis isn't stability but dreams and fiction—the man who sells dreams finds that, after spending his whole life ignored, he can "assert his existence by dreaming"; a girl discovers that drawings are more real and powerful when she refuses to draw her school exactly as it really is but rather how she imagines it—a prison surrounded by a cavalcade of eccentric street hawkers and malingerers, a cotton-candy man, a fish man, a flasher.

These stories reminded me of Kikuko Tsumura's "There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job" and Hiroki Oyamada's "The Factory"—in each of Ko-eun's stories, work seems depressingly meaningless and trivial; the world is strange and surreal; and yet the characters find meaning in their re-imagination of the world around them, bonding with likeminded outcasts and finding solidarity in the absurd.

This was an interesting fiction anthology. I enjoyed the narrative style of each piece. Of the nine stories in the anthology I most enjoyed Table for One, Invader Graphic and Hyeonmong Park's Hall of Dreams. Each story was different but they were connected on their themes of loneliness, family relationships and introspection. Parts of this collection were more surrealist which made it interesting.

I think this is a good collection of stories if you are looking for something shorter to read, and something that makes you reflect on the actions of the characters and human condition.

Table for One, the first and titular story was my favorite. It is the story of a young woman learning to eat alone. She enrolls in a course which teaches her and others the rhythm of eating alone. I appreciated the musical analogy, and the way four-four time or other time signatures were assigned to different meals.

This is definitely a book you need to read a second time to further appreciate the nuance and messaging within the stories.

Thank you NetGalley for the e-ARC.

I enjoyed reading this book a lot. I always really appreciate getting to hear the protagonist's unfiltered thoughts and perspectives on the world, and I loved the wit and depth that the author was able to convey in the characters' personalities in a relatively short book.

This book by Korean author Yun Ko-eun is a creative one. It is filled with unrelated short stories. Well, the stories are long short stories, like little novellas. They each delve into different idiosyncrasies of human nature. They get into deep detail, sometimes surprising, sometimes even gross detail, but always brutally honest. There is some repetitiveness within these stories, as the author sometimes drives the point home. However, the execution is clever and unique, and the author has talent.

Overall I found this collection a little slow and meandering, and while a couple of the stories were interesting, I think the whole premise of commentary on mundanity and the ordinary was lost on me. I thought the first three stories were the best, but at times even they felt a little too long, a little too drawn out, and I found myself checking exactly how many more pages of the story I had to get through.

I really wanted to like this, but it just wasn't a good match.

This was an interesting fiction collection. The tone was pretty conversational throughout, with the material ranging from strange to mundane. A few of the stories felt like they went on for a bit too long when they could have had very impactful and succinct endings if they were shorter. But I loved this author’s creativity and how things were sometimes worded. Example: saying that throughout your life in your relationships, from family members to partners, you are basically handed from person to person like a baton. I'll comment briefly on each story individually.

Table For One - I would definitely need to take this class for overcoming your anxiety about eating alone in public, but I would be too mortified to do the homework. Though I absolutely wanted to eat all of that delicious food! The idea of a barbecue restaurant being the hardest level was very funny.

Sweet Escape - A man becomes OBSESSED with preventing bedbugs from getting into his home. The way this story educates you about bedbugs in general made even me more paranoid. Though as you can probably imagine, the residents in this story take things to absolute extremes.

Invader Graphic - This one is odd. A writer uses the public bathroom/lounge area of a department store as an office to write her book, and the paragraphs switch back and forth between her life and the plot of the book she’s trying to write. I liked how the author wrapped everything up in this one. There's a plotline about Space Invader imagery showing up as graffiti around the city, and that seemed like such a random thing to write about but the author made it work.

Hyeonmong Park’s Hall of Dreams - This story was by far my favorite. As someone with an “Inception” tattoo, I’m a sucker for anything with dream-related content and I loved the concept here. (Essentially, a dream vendor.) I do think the story was a little too long and I didn’t completely understand the ending, but I still really liked it.

Roadkill - A very depressing story about a hotel with vending machines on a conveyor belt. It ends up being about the cruelty and hopelessness of life in general. 

Time Capsule 1994 - Another sad story, about the passage of time and a symbolic emptiness. I like how the author chooses things to use as metaphors that don’t feel terribly obvious, but they work well for the stories.

Iceland - Probably least favorite story. It’s just not as interesting as the others. The narrator becomes very interested in the country of Iceland and considers moving there. Not a lot more to it than that. 

Piercing - A story that’s a little disjointed and contains pretty gross descriptions of infected piercings. Something bad happens to a dog in this one, too. Pretty disturbing ending that kind of comes out of nowhere.

Don’t Cry, Hongdo - My other least favorite, probably. About a kid who just wants to eat junk food but her mother insists on only organic. There’s more to it than that, and it did have some funny statements such as: “My teacher took us to McDonalds, like a dork.” But parts of it were confusing and I couldn’t quite understand exactly what was happening, and the young girl’s crush on her teacher was unsettling.

Overall, a pretty decent collection. I'm giving it a 3.5. I think it was worth reading just for the dream story and the title story alone.

TW: Animal abuse/death, Suicide, Bullying, Sexual harassment

I really enjoyed these short stories! Not all to the same extent but even the, let's say "least good" ones, were still very interesting to read. I'd say my favorites were the first five. But overall this was one of the best collections I've read in a long while and I will definitely be reading more from the author.

Thank you NetGalley and Columbia University Press for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Table for One" by Yun Ko-eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler, is a Korean short story collection. It features nine distinct genre-bending stories that are unique and unsettling, and sometimes comedic. My favorite stories from the collection are "Sweet Escape," "Invader Graphic," "Roadkill," and "don't Cry, hongdo."

In "Sweet Escape," an unemployed man becomes obsessed with bed bugs. In "Invader Graphic," a freeloader kleptomaniac amateur writer takes advantage of the spaces around her. "Roadkill" features a vending machine manager who gets stranded at a claustrophobic hotel during a seemingly never-ending blizzard (this one has Cronenberg written all over it, imo). In "don't Cry, hongdo," a fourth-grade girl tries to set up her organic food-loving mother with her bachelor homeroom teacher.

The other stories in the collection, "Table for One," "Hyeonmong Park's Hall of Dreams" (comparisons to Satoshi Kon/Junji Ito), "Time Capsule 1994," "Iceland," and "Piercing," were also strong, but they didn't grab my attention as much as the ones mentioned above. At times, I found some of these stories to be a little dry (perhaps due to the translation?) and slow-moving. However, all the stories were unique and dark while balancing a sort of uncanny humor. Even though the short stories were steeped in Korean social commentary, I was still able to draw parallels to Western sociopolitical and socioeconomic dynamics, giving credence to the author's ability to transcend cultural boundaries with her exploration of ubiquitous themes and issues.

Thank you to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first time reading a short story collection and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It was very thought provoking and I would definitely recommend.

I really enjoyed the first story, it was odd and whimsy, but with real commentary that I personally related to. There were a few stories that I really enjoyed for the same reasons, but others fell a little short or didn't do it for me. I also enjoyed the bits of connections that I spotted in some of the stories. It is typical of collections that some will work and others won't for different readers, but this is a well-crafted short story collection and I would recommend it!

Table For One is a collection of indelible short stories by contemporary South Korean author Yun Ko-eun. Her fiction is bursting with images that toe the line between realism and the fantastic, and her characters are quirky, lonely, hopeless, sad, isolated... unique, just like her stories. There are some that I enjoyed reading more than others, the titular one being my absolute favorite, but overall they are all pretty good! I would recommend this book if you enjoy literary translated fiction and characters finding themselves in surreal situations.
4 stars.

* I'd like to thank Yun Ko-eun, Columbia University Press and NetGalley for providing this ebook in exchange for my honest review.

I love these types of stories where it´s unhinged and funny at the same time, a sort of chaotic feeling but making sense at the same time. I think my favorite ones were Iceland and Table for one, but overall it was a solid read and will check it out other works by the same author !!

As with most collections of short stories, Table for One has its moments. I enjoyed the stories that relied more on the absurd rather than the surreal - the latter suffers from endings that fall flat after slowly constructing a weird plot and trying to tie everything up pretty fast (think Iceland vs Roadkill or Table for One vs Hall of Dreams).

— 3.5 stars ✰

In a series of short stories, Yun Ko-eun examines solitary city dwellers and highlights their sense of isolation stemming from Korean urban culture, particularly focusing on characters being driven to obsession by their segregation from society. Preoccupied with their lone state, these characters often find themselves feeling increasingly alienated from others around them, focusing on random concepts like bedbugs to give their life meaning. There is often a strong theme of music and rhythm permeating these stories, the writer does a compelling job when it comes to descriptions, seamlessly blending together genres such as thriller, horror, magical realism and fiction, whilst also merging together two completely different concepts, and yet somehow this whole kaleidoscope seems to work. As an example, there is an idea presented in the first story that each type of food (sushi, steak..) has its own chewing rhythm, which can relate to different types of classical dance music (waltz, tango..).

Considering that this is a debut, it is a very strong one.

Table for one = 4 stars

It centres around a shy office worker as she attends a course designed to build her confidence and teach her to enjoy her solidarity as she lunches. I think many readers would be able to relate to this main character, who constantly seeks approval and thus picks lunch spots further away from the office, in hopes to avoid her colleagues seeing her all by herself. Something about this story felt so familiar and yet the concept of loneliness and self-confidence was explored in an incredibly unique way. I really loved this story.

Sweet escape = 3.5 stars

Not my favourite of the batch but still a very strong contender. Here we explore the life of a man becoming madly obsessed with bedbugs. We follow him from the very beginning, when he only just hears this notion mentioned in the news, until they are effectively the only thing at the forefront of his mind. Even though this story focuses around bedbugs as the main theme, it was executed so well that I really got to feel the emotions of the narrator.

Invader graphic = 3.75 stars

Narrated by a woman who spends most of her time in a shopping mall trying to live entirely of free products, we get to see her writing her novel camped out in the bathrooms. We got glimpses of both the woman’s life and the life of the main character in her story, which was an interesting writing concept. As the shopping mall transitions into a more capitalist state, the narrator finds herself now having to provide a receipt in order to sit in cafes and being kicked out by cleaners who spot her staying in one s

Hyeonmong Park's Hall of Dreams = 2.5 stars

Initially, the concept of this was very intriguing, but I felt like it was another story exploring the theme of obsession and I grew a little bored of it. Yet, the sense of the characters lives getting out of hand almost reminded me of the nature of Junji Ito’s horror mangas.

Roadkill = 5 stars

This story was by far my favourite one, having read it a few days ago, I still find myself thinking about it as I go about my day-to-day tasks. A man finds himself in an isolated motel, which seems to have a large selection of vending machines, yet he never runs into other visitors. As it happens, he finds himself snowed in and has to figure out what to do next. In a blend of horror and thriller, this story had me on the edge of my seat.

Time capsule 1994 = 3.25 stars

The concept of this story was so interesting and it was a nice spin to tell it from the perspective of an unlikeable main character. Again, it did explore the concept of obsession and paranoia, but didn’t feel too repetitive.

Iceland = 3.75

As someone who is a fan of the post-rock band Sigur Rós, I enjoyed a whole story based around a protagonist, who is dissatisfied with life becoming increasingly obsessed with Iceland after undertaking a country compatibility quiz.

Piercing = 4.5

This story was so good and I loved how disturbing this felt. Essentially, we follow a man who has separated from his wife. He takes consolation in piercings even though they cause him profound pain and discomfort, which could be an interesting psychological angle to explore. The author brushes over the idea that pain may be a way for him to justify his trauma related to the passing away of his dog, but the interpretation if very much left to the reader.

Don’t Cry, Hongdo = 3 stars

As one of the longest stories in the collection, ‘Don’t cry Hongdo’ is a coming of age tale told through the perspective of a schoolgirl. As the craze for organic food takes off around her, she finds her school implementing a vast array of new rules and standards, which banishes the snack vendors outside her school gates that she has become so accustomed to. This story felt very much like a reflection of society.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for providing me with early access!

First of all, the cover intrigued me; a zebra having a meal, obviously I had to read the description. I find myself attracted to east Asian literature, they have an element of normal, everyday, monotonous life with a surrealist element. This book focuses more on loneliness and obsession.
I found that it was dragging after the first couple of stories, which made it difficult to finish but I persevered.

Yun Ko-eun's "Table for One" translated by Lizzie Buehler is a thought-provoking short story collection that delves into the complexities of solitude and self-discovery. Ko-eun weaves tales that resonate with the nuances of human experience, exploring the often-overlooked moments of isolation. Each story is a literary gem, offering a glimpse into the lives of characters navigating loneliness, introspection, and the search for connection. The author's prose is both elegant and haunting, capturing the essence of solitude in a way that lingers in the reader's mind. "Table for One" is a captivating exploration of the human condition, skillfully crafted with sensitivity and insight.

Surreal collection of short stories: a class to learn how to eat at a restaurant alone, an obsession with bedbugs, dreams...Fun and thought provoking stories about urban life.

Terrible
Did not finish
I anticipated it to be a little different to what I would usually read but this genuinely just felt like babbling.
The book has various different short stories but I couldn’t bring my self to try any others and closed the book never to be read again.