Yun Ko Eun's collection of short stories are simply told yet not so simple to understand. They are usually about everyday things looked at from different angles, with a bit of whimsy thrown in. I found myself comparing her writing to Haruki Murakami for it's clean writing and to Mona Awad for it's surreal imagery. My two favourite stories were the two longest ones, Table for One, a story about a woman taking a class on how to eat in public alone and enjoy it, and Don't Cry, Hongdo, a story about a young girl and her relationship with her mother, her homeroom teacher and sugar.

Yun Ko Eun has a specific writing style, all her stories were told in the same consistent tone. Truth be told, I'm not sure if I fully understood where she was taking me, but I followed along as best as I could.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A solid collection of short stories about urban life. My favourites were the stories with unhinged characters and humour. The translated prose read smoothly.

Table For One 8/10
A subtly comedic story with sad undertones. I liked the concept and the bizarreness.

Sweet Escape 9/10
I usually don't like longer stories, but I couldn't get enough of this one. I loved the humour and the obsessive, paranoid character's voice.

Invader Graphic 5/10
Not for me. I'm not a fan of metafiction in short stories. It's too ambitious for the short form and I always end up disliking either the main story or the meta story. I liked a few paragraphs here and there.

Hyeonmong Park's Hall Of Dreams 8/10
This story would be better told from the POV of the main character instead of from the POV of the main character's employee. There was no need for the story to be filtered through an inactive character who observes the active main character. This story was long for my liking, otherwise I loved it.

Roadkill 4/10
I couldn't get into this one. Too long. I wanted to skim, which almost never happens to me.

Time Capsule 1994 6/10
I was confused at some points but it was engaging. I'm not the biggest fan of dual timeline short stories.

Iceland 10/10
Amazing. I loved the obsessive main character. The humour resonated with me. But I felt like the ending was tame compared to the rest of the story.

Piercing 9.5/10
Apart from the disjointedness this was great. Kinda disturbing though.

Don't Cry, Hongdo 9/10
I had low expectations for this story when I saw how long it was. I don't like longer short stories but this was very good. The concept: so good. The voice: so good. The descriptions: so good. But the story's second half was not as strong as the first.

I love a good short story collection! This collection was a bit of a challenge to read consistently,or at my normal pace due to the translation aspect, but I would still recommend it if you are comfortable with a less than smooth reading experience!

This is a collection of short stories from Yun Ko-eun. The stories range from quirky to surreal and poke fun at modern Korean society. There are some stories I liked more than others (as typical with short story collections) but overall the book was enjoyable and I'm going to look out for more work by the author. I particularly liked Hyeonmong Park's Hall of Dreams and the titular story.