The writing here is delectable, I gobbled up Shin's sentences. The story itself too, the emotions well-rendered, the social commentary too. Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley!

Spring on the Peninsula was a really interesting read. I appreciated the history and character study. I'd read more from this author.

Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.


This book was was litfic in all seriousness, and I wish I could have been a better reader for it. I did find it interesting and artful, but I think my resistance to litfic as a genre and my lack of what it’s like to live in Seoul really got in the way.

Spring on the Peninsula mostly follows Kai, a sexually fluid libertine in his thirties who has just been abandoned by his (male) lover of the previous decade, as he attempts to deal with his heartbreak and find meaning in his life. There’s more here, though, as the novel roams restlessly from Kai to his family (his long-married parents are separating, his brother is a borderline reclusive following experiences in the military) to his equally dissatisfied friends (Han, Jung, Min, and Yoon, of whom Jung maybe gets the most page time). Kai is not a particular sympathetic character, nor is anyone around him (even one of his lovers, a depressed hairdresser with very little hope for herself or her life brutally beats her own own) which does it make somewhat difficult to emotionally invest in the book. Not that I’m sure I was supposed to? I did appreciate, however, that Kai’s sexual fluidity is presented as broadly unremarkable.

The writing is here is extremely dense and often abstract, though I don’t to know degree that’s about the translation. There are some really striking moments. For example:

"Grief never stays where you think it is going to rest. You think it has spent itself, and it persists; you feel like luxuriating in it, but then only pickings are left to play with. Willful creature, this grief."

But others I utterly failed to connect with. But, as I said above, I do think a lot of this was a me problem. Spring in the Peninsula is clearly a novel with a lot to say about life in contemporary Korea. Its personal and political are utterly inseparable, its characters as fatigued and worn down and cynical as they feel their country has become. I just honestly wish I’d been able to access any of this better.

Which is very much on me.