SPRING ON THE PENINSULA

Shin’s unforgettable debut novel follows 30-something Kai as he navigates a painful breakup in Seoul.

Spending his evenings drinking in late-night bars and engaging in fleeting affairs with both men and women, Kai attempts to stave off the loneliness that’s hounded him since his partner left. He treks up a mountain in a snowstorm, ill-equipped and overcome with a kind of manic, reckless abandon. He visits his recently separated parents, brooding over their decision to part ways. He trespasses on his brother’s self-imposed isolation in hopes of rekindling their bond. Though his existential angst is poignant, his cynical derision toward others and morally dubious behavior makes him an unsympathetic protagonist. (Several of his sexual liaisons take a decidedly dark turn, forcing the reader to ponder the implications of a power imbalance in the bedroom—and Kai’s capacity for abuse.) Obsessively agonizing over his partner’s desertion, Kai becomes increasingly nihilistic—an ethos shared by his close friends, all of whom are facing their own crises. The perspective occasionally switches from Kai to his various friends, revealing not only their mixed feelings toward him but the toll that loveless relationships, addiction, violence, and warped self-image have taken on millennials. Shin suggests that the thread connecting their suffering is a sense of aimlessness, an inexorable void that none of them seem able to fill. Given that most of the characters are unlikable and the novel’s milieu is relentlessly bleak, the reader can’t be expected to feel a great deal of sympathy for Kai or his friends. But the skill with which the novel is crafted—blurring the distinctions between daydream, fantasy, and reality with lilting, metaphorical prose—is undeniable. Shin reinforces the directionless felt by her characters with a meandering, wonderfully unhurried plot. In the same way, the sense of disorientation prompted in the reader by the book’s shifting perspective and formal experimentation is undoubtedly designed to mirror the uncertainty felt by the characters. Shin masterfully locates the individual struggle to find meaning within a broader discourse, tussling with notions of class, gender, sexuality, generational divides, and war.

A snapshot of a generation hopelessly conscious of their parents’ failures, at a loss as to how to proceed.