Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: thoughts. A book review.

This is the kind of book I'm drawn to when life speeds up. Not the kind where you're embracing the speed and things are going the way you want it; not the external world. I'm talking about internally, when my thoughts start to speed up, running one-hundred miles an hour and I can't even sit through a paragraph of a book without my mind flittering off to what my plan is after I finish the next chapter.

In a world where speed is ground-breaking, our minds now struggle to just be.

Slice-of-life fiction doesn't get better than eastern fiction, and I can write an essay about the general sense of community that's treasured in the east and the individuality complex that's pushed in the west (and I probably will at some point), but I only want to say that translated fiction from China, Japan, and Korea within this genre all have something in common that brings me a sense of peace - cats and books. There's such an expansive niche of fiction that falls into those two categories and I couldn't be more happy about it, so I knew when I saw this book that I needed to read it, I needed to know what it said.

This book is about finding your way when the speed and ungratefulness of the world wears you down and reminding yourself what it feels like to actually live, as a human with needs. To slow down. To value other humans around you and to seek out help, even with little luxuries like the company of a friend.

To start, the emphasis on slowness speaks to me in a world where we push the limits of efficiency and translate the improvement of speed as something to strive for. That productivity is synonymous with success. With the expansion of Chat GPT, I've noticed that many writing jobs really just include editing what AI has written, and the expectation is to produce ten well-thought articles a day. As a writer, seeing job requests like this deflates me. If we overlook the popular question of why we're giving AI all of the creative jobs (which I do have some comments about myself...), it's a representation of the way that the world is speeding up to extraordinary proportions, something that humans just aren't built to deal with. We can't even multitask without our brains getting upset. As someone who really values the extent to which I feel and the ability to translate these feelings into words - something understandable, something tangible to those who read them - I appreciate slowness. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is the definition of what it means to be present. It's like a home to return to, somewhere distant, yet familiar - it's a leisurly stroll in a world of speed-walkers.

My favourite parts are, firstly, the acknowledgement that this book is a response to the state of the world, and highlights what it does to those not built to live in it. Which, honestly, is a lot. The bookshop is full of people who have burnt out from a capitalist world that has them churn out everything they have in exchange for hopeful pleasantries that never arrive. Such as Jungsuh, who worked for a company for eight years as a contract worker with the promise of promotion to permanency (which isn't exactly a lot to ask for, shouldn't a level of security be a small ask in exchange for living in and contributing to the world?), a wish that was never granted. She quit and found a new job, and then she quit that job when someone on the permanent payroll stole her work, and she realised she was just so angry that she could no longer cope with her daily life. After a year of crocheting and meditating, she eventually returned to working with her newfound coping mechanisms. She took that year to remind herself that she is not her job and life exists outside of jobs that don't care for her.

Similarly, yet on the opposite side of the scale, Seungwoo had a permanent job making more than the average man's salary, doing something he loved and was good at - so good that everyone else thought he was the best of them. But after a few years, he was so exhausted. Doing well at his job meant working more, and working more meant living less. He stopped loving programming, he stopped wanting to be good at his job. Being permanently exhausted meant he lost the ability to love. So, he switched department and worked in a role that he wasn't so good at and didn't really care for, and he was no longer teetering on the brink of burnout every day. He could go home and do something he cared about; something that was his.

Both Jungsuh and Seungwoo are examples of this world where speed is rewarded with more speed, and additional speed translates into productivity, contribution, and therefore success. But it meant nothing, because speed simply isn't a sustainable model for the majority of the population. You're promised promotion into a basic level of security if you just put in more work than everyone else, you're expected to do even more if you're one of the few who rise in the ranks of their career path. There is no escape - it's all rather exhausting. Increased speed of production and a disrespect for the fundamental needs of a human is unsustainable. And there are consequences, real ones, for the average person.

And that's what this book is all about. The consequences, and learning how to be human again.

My second favourite part of this book is how this is shown through the characters - from the beginning to its end, it seems little has happened, yet so much at the same time. It's the equivalent of having an undramatic year and looking back on New Year's Day at the person you were in the last, and realising that you're unexpectedly completely different. A lack of major events don't cease the progress we make as humans who are learning how to live. In fact, it's when the most internal progression tends to occur - having time to sit back and reflect is what allows us to grow as people. Constant activity prevents us from being able to sit back and give ourselves time to think, and without time to think, we cannot develop new thoughts and reflect on the truth of our current ones, whether they're still things we believe.

And above all else, not knowing the answer is a good enough answer. To make something up or pretend you know because you don't feel comfortable with the reality that you don't know is to halt your learnings. It's to lie to yourself, and we don't need to do that. It's okay not to know and simply live with that, maybe one day you'll find the answer within yourself.

But this book doesn't bash having a job - Yeongju is a great example of a worker who is genuinely happy with her calling. When something is your dream, is the thing that makes you happy, it will lead to a life of satisfaction - but only if you have time to be human. Time to eat good food every day, to indulge in something to feed your soul everyday that doesn't have to leave its mark on the world, time to sit in the wind and feel it on your face without feeling concerned about how much you've contributed to the world and whether its enough. It's to know that being alive and living is enough, and everything else is just the cherry on top.

Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop has earned my 5/5 stars, and I know that I'll return to the comfort of its contents in times of confusion or difficulty. Or just when I feel that I've lost my way. It's nice to read something and to read it slowly.

Up next: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

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