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외계 신장
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March 13, 2026This is my personal reaction to the book, not at all a formal review. I read this in the original Korean in the space of two evenings and one morning, and I mainly read it for analyzing the language itself rather than the story and I was not disappointed by the writing style. she uses a lot of descriptive adjectives but in a different way from other Korean books that I've read recently. Honestly, I started it at one point and just couldn't get into it. finally a couple days before my book club gathered, I just plowed through and fortunately had better concentration.
Others have said they enjoyed the first half or three quarters but personally the story didn't grab me. the main character freaks out big time thinking she might have an insect or a rat. long ago but not long enough ago, I lived in one of those infamous half basement places, and I had rats. definitely. I remember one night I was awake until the wee hours reading a girl with a dragon tattoo and beside my bed on the floor I had a glass of cold 매실차. the story itself was deeply suspenseful and at one point when the terror was already high I heard a small noise to my right and I looked over and there was a big rat drinking my 매실! it was a moment of true horror but being an adult with a job and responsibilities, I didn't have the luxury of freaking out except briefly in the moment and moving out of my apartment. it ended up being an infestation that was hard to deal with and I saw more rats and I lived to tell the tail. this year, in my brand new clean apartment I suddenly got an infestation of cockroaches and once again I just had to plow through. So the level of freak out that the main character experiences just was eye rolling to me. her staying up the whole entire night cleaning because she thought she might have seen one insect is something that would never happen to me. I actually saw a cockroach run under my bed the other night just before bedtime, and I went to bed and slept.
Then, I don't want to give spoilers but the end was strangely unsatisfying to me. it would be fine if there were one or two unanswered questions, but it ended up being a bizarre collection of many many unanswered questions in a way that did not work for me. There were horror elements near the end but they were too surreal to speak to me which is good, as I don't want anything too awful in my head.
I did very much like the main 무당 character 경자 만신 and the parts where she appeared and particularly her conversation with the main character near the end were the most impactful and memorable to me. I checked the English translation in a friend's book and she said you will see chaos which in Korean was 혼돈. There were a lot of philosophical implications packed into a couple paragraphs of what she had said, and those were fun to unpack in my head.
I do definitely recommend this book for non-native speakers of Korean working through reading Korean literature as it's short and the writing style itself is rewarding.
Others have said they enjoyed the first half or three quarters but personally the story didn't grab me. the main character freaks out big time thinking she might have an insect or a rat. long ago but not long enough ago, I lived in one of those infamous half basement places, and I had rats. definitely. I remember one night I was awake until the wee hours reading a girl with a dragon tattoo and beside my bed on the floor I had a glass of cold 매실차. the story itself was deeply suspenseful and at one point when the terror was already high I heard a small noise to my right and I looked over and there was a big rat drinking my 매실! it was a moment of true horror but being an adult with a job and responsibilities, I didn't have the luxury of freaking out except briefly in the moment and moving out of my apartment. it ended up being an infestation that was hard to deal with and I saw more rats and I lived to tell the tail. this year, in my brand new clean apartment I suddenly got an infestation of cockroaches and once again I just had to plow through. So the level of freak out that the main character experiences just was eye rolling to me. her staying up the whole entire night cleaning because she thought she might have seen one insect is something that would never happen to me. I actually saw a cockroach run under my bed the other night just before bedtime, and I went to bed and slept.
Then, I don't want to give spoilers but the end was strangely unsatisfying to me. it would be fine if there were one or two unanswered questions, but it ended up being a bizarre collection of many many unanswered questions in a way that did not work for me. There were horror elements near the end but they were too surreal to speak to me which is good, as I don't want anything too awful in my head.
I did very much like the main 무당 character 경자 만신 and the parts where she appeared and particularly her conversation with the main character near the end were the most impactful and memorable to me. I checked the English translation in a friend's book and she said you will see chaos which in Korean was 혼돈. There were a lot of philosophical implications packed into a couple paragraphs of what she had said, and those were fun to unpack in my head.
I do definitely recommend this book for non-native speakers of Korean working through reading Korean literature as it's short and the writing style itself is rewarding.
Displaying 1 of 1 review