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by Won-pyung Sohn ; translated by Sandy Joosun Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020

A sensitive exploration of what it’s like to live at life’s emotional poles.

A Korean teenager struggles with a rare emotional impairment.

Soon Yunjae, a highly intelligent teenage boy who lives with his mother and grandmother in Seoul, suffers from alexithymia, a defect believed to be rooted in the amygdala—the almond-shaped region of the brain—that renders him incapable of expressing, or even identifying, his emotions. Yunjae’s antagonist, nicknamed Gon, has returned to his home after 13 years following a mysterious disappearance that saw him shunted among various foster homes and finally to a youth shelter. In that long exile, he’s become a hardened juvenile delinquent, bitter toward the father he believes abandoned him and acting out at every opportunity. When Yunjae becomes the victim of an act of random violence that shatters his life and thrusts him into an unwanted state of independence, Gon, sensing his classmate’s vulnerability, singles him out for special torment. The radical imbalance between Gon’s physical and emotional abuse and Yunjae’s inability to respond in any meaningful way fuels the novel’s escalating tension and justifies Yunjae’s blunt description of his story as one “about a monster meeting another monster.” But that imbalance subtly shifts as the two damaged boys inch toward something that looks like a friendship and becomes more complicated when a young girl named Dora enters the picture. In her debut novel, director and screenwriter Sohn makes the bold decision to choose an emotionally constricted first-person narrator, but the risk pays off. With the aid of a skillful translation, she conveys the hollowed-out feeling of Yunjae’s life and his almost inexpressible desire to overcome it, heightened by the contrast with Gon’s inability to control his rage. The novel will appeal fully to adults, but mature young readers who must cope in their everyday lives with the struggles of late adolescence will find themselves identifying with Yunjae and moved by his plight.

Pub Date: May 5, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-06-296137-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: HarperVia

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

LITERARY FICTION

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HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

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NORMAL PEOPLE

by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2019

Absolutely enthralling. Read it.

A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!

Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends , in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.

Pub Date: April 16, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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BookBrowse Reviews Almond by Sohn Won-pyung

Summary  |  Excerpt  |  Reviews  |  Beyond the book  |  Read-Alikes  |  Genres & Themes  |  Author Bio

by Sohn Won-pyung

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• Literary Fiction
• East Asia (except China)
• Contemporary
• Coming of Age
• Adult-YA Crossover Fiction
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When tragedy strikes, a neurodivergent teenage boy is left on his own to navigate daily life and a budding connection with the delinquent new kid at school.

Almond is Sohn Won-pyung's debut novel (translated from Korean by Sandy Joosun Lee) about Yunjae, a 15-year-old who is alexithymic, or unable to recognize or express emotions. Yunjae explains that the amygdalae are two small, almond-shaped structures in the human brain which allow us to experience emotions, but his almonds are dysfunctional. He says, "[F]or some reason, my almonds don't seem to work well. They don't really light up when they are stimulated. So I don't know why people laugh or cry. Joy, sorrow, love, fear - all these things are vague ideas to me. The words 'emotion' and 'empathy' are just meaningless letters in print." His Mom wants him to have an ordinary life, so she and Yunjae's Granny teach him how to perform emotional reactions in order to approximate "normality." Yunjae is comfortable living with Mom and Granny, helping to run their used bookstore, until one snowy Christmas Eve when his world comes crashing down. After a meal out at a restaurant, Mom and Granny are brutally attacked by a knife-wielding stranger, an incident that leaves Granny dead and Mom in the hospital in a coma. Yunjae confesses, "I simply watched the whole thing unfold before me. Just standing there with blank eyes, as always." After the attack, Yunjae visits the hospital where Mom is being treated. Through a strange series of events, which begin at the hospital, he meets Gon, a boy his age who has had a difficult past. Gon is the opposite of Yunjae — he is loud, a troublemaker and always looking for a fight, though his bravado comes from a place of emotional pain. At one point, he tells Yunjae, "[I]f I can't protect myself from being hurt, I'd rather hurt other people." With its confessional tone and short chapters, the novel is diary-like, showing a record of Yunjae's daily life after the attack and his attempts to understand more about his neurodivergent brain. Both Yunjae and Gon have distinctive, well-written voices. Yunjae is very precise with his use of language. There is an insightful directness to his words in contrast with Gon's messy and invective-littered speech. It was fun to realize that Yunjae's expressiveness changes subtly over the course of the novel as he spends more time with Gon. Gon's initial bullying and violence toward Yunjae may make some readers uncomfortable, especially as Yunjae keeps coming back to Gon despite this ill treatment. However, the novel often strikes an openly moral tone, specifically to the tune of "don't judge people too quickly," which is most noticeable in the fraught relationship between the two boys. Throughout the novel, people call Yunjae a "weirdo" because he never expresses emotion and they say Gon is "scary" because he is too expressive and in the wrong ways. But Yunjae doesn't jump to conclusions about Gon, even after Gon starts his "new hobby" of bullying Yunjae relentlessly. Yunjae wonders if Gon is similar to the man who stabbed Mom and Granny. He also wonders, because he didn't react during the gruesome crime, if he himself is like the attacker. These questions trouble him, so he allows Gon to get closer, explaining, "I wanted to understand the world a little better. To do that, I needed Gon." Despite Gon's violence, the boys develop a bond. In explaining why he is friends with Gon, Yunjae says, "I knew that Gon was a good kid. But if someone asked me to describe him in more detail, I'd only be able to say that he beat me and hurt me, he ripped apart a butterfly, he set his face against the teachers, and threw things at my classmates. That's how language is... So, I simply said, 'I just know he is.'" The use of language is a subtler theme woven into the story. After watching a K-pop (Korean pop music) group accept an award on TV and flippantly say that they love all their fans, Yunjae thinks, "[C]an the word 'love' be thrown around so casually like that? ...From what I understood, love is an extreme idea. It seemed to force something undefinable into the prison of a word. Such an overused word. People used the word 'love' so casually, if they were feeling slightly good or thankful." It seems that it is precisely because Yunjae can't recognize emotions and has had to study them that he has such a profound understanding of the rather subjective nature of the language humans use to describe feelings. This slipperiness of language, of how people describe their worlds and the ways they experience them, is really at the heart of Almond , and is brought to light by this unexpected protagonist. My biggest critique of the novel didn't fully reveal itself until near the end of it, when Yunjae's elderly neighbor (and de facto guardian and mentor after he loses his family) utters the words, "[T]o be honest, I have always doubted your diagnosis," after Yunjae rather miraculously gains some ability to experience emotion in a more conventional way. The implication is that Yunjae, with this new ability, somehow becomes "more" — more acceptable, more normal, more valued — than he was before. This seems entirely superfluous, like a trick to make readers feel good after Yunjae has experienced so much tragedy. It undermines the message given throughout the rest of book that Yunjae, even though he is unable to identify emotions, is already a fully developed human being, capable of making decisions and forming complex opinions about himself and his world. By sowing doubt about his disability diagnosis, Sohn robs a neurodivergent person of his intrinsic value, something that happens all too frequently in both fiction and real life. This last critique is a big one to be sure, but I would still recommend the book because of its overall positive representation of a young neurodivergent character. Almond is a complex coming-of-age story featuring an alexithymic protagonist who finds himself in the unlikeliest of friendships, exploring the nature of love, fear, hate and the language people use, and misuse, to describe their messy emotions.

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Misty Realms

Review: Almond by Sohn Won-pyung

18th September 2022

Hi everyone!!

I haven’t written a review in so long so LOL I feel like I have completely forgotten how I used to write these, but that’s okay i’ll figure it out … I think?

Anyway, today I am reviewing a book that is super special to me because one: I loved the story and the setting so much (I cried), two: I almost never read literary fiction, so I was surprised that I actually enjoyed this book so much, and three: Namjoon and Yoongi from BTS love this book too, and honestly I can confirm— they do in fact have an immaculate taste in books.

Let’s get on with the review!!

Almond by Sohn Won-pyung

This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. 

One of the monsters is me.

Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that—but his devoted mother and grandmother aren’t fazed by his condition. Their little home above his mother’s used bookstore is decorated with colorful post-it notes that remind him when to smile, when to say “thank you,” and when to laugh. Yunjae grows up content, even happy, with his small family in this quiet, peaceful space.

Then on Christmas Eve—Yunjae’s sixteenth birthday—everything changes. A shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him alone and on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation, until troubled teenager Gon arrives at his school and begins to bully Yunjae. 

Against all odds, tormentor and victim learn they have more in common than they realized. Gon is stumped by Yunjae’s impassive calm, while Yunjae thinks if he gets to know the hotheaded Gon, he might learn how to experience true feelings. Drawn by curiosity, the two strike up a surprising friendship. As Yunjae begins to open his life to new people—including a girl at school—something slowly changes inside him. And when Gon suddenly finds his life in danger, it is Yunjae who will step outside of every comfort zone he has created to perhaps become a most unlikely hero. 

The Emissary  meets  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime  in this poignant and triumphant story about how love, friendship, and persistence can change a life forever.

“To be honest, I couldn’t have cared less. Whether I was normal or not made little to no difference. To me, it was as subtle as the differences in the nuance of the words.” 

ALMOND is a book about a boy named Yunjae who had a condition called Alexithymia, which impacted his ability to feel emotions. The book began with his childhood, where he lived with his mother and grandmother. The family was portrayed as most families are— they had their share of conflicts, but the three of them did love each other more than anything (even though Yunjae didn’t particularly feel ‘love’).

“What does love mean?” Mom asked mischievously. “To discover beauty.” 

Yunjae’s mother was a character I don’t really know my feelings about. On one hand she truly did love and care for him, and spent as much time as possible with her son even though she was managing a small second hand bookstore and not earning much from that. The thing that bothered me was how her worry about Yunjae’s inability to express emotions— especially reflex emotions such as fear, turned more into her being scared that something was ‘wrong’ with her child, and that she didn’t like this. Of course this could be a lot of my own interpretation, but I did feel that way.

On the other hand I think granny was one of the best characters in the book. She was so cool and Yunjae really did hold her in a special place in his heart. Unlike his mother she didn’t really care about what other kids or adults would say about her grandson, she loved him more than anything. I also liked how at the beginning of the novel, when she met him for the first time she called him a little monster in an endearing way— probably so that if vile people say it later on in his life, he would probably not think that is was something negative.

“To be more specific, I felt connected to the smell of old books. The first time I smelled them, it was as if I’d encountered something I already knew.” 

Okay so moving onto Yunjae. My boy suffered way too much in this book, but I believe everything included in the plot helped enhance all the characters— also I won’t tell you more because *spoilers*. Honestly Yunjae was the coolest. For a person that doesn’t feel or express much, the amount of depth the author vocalised his thoughts and dialogue was impeccable. Also yes we love to see a book loving character. Yunjae loved the bookstore his mom managed and I think the bookstore setting/his home was my favourite too!

I also really liked the symbolism of the almonds used in the book. Obviously they signified the amygdalae in the brain. But I liked this particular scene where he said that his mom used to keep on feeding him almonds, as if eating actual almonds would somehow ‘fix the almonds in his brain’.

“People said there was no way to understand Gon. I didn’t agree with them. It’s just that nobody ever tried to see through him.” 

The juxtaposition between Gon and Yunjae was in my opinion, one of the most poignant parts of the book. Towards the middle of the book Gon is introduced, and for a few chapters he is Yunjae’s tormentor. The author then further develops their relationship in such a way that they’re the only ones who truly perhaps understand each other. Which is really interesting, because how can a boy who feels too much and a boy who feels nothing have this mutual understanding and towards the end— mutual care and love for each other? I will not give spoilers but Gon and Yunjae truly have a really good friendship/relationship and by the end both the characters manage to express how much they care.

Furthermore because this is literary fiction, so the obvious focus was more on the characters than the plot, which I actually really enjoyed … maybe I should read more of this genre! Please leave me some recommendations LOL.

To conclude, I would like to say ALMOND was a truly beautiful books that explores sudden change, emotions, relationships, and just the general movement of life. AND I loved it more than anything!!

RATING: Highly Recommended!

Is this book for you.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Violence, animal death, implied torture, stabbing.

PERFECT FOR:  Fans of literary fiction or Asian literature, Or if you’ve read and loved the book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime .

THINK TWICE IF:  You do not like books with extremely short chapters, and first person narration.

GENRE:  Literary fiction, contemporary.

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Did you enjoy the review? Do you have any literary fiction recommendations especially books by authors of colour? Comment below and chat with me!!

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Cupcakes & Harmony

Eat | meditate | read | travel | love | repeat.

Almond, a novel, by Won Pyung Sohn. Review

¡Gracias por compartir! / Thanks for sharing!

“ This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. One of the monsters is me. ”

First things first

We read Almond at Book Club. That month, the candidates were three books from Korean authors, and this one was the winner. I postulated Almond , by Won Pyung Sohn because I read some recommendations here and there. Even though I love Korean dramas and I am a huge fan of a particular Korean music group, I have never read books from Korean authors, so I was very happy to jump into this adventure. I was excited when this book won, but I must confess that I already had it, and I was going to read it anyway.

“This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. One of the monsters is me.”

Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia, that makes it impossible for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends –the two almond-shape neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that– but his devoted mother and grandmother provide him with a safe and content life. Their little home above his mother’s used bookstore is decorated with colorful Post-it notes that remind him when to smile, when to say “thank you” and when to laugh.

Then on Christmas Eve –Yunjae’s sixteenth birthday– everything changes. A shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him alone and on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation, until troubled teenager Gon arrives at his school, and they develop a surprising bond.

As Yunjae begins to open his life to new people –including a girl at school– something slowly changes inside him.

Personal opinion

Almond is a very touching story that gives messages about friendship, compassion and second chances. Yunjae and Gon’s evolution is very emotional. The reading is fluent and it gets you from the start, so you won’t take long finishing this book.

Since Yunjae narrates it in first person, I found it fascinating to know his thoughts and reasoning about situations around him; otherwise, it would have been almost impossible to understand him, due to his Alexithymia.

Yunjae is unable to feel emotions, but he is able to deduce what a person is like, based on his/her actions. He uses a lot of logic to define someone’s character; so, despite his lack of emotions, Yunjae sees them from another angle, and perceives how they really are. That got me, because I am a person who sees the actions of a human being, not their emotional words, and up until now, I have not been wrong about their character.

Growing up with his mother and grandmother, being surrounded by love was the key for Yunjae to grow up with good values and be a good-hearted person. He can differentiate what is right from what is wrong contrary from what happened to his friend, Gon, who grew up unloved.

Gon is a very difficult kid. I did not like him at first, but little by little, I started to realize that he was a misunderstood and pigeonhole person, like many. If everyone assumes you are a bad person, you get to a point where you give up trying to prove otherwise because no one will believe you; so you decide to become what they say you are. There is a fine line that can radically change a person’s life. Gon was a bag filled with emotions that he did not want to feel. Gon wanted to be like Yunjae. Gon got to my heart and made me cry; he was a victim of the circumstances since he was a boy and suffered a lot. Only Yunjae could see who he really was as a person.

All characters in this book are memorable, specially Yunjae’s grandma, his mother, and Dr. Shim, who gave him so much in exchange for nothing, pure kindness.

About the ending, all I can tell you is that I loved it. I was satisfied with it, and it has that Kdrama vibe: it leaves you wanting more. Almond is a book I definitely recommend you to read. If you already did, I would love to read your opinion.

Other book reviews on my Blog:

A recipe for love, by Nicola Yeager

The white Masai, by Corinne Hofmann

The invisible guardian, by Dolores Redondo

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Book review: Almond by Won-pyung Sohn

• January 27, 2022
• By  Carolina Alvarado. R.

In her first novel, director and screenwriter Won-pyung Sohn tells the challenging story of Soon Yunjae, who has been diagnosed with alexithymia. This condition is a rare emotional deficiency that inhibits the ability to experience and perceive essential feelings such as fear, love, sadness, anger, or disgust. Through fiction, the author, born in 1979 in South Korea, poses an unsettling question: how do people who cannot feel anything cry?

As the title of the book references, Soon Yunaje’s brain tonsils are the size of an almond and it is for this reason that the adolescent fails to achieve emotional awareness. Not only does Yunjae have an underdeveloped amygdalar body, his limbic system and frontal lobe fail to communicate fluently. Thus, the young man has enormous difficulties in experiencing feelings like other people. Yunjae cannot understand the implicit meaning of gestures, facial expressions, voice inflections, jokes, double-meaning dialogues and, in particular, he cannot interpret affective states (his own and others’). It should be noted that, etymologically, the term alexithymia, coined by Sifneos, refers to a “lack of words for emotional expression”.

Won-pyung Sohn tells the story of a teenager who cannot connect with himself and consequently cannot connect with the world around him. Given the situation and the grim medical prognosis, Yunjae’s mother and grandmother decide to do everything they can to help the boy learn to communicate with some independence so that he can survive a society that is quick to judge and stigmatize individuals who are different.

Day by day, his devoted caregivers give him lessons on social rules and principles of good behavior so that the young man can relate and adapt to his environment. Routinely, Yunjae must memorize, rehearse, and fake everything that most people learn by mere instinct. His mother and grandmother urge him to fake his own moods and teach him to feign empathy for his peers.

“Even thought my brain was a mess, what kept my soul whole was the warm of the hands holding mine on both sides” Yunjae comments.

Thanks to persistent family efforts, Yunjae learns to blend in with others and to cope in everyday situations. His “false normality” allows him to fit in – not without difficulty – at school. Despite being labeled as a “weird” and “insensitive” kid by his classmates, Yunjae eventually manages to get by in school life. However, the teenager’s world is shattered when his family is the victim of a heinous assault on Christmas Eve. What was supposed to be a beautiful celebration suddenly turns into a nightmare as a mentally unstable man stabs his grandmother to death and beats his mother into a deep coma.

After this tragic incident, Yunjae – lacking in social skills and emotional reactivity – must take responsibility for his future. At this crossroads, the sixteen year old decides to pursue a “normal, ordinary life” in order to honor his mother’s heartfelt wishes. In this way, Yunjae follows the usual routines, keeps up appearances, and takes care of the used book store that his family used to run.

Yunjae’s lonely days are transformed when he starts high school and his path crosses that of Isu Yoon, better known as “Goni”, a violent and volatile teenager who rages against Yunjae and attacks him continuously and viciously at school.

For his part, Goni is a young man who has suffered deep emotional wounds. At a very young age he was separated from his family and was forced to grow up in foster homes, orphanages, and juvenile reform school. After thirteen years in the public foster care system, the teenager learns a delicate and unexpected truth: his legitimate family never abandoned him to his fate. From the moment of his disappearance, his parents fought relentlessly to get him back. Hurt, overwhelmed and filled with dark resentment, Goni tries to reintegrate into a home that seem alien, distant, and impossible for him.

Against all odds, the boisterous tormentor and the inexpressive victim develop an unusual bond. Both outcasts, loners, and misfits, they strike up a peculiar and unlikely friendship. As these “monsters” learn about each other, they also begin to discover more of their own identity. In this sense, the book Almond develops a bold contrast between the boy who is doomed to inner emptiness and the boy who is doomed to heartbreaking sensitivity.

From interactions with Goni, Yunjae begins to ask new questions about the world and human interaction. Although genetics continue to limit his emotional-processing ability, something tiny is stirring inside him. Gradually, the boy with frozen feelings gives in to curiosity and even illusion.

“I turned off the light and breathed in the book smell that still lingered. It was as familiar as the background surrounding me. But I noticed something slightly different carried on the scent. Suddenly a small ember was rekindled in my heart. I wanted to read between the lines. I wanted to be someone who truly understood the meaning of an author’s words. I wanted to know more people, to be able to engage in deep conversations, and to learn what it was to be human” Yunjae admits in a revealing passage.

Nevertheless, everything is brutally precipitated when Goni escapes from his family and puts his life at risk. Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of love, Yunjae decides to intervene and help his friend. Be that as it may, the boy who does not know how to feel awakens to his own instinct and will do everything possible to rescue Goni not only from the danger that threatens him, but also from his own violence.

Almond is a lacerating novel about the strength of friendship, the power of emotions, and the urgent need to live with more empathy and compassion. With shattering questions and insightful comments, the author invites us to become aware of alexithymia and urges us to demolish social prejudices.

Although the novel may belong to the Young Adult genre, the story goes beyond this editorial label and could appeal to a variety of audiences. Won-pyung Sohn’s pen is remarkably nimble and witty, the writer has a fine acuity to shake and conquer the reader. Almond is one of those rare exceptions that provokes rereading.

Almond won the Changbi Award for Young People’s Literature, was well received by critics and quickly became a bestseller.

Image credit: Aaron Burden

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K-Book Review: ‘Almond’ by Won Pyung-sohn

Nikhat Parveen, New Delhi

“Human Beings are a product of their Education, after all”

–  Almond

‘Almond’ is a young adult fiction masterpiece written by Won Pyung-sohn which was originally published in 2017, and was distributed by Changbi Publishers . In 2020, it was published in English by HarperVa . ‘Almond’ was translated into English by Sandy Joosun Lee .

In this novel, author Won Pyung-sohn tells an endearing story of a Korean teenager’s struggles with a rare Emotional Impairment. Soon Yun-jae, a highly intelligent teenage boy who lives with his mother and grandmother in the city of Seoul, suffers from “Alexithymia,” a defect believed to be rooted in the Amygdala – the almost almond shaped region of the brain. It is the inability to identify and describe emotions experienced by oneself or others. This renders him incapable of expressing or even identifying his emotions. Yun-jae’s antagonist, nicknamed Gon , has returned to his home after thirteen years following a mysterious disappearance that saw him shunted among various foster homes and finally to a youth shelter. In that long exile, he becomes a hardened juvenile delinquent, bitter towards the father he believes abandoned him and acting out at every opportunity.

Yun-jae becomes the victim of an act of random violence that shatters his life and thrusts him into an unwanted state of independence. Gon, sensing his classmate’s vulnerability, signals him out for special torments. The radical imbalance between Gon’s physical and emotional abuse and Yun-jae’s inability to respond in any meaningful way fuels the novel’s escalating tension and justifies Yun-jae’s blunt description of his story as one about a ‘monster meeting another monster.’

But that imbalance subtly shifts as the two damaged boys inch towards something that looks like friendship and become more complicated when a young girl named Dora enters the picture.

In Won Pyung-sohn’s debut novel, director and screenwriter Sohn makes the bold decision to choose an emotionally constricted first person narrator, but the risk pays off.

“Luck plays a huge part in all the Unfairness of the World. Even more than you’d expect”

– Almond

The book is brilliantly depicted. It was the first time that I read about a mental disorder called Alexithymia and I found myself deeply invested in the story. This novel focuses on Yun-jae’s journey on self discovery and growth . You will have a lot of emotions by rooting for Yun-jae while reading this novel. The novel also describes how society reacts to the horrific events, judging and whispering rather than helping the ones in need. ‘Almond’ is written with rich vocabulary which will keep you engaged effortlessly all the time.

Reading ‘Almond’ is like growing up together with Yun-jae. The way Yun-jae describes his surroundings expression without telling their emotions explicitly, and how he tries to explain his feelings, building an understanding about his condition to us gradually. Hands down to the English translation of this book. The words that contained in the story had big roles in this novel. Considering Yun-jae had alexithymia, the narration that came from his point of view has a lot of emotions.

“Books took me to places I could never go otherwise. They shared the confessions of people I’d never met and lives I’d never witnessed. The emotions I could never feel, and the events I hadn’t experienced could all be found in those volumes.”

This book addresses important themes of bullying, family, friendship, grief, and prejudice. The dialogues are also witty and entertaining .

It’s difficult to review a book that has been translated from Korean, as there is always going to be so much that’s left out or unexpressed. Author Sohn touches well across both happiness and sadness, joy, and the complexities of life. There are also some beautiful descriptions about books, which were a delight to read: 

   “But Books are quiet. They remain dead silent until somebody flips open a page. Only then do they spill out their  stories, calmly and thoroughly, just enough at a time for me to handle.”

– Almond 

The book is divided into 75 chapters which makes the novel stand out for the readers. All in all, there’s something about Korean literature as a whole that’s also prominent about this novel, that holds this distinct brand of sadness and anger.

  Overall Thoughts 

This is a refreshing step away from Western literature. I really recommend it because it’s not a story we see everyday, nor is it a perspective stylistically told this way. I randomly came across this book while watching IN THE SOOP, SEASON 1 , where BTS members, RM and Suga , were seen reading this book. The interest in this story lies between the relationships of the characters, and how they interact with each other.

Know the Author 

Won Pyung-sohn is a Korean writer, screenwriter and film director who had her literary debut with ‘Almond’ in 2017. She also won two literary awards for ‘Almond’ and for ‘Counterattack of the Thirty.’ She also won Changbi Prize in the Young Adult Fiction genre for ‘Almond.’

“I won’t tell you whether it has a happy ending or a tragic ending…neither you nor I, anyone can ever really know whether a story is happy or tragic.”

– Won Pyung-sohn

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27 Comments Add yours

I’m so glad and happy that finally this article got published. Can’t convey the amount of emotions i felt while penning down this article . Thank you hallyuism 💜

Thankyou for penning down this beautiful review of Almond. Not a bookish person but gonna read Almond definitely now! Loads of loveeee

Thank you so much for admiring this article. Happy Reading ❤️

Such beautiful writing this is, I appreciate your talent. I really wanna buy the book now. Thank you for the review.

Ikr , it’s an amazing book.

Nice Article

This review is so beautifully written❤️ Already have this book in my TBR!

Yes do read it whenever you get time

Very well written review!

Loved reading the review! Sounds like a great read

Yes indeed. Do have a read

I m going to read 🐰🐰

Yes do read it and comment down what yoh felt while reading this book

I came to know this novel due to RM’s recommendation and I am glad I read it. This has my 💜

Ikr , same here . I was so curious about this book , and it’s worth it

This is so so beautiful.. both the article and the book! <3

I have read this book 🤓 the review is amazing 👍

Thnx for appreciating the review

need to read this book 🤞

Yes yes do read it .

I read this book due to RM’s recommendation and you have written a beautiful review. Thank you for such a beautiful review it needs to be out there for more people to read this masterpiece.💜💜💜

Yes , this book is very amazing. And thanks for appreciating the review.

loved reading this.

Thnx yashi for the appreciation .

Basically I am not a very big book person but nowadays I find myself reading books often , so this book after reading the whole article is surely is very good book. The way everything about the book is described so well, I am gonna read the book as soon as possible. I really love exploring various kinds of new things and this book is another one to explore some new things.

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Pax Economica , by Marc-William Palen (Princeton) . A comprehensive account of the modern free-trade movement and a timely act of historical reclamation, this book illuminates the forgotten legacy of left-wing advocacy for liberalized markets. Palen, a historian, reveals the movement’s origins to be internationalist and cosmopolitan, led by socialists, pacifists, and feminists, who viewed expanded trade as the only practical way to achieve lasting peace in a newly globalized world. This fresh perspective complicates contemporary political archetypes of neoliberal free marketeers and “Made in America” populists, adding valuable context to our often overly simplistic economic discourse.

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By Justin Chang

By Benjamin Kunkel

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Don Winslow says farewell to fiction writing in high style

With ‘city in ruins,’ winslow wraps up a spectacular crime fiction trilogy, a sweeping story that morphs and expands over time.

And so, we come to the end. The end of an exemplary crime fiction trilogy and the self-chosen end of a popular author’s writing career. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

With “ City on Fire ” (2022), “ City of Dreams ” (2023) and now “ City in Ruins ,” Don Winslow has written a near-perfect saga: He’s created great characters who grow and develop while remaining true to their essence, and a sweeping story that morphs and expands over time, with the stakes escalating until they reach nosebleed heights at the end. Winslow says he has given up writing novels to devote his time to political activism: “I wanted in the fight. I didn’t want to be writing a fiction obituary of America losing democracy,” he told the Los Angeles Times . With “City in Ruins,” he is saying farewell in high style.

Winslow modeled this trilogy on Virgil’s Roman tragedy “The Aeneid,” an intention made obvious by the epigrams in all three novels. However, you needn’t be a Roman or Greek scholar to enjoy these books (and though it is best to read them in order, it’s not vital). These novels wear their inspiration lightly. The epic poems do not bleed into Winslow’s story but linger like ghosts in the background.

At the center of the three “City” books is Danny Ryan, a Rhode Island version of “a Springsteen kind of guy,” a onetime Providence waterfront worker from a scrappy Irish American family. Over the course of the series, he has gotten mixed up with the mob, fought epic (yet doomed) battles and resurrected himself in Hollywood. After marrying into the family of the king of the Irish mob in Providence, he ends up their reluctant leader in a fatalistic war with the Italians, runs to the West Coast with his family and crew to lie low when it all blows up, manages to claw back his life, gets involved with a movie that’s being made about the Rhode Island mob, and falls in love with a celebrity superstar.

In the final moments of “City of Dreams,” Ryan is in a bad place: in the desert, facing off against a Mexican gang lord who wants to end him. The woman he loves is dead, and he blames himself. Ryan’s life has turned around in the opening of “City in Ruins.” He now owns a casino on the Las Vegas Strip; he’s being a good dad to his son, Ian, with whom he escaped from Rhode Island six years earlier; and he has a psychotherapist girlfriend who’s very different from his previous love interests — in other words, good for him.

But then Ryan decides to indulge his ambition by building a billion-dollar resort casino complex — Il Sogno, which sounds like Las Vegas’s latest wonder, the Sphere , expanded into a full-blown resort. Winslow shows us step by step what it takes to do something this grandiose in Vegas, where everything is supersize, especially the egos.

The project puts Ryan on a crash course with one of his hitherto friendly rivals. Vegas being Vegas, everyone has some connection to the mob, even if it’s distant, and before long Ryan — who thought he had successfully left his gangster past behind — finds himself up to his eyebrows in trouble as old vendettas are resurrected.

Peter Moretti Jr., son of one of Ryan’s former rivals, returns to the States after serving a tour in Iraq only to find out that his mother and her lover are responsible for his father’s death. In a scene involving the clan godfather, Winslow shows how an innocent like Peter Jr. is manipulated into carrying the water for his late father’s crime gang. The rest of this thread is devoted to the courtroom battle between the good district attorney who wants to see Peter Jr. pay for his crimes and the sharpshooting defense attorney who uses every trick at his disposal to get the young man freed.

There’s also Chris Palumbo, the late Peter Sr.’s second-in-command, who took to the wind after a partnership with a crooked FBI agent went south. We see him holed up in Nebraska with a hippie-ish woman (a la Odysseus and Circe in “The Odyssey”) until he comes to realize that he must return to his wife and children back East. He knows he must face the music for his misdeeds and confront the Providence crime gang that wants him dead.

Winslow immerses readers in the hidden world of organized crime, highlighting its inner workings. Whether it’s jousting between lawyers, etiquette among wiseguys or the history of the mob in Las Vegas, Winslow knows how to make the reader feel like one of the cognoscenti. For instance, he shows how he toed the line through the first two books so that Ryan can be in the casino business in Book 3: “Danny’s lawyers argued his cause. ‘There isn’t a single fact linking Mr. Ryan to organized crime,’ the lead attorney said. ‘Not an arrest, not an indictment, never mind a conviction. All you have are rumors and a few articles in the tabloids.’ … The appeal was an effort to keep Danny out of the [Nevada Gaming Control Board’s] dreaded Black Book, which would have prevented him from even entering a casino.”

You can read “City in Ruins” as a meditation on honor, revenge and justice, but the book also challenges readers to examine beliefs about morality. In “City in Ruins,” whether you’re in the world of gangsters or law enforcement or the casino industry, Winslow shows us that morality rides a sliding scale. Ryan is the closest thing the novel has to a hero, trying to inflict the least amount of pain and suffering while saving his family and friends, and willing to sacrifice his dreams as payment for his past sins. In absolutist terms, however, he’s no hero — yet the reader continues to root for him. Even the villains in “City in Ruins” question whether the gods are protecting Danny Ryan or if he will ever get his comeuppance. For the answer, you’re going to have to read the book.

Alma Katsu is the author of eight books, including the Taker trilogy, “The Hunger,” “The Deep” and “The Fervor.” Her latest is “Red London.”

City in Ruins

By Don Winslow

William Morrow. 400 pp. $32

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Talking ‘Dune’: Book and Movies

The times’s critic alissa wilkinson discusses frank herbert’s classic science fiction novel and denis villeneuve’s film adaptations..

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Frank Herbert’s epic novel “Dune” and its successors have been entrenched in the science fiction and fantasy canon for almost six decades, a rite of passage for proudly nerdy readers across the generations. But “Dune” is experiencing a broader cultural resurgence at the moment thanks to Denis Villeneuve’s recent film adaptations starring Timothée Chalamet . ( Part 2 is in theaters now.)

This week on the podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks to The Times’s critic Alissa Wilkinson, who covers movies, culture and religion, about Herbert’s novel, Villeneuve’s films and the enduring hold of Fremen lore on the audience’s imagination.

“There’s a couple things that I think are really unsettling in ‘Dune,’” Wilkinson says. “One is, the vision of Frank Herbert was, I believe, to basically write a book that questioned authoritarians and hero mythology genuinely, across the board. Any kind of a hero figure he is proposing will always have things and people come up alongside that hero figure that distort their influence. Even if they intend well, if they’re benevolent, there’s still all of this really awful stuff that comes along with it. So Paul is a messiah figure — we believe he wants good things for most of the book — and then he turns on a dime or it feels like he might be turning on a dime. You can never quite tell where anyone stands in this book. And I think that is unsettling, especially because so many of the other kinds of things that we watch — the superhero movies, “Star Wars,” whatever — there’s a clear-cut good and evil fight going on. Good and evil don’t really exist in ‘Dune.’”

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected] .

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How to Make a Bomb by Rupert Thomson review – struck by sickness, an academic seeks solace in love

A man swaps his comfortable existence for an affair in Thomson’s lyrical study of a midlife crisis

I n Jean-Paul Sartre’s first novel, Nausea , the protagonist, Roquentin, suffers a strange “sweet sickness” that is the physical manifestation of a deep existential malaise. Phillip Notman, the hero of Rupert Thomson’s How to Make a Bomb , is, like Roquentin, an academic researching a biography of an obscure historical figure. Like Roquentin, he is struck by a sudden and paralysing nausea, one that threatens to capsize his apparently ordered existence. Like Roquentin, he seeks solace in a woman’s love. Thomson’s 14 novels are overwhelmingly disparate, sharing only a profound regard for style, an engagement with the European avant garde tradition, and an interest in the secret and occluded corners of life.

It is at a conference in Norway that Notman suffers his first bout of illness. He is on his way to the airport after an evening spent in the company of a Spanish academic, Inés. How to Make a Bomb is written in an unusual kind of free verse with line breaks replacing full stops, although, as with any successful stylistic effect, you stop noticing it after a page or two. On the tram to the airport, Notman feels as if:

“A hand had wrapped itself around his brain, and it was squeezing He was worried he might throw up or pass out He was worried he might scream He couldn’t think There was nothing left to think with ”

Notman decides to leave his “ordered and predictable” life, his wife – the stoical Anya – and his troubled son, Seth, and set out to find the Spanish academic, feeling that she is in some way implicated in his breakdown. He flies to Cádiz; Inés is “surprised and flattered” by his arrival. They embark on a kind of chaste affair, immersing themselves in the life of the city, inhabiting a dreamlike world of very European pleasures: good wine, flamenco, deep conversations. Notman tells Inés that he doesn’t want anything from her, that to get into bed with her would be to fall into a cliche. He meets an elderly couple who offer him their holiday house in Crete. On a whim, he flies there, hoping to find a more rugged and essential version of the world.

That idea about falling into a cliche seems important in this book and in Thomson’s writing more widely. There is always a tension between the austere avant-gardist and the crowd-pleasing storyteller. How to Make a Bomb is a novel about a midlife crisis, elevated and rarefied by its protagonist’s exalted view of himself in a literary and historical tradition of suffering men. The ending sees Notman attempt to wrest his life in the direction of a more heroic, tragic plotline, the final pages left pleasingly open to the reader’s interpretation: will Notman follow through on the dictates of his “Notmanifesto”, or will he return to the comfortable, ordinary family life that – incredibly – has waited for him over the course of his absurd midlife lurch?

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Almond: A Novel Kindle Edition

A BTS fan favorite! A WALL STREET JOURNAL STORIES THAT CAN TAKE YOU ANYWHERE PICK * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S STAY HOME AND READ PICK * SALON'S BEST AND BOLDEST * BUSTLE'S MOST ANTICIPATED 

The Emissary  meets  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime  in this poignant and triumphant story about how love, friendship, and persistence can change a life forever.

This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. 

One of the monsters is me.

Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that—but his devoted mother and grandmother provide him with a safe and content life. Their little home above his mother’s used bookstore is decorated with colorful Post-it notes that remind him when to smile, when to say "thank you," and when to laugh.

Then on Christmas Eve—Yunjae’s sixteenth birthday—everything changes. A shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him alone and on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation, until troubled teenager Gon arrives at his school, and they develop a surprising bond.

As Yunjae begins to open his life to new people—including a girl at school—something slowly changes inside him. And when Gon suddenly finds his life at risk, Yunjae will have the chance to step outside of every comfort zone he has created to perhaps become the hero he never thought he would be.

Readers of Wonder by R.J. Palaccio and Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig will appreciate this "resonant" story that "gives Yunjae the courage to claim an entirely different story." ( Booklist , starred review)

Translated from the Korean by Sandy Joosun Lee.

• Print length 272 pages
• Language English
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• Publisher HarperVia
• Publication date May 5, 2020
• File size 1177 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
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Editorial reviews, amazon.com review.

"A boldly original piece of fiction, plumbing the depths of the human condition with plenty of humor along the way." — Entertainment Weekly

"In her debut novel, film director and screenwriter Sohn Won-pyung (with the assistance of translator Sandy Joosun Lee) has created a tender exploration of adolescence — a universal experience complicated here by extraordinary circumstances. This is one of those books that deftly straddles the line between young adult and adult fiction; it has such a gentle heart that readers of all ages will recognize and sympathize with the characters' struggles and celebrate when they ultimately triumph." — Salon

“Won-pyung Sohn understands that those who think, feel, and communicate differently aren't society's villains, they are its saviors. Her writing possesses seemingly unlimited empathy and tenderness.”  — Madeleine Ryan, author of A Room Called Earth  

“In what might be the first novel to feature a protagonist with alexithymia—an inability to identify and express one’s feelings—Korean novelist Sohn’s affecting debut arrives stateside. Raised by his grandmother and mother who worked diligently to guide him through everyday social interactions, Yunjae at 15 is effectively orphaned…. As Yunjae risks communication and connection, the eponymous almond—the undeveloped amygdalae of his brain—takes seed, and gives Yunjae the courage to claim 'an entirely different story. New and unknown.' Winner of the prestigious Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction in Korea, Sohn presents a 15-year-old neurodiverse protagonist with much resonance.” — Booklist (starred review)

“ Almond is a tour de force -- deeply engaging, engrossing, and troubling -- a poignant allegory of the contemporary Korean condition that marks the debut of a new international talent." — Heinz Insu Fenkl, author of Memories of My Ghost Brother and translator of The Nine Cloud Dream by Kim Man-jung 

“Delicate and heartbreaking. Like peeling a fruit, Sohn bares human emotion and questions the human condition with a gentle hunger.”  — -Jamie Marina Lau, author of Pink Mountain on Locust Island

“In her debut novel, director and screenwriter Sohn makes the bold decision to choose an emotionally constricted first-person narrator, but the risk pays off. With the aid of a skillful translation…the novel will appeal fully to adults, but mature young readers who must cope in their everyday lives with the struggles of late adolescence will find themselves identifying with Yunjae and moved by his plight. A sensitive exploration of what it's like to live at life's emotional poles.”  — Kirkus Reviews

"The narration by a young protagonist with a disorder that affects his ability to identify and express feelings will rightly draw comparisons to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, but Sohn's insightful depiction of an outsider's perspective on society around him will also please fans of other narrators who sharply consider the world at a remove, such as in The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Readers will treasure the opportunity to see the world through Yunjae's eyes and watch him as he grows." — Shelf Awareness

"Intense and moving...a phenomenal book that deserves a wide audience among readers."  — Wall Street Journal

About the Author

Sandy Joosun Lee is a translator and interpreter based in Seoul. She earned a BA in Literature/Writing from the University of California, San Diego. She has received translation grants from Literary Translation Institute of Korea and Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea. She currently works at Studio Mir where she translates and develops animated content.

Sohn Won-pyung is a film director, screenwriter, and novelist living in South Korea. She earned a BA in social studies and philosophy at Sogang University and film directing at the Korean Academy of Film Arts. She has won several prizes, including the Film Review Award of the 6th Cine21, and the Science Fantasy Writers’ Award for her movie script I Believe in the Moment. She also wrote and directed a number of short films, including Oooh You Make Me Sick and A Two-way Monologue . She made her literary debut in 2017 with this, her first full-length novel, Almond , which won the Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction, followed by which won the Jeju Peace Literary Award. Counterattacks at Thirty also received the Jeju Peace Literary Award, as well as the 2022 Japanese Booksellers' Award.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07WSCKCH5
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperVia (May 5, 2020)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 5, 2020
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1177 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• #5 in Indian Literature
• #176 in Asian American Literature & Fiction
• #265 in Sea Stories

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Almond: A Novel

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About the author

Won-pyung sohn.

Sohn Won-pyung (b.1979) earned her BA in social studies and philosophy at Sogang University and film directing at Korean Academy of Film Arts. She won the Film Review Award of the 6th Cine21 in 2001. Her movie script “I Believe In the Moment” won the Science Fantasy Writers’ Award in 2006. She also wrote and directed a number of short films including Oooh You Make Me Sick (2005), and A Two-way Monologue (2007). She made her literary debut in 2017 when her first full-length novel Almond won the Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction, immediately garnering rave reactions from the readers. A new generation of a storyteller, she wrote her next full-length novel, Born in 1988 which won the Jeju 4.3 Peace Literary Award. She is active in both movie and literary scenes as a film director, screenwriter, and novelist.

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