(English) Gyeong-ae’s Heart

Kim Keum-hee’s first novel, the most anticipated work in 2018

Is your heart well today?

The recipient of the Changbi Shin Tong-yop Prize for Literature for Sentimental for Too Many Days (published by Changbi), her first short story collection published in 2014, the grand prize in the Munhak Dongne Young Writers’ Literary Award in 2016 for “Romance in Broad Daylight,” and the Contemporary Literature Prize in the following year for “Everything about Chess,” Kim Keum-hee has dramatically risen as a new star in South Korean literature. The prose fiction writer’s first novel, Gyeong-ae’s Heart has been published. Serialized in the Quarterly Changbi from spring to winter 2017 and critically acclaimed and highly anticipated by readers, this is the most anticipated work in 2018 belonging to the tradition of bestselling serialized novels. Receiving overwhelming support from 300 people participating in a book review event held even before its publication, Gyeong-ae’s Heart has met with passionate responses from readers.

“Don’t discard your heart, though we’ve crumbled a bit, we haven’t been destroyed”

We have withstood in this mindset

Since a breakup with her former lover, Gyeong-ae has sunk into deep torpor so that she is barely able even to wash herself. The only thing that she can manage to do all that cruel summer is to write letters to a Facebook page offering advice on love. Several years later, however, Gyeong-ae encounters “Big Sister,” the administrator of “Big Sister Is Guilt-free,” the online romance advice page that sometimes replied with commonplace solutions. Withstanding the disgrace of having been assigned to the Sales Division of Bando Sewing Machine Co., Ltd. as a deputy team leader without team members through personal connections rather than his own efforts and abilities, Sang-su has led a double life after work at night, under the alias of “Big Sister.” Thus meeting each other at the same company as a team leader and a team member, Sang-su and Gyeong-ae share yet another link unbeknownst to them: they lost a close mutual friend in the Incheon beer hall fire incident of 1999, a historical event in South Korea where many adolescents perished in a conflagration because the owner of a pub locked the door from the outside. Indeed, Gyeong-ae is a survivor of that incident as well. Unaware of this link, the two figures come to open their hearts and to feel special tenderness for each other.

"2014년 출간한 첫번째 소설집 <센티멘털도 하루 이틀>로 신동엽문학상을, 2016년 '너무 한낮의 연애'로 젊은작가상 대상을, 이듬해 '체스의 모든 것'으로 현대문학상을 수상하며 한국문학의 빛나는 기대주로 급부상한 소설가 김금희의 첫번째 장편소설. 2017년 봄부터 겨울까지 계간 「창작과비평」에 연재하며 문단의 호평과 독자의 기대를 한껏 받았다.

고등학교 시절 호프집 화재사건에서 운 좋게 살아남은 경애와 같은 사고 현장에서 단 한명의 소중한 친구를 잃은 상수가 서로의 연결고리를 모른 채 '반도미싱'에서 팀장과 팀원으로 만나며 시작되는 이 소설에는 지금 이 시대를 살아가는 우리 모두의 마음이 켜켜이 담겨 있다. 읽는 사람에 따라 보는 각도에 따라 다양한 이야기를 읽어낼 수 있는 <경애의 마음>은 한가지 독법으로 해석할 수 없을 만큼 다층적으로 읽히는 작품이다."