(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.
