Book Review: Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, Hwang Bo Reum and Shanna Tan
Finally managed to sit down and finish a book! And what a book to jolt me back to life, even if I will return to my post-grad stupor… At least for the duration I read it, my heart beat strongly.
I didn’t go into Hyunam-Dong Bookshop with high expectations; despite being a seasoned reader, I still judge a book based on first impression, and my first impression of Hyunam-Dong was that it would be a quaint, perhaps slightly dull, book about running a bookshop. I don’t usually read books about books, so I didn’t go in with much anticipation. Sometimes this is the best way to enter a story, because then it can surprise and move you in ways you never saw coming.
Like the founder of the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, Yeongju, and its workers and visitors, I found myself, as a reader, on a journey towards loving the bookshop and what it makes possible as a space and fixture of community. Yeongju set it up soon after a divorce, and the business only really kicks off when she hires Minjun, a fledgling barista. It is a dream of hers, but it is also a struggle: it was difficult to get the bookshop off the ground, and it’s difficult still to keep it running. Striking out on one’s own in the literary world, but also in general, is a risky and often ill-fated endeavour, but Yeongju did it anyway because she had nothing (more) to lose. This is one of the questions the book asks and keeps returning to: is it possible to live a life that “deviate[s] from the textbook definition of success,” to change your life so you can live it, not wait for it, as Susan Sontag wrote?
I’ve been asking myself the same question for the past few months. One of the reasons the book speaks to me is because I am also a reader trying to mend their relationship to books. Ironic, considering I just came out of a literature degree. But this is where the book really connects on a personal level, when it asks whether one should do what they like, or what they are good at, what to do if you like nothing and are good at nothing, and what constitutes a good life, happiness, success, if such things can exist honestly and equally in a world where work is tied to livelihood and productivity (in service of capital) is tied to worth, and you don’t own the means of production nor the fruits of your labour.
I am reminded of what Audre Lorde said about how poetry is not a luxury. In Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, reading and bookselling seem to be a luxury at first, but then you realise it is a necessity for those whose lives it changes, however modestly, due to the community it fosters and the vibrancy it brings to a neighbourhood, even a culture.
In the subtly shifting lives of the characters, it indeed seems possible to live in the moment and for that to make up a life, to do and not be haunted by the past or cowed by the future, to live in the distance between the coffee dripper and coffee grounds.
This book does not offer a dream as a cure-all, but as a tough yet tender reality. It is borne out of Yeongju’s desire to change her life, and to honour the books that give her that life – perhaps there’s a bit of romance in that, too. As a book-lover and literature major, writing this is testament to the fact that whatever gives you strength and reminds you of your agency and humanity is not a luxury; however selfishly guarded and cynically treated art can become, it will always have the power to speak to someone, and serve anyone.
Endnote: the blog booksmart, doing an actual book review? it’s more likely than you think. i have so much more to say about what this book has to say, and what it affirmed and provoked in my own relationship to books and reading. more to come! in the meantime, i need to find a way to shorten this so i can fit it into an instagram caption. thanks for reading 💙