Shoko's Smile: Stories

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S hoko’s Smile has already sold more than 200,000 copies in South Korean author Choi Eunyoung’s home country. Reading these seven excellent stories, translated by Sung Ryu, it’s easy to see why. Each is written with sober detail, filmic precision and absolute control. Everything, from the three-decade occupation of Korea by Japan to the consequences of the Vietnam war, is explored with the lightest of touches and without losing sight of the central characters’ motivations and personalities. JY: In your interviews, you’ve mentioned how female artists undergo intense self-scrutiny, particularly how you’re “ cold and cruel ” about your own art. I’m curious at how this plays out within the world of Shoko’s Smile, where all the narrators are female. Could you talk more about the role of women in your writing? How do you think this intense self-doubt affects your work?

The final two stories - Michaela and The Secret - revolve around the heartbreaking 2014 Sewol ferry sinking that killed 304 passengers, many of whom were high-school students and their young teachers. This is easily a new favourite read of mine. Shoko's Smile is an extraordinary collection of short stories with a lot of heart that centers around woman navigating human relationships amidst grief, trauma, suffering and injustice. Sewol ferry disaster (a traumatic and transformative event in modern Korean history that even contributed to the impeachment of the President.) Truth to be told, I'm not sure why I started this when I don't feel like having any literary fiction at the moment. After looking further on what the message forth, I think this book is astonishing and agonizing all the same. I find the prose to be a bit dry and monotonous which is why as much as I wanted to love the book, I couldn't find myself engaging with them. I got weary instead. I also agreed on the part where most of the characters felt one-dimensional and barely distinguishable despite it being anthologies.Some stories are pointedly political and show how some relationships can break down due to events far beyond one's control. Choi Eunyoung refrains from sensationalizing the horrors of these historical events, keeping the stories firmly grounded in the emotional realities of the characters through sparse and understated prose. Reminiscent of Alice Munroe and Elena Ferrante, it is the force of emotions bleeding through Choi’s language that disarms, breaks, and warms the reader’s heart. Ultimately, Shoko’s Smile gently arouses in us an empathy for the pain of others and ourselves.

Even cooler is that the first 5 stories are excellent - the aforementioned novel-level punch (which sounds like a delicious beverage), beautiful writing, brilliantly translated. Brilliantly conceived, the stories in Shoko’s Smile are emotionally raw and true to life: a compilation of a writer who has not only devoted time to the development of the craft, but who has invested in the deep observation of character. The resulting emotional portraiture is both extraordinary and moving. Sung Ryu is part of the Smoking Tigers collective ( https://smokingtigers.com/sung-ryu/). I have previously read her translation of two sci-fi/speculative fiction works, I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories by 김보영 (Kim Bo-Young) and the brilliant Tower by 배명훈 (Bae Myung-hoon). In Xin Chao, Xin Chao, a Korean family in 1990s Germany becomes fast friends with a Vietnamese expatriate family. But they fall out over a brusque remark that downplays South Korea's alleged complicity in the Vietnam War. JY: A deeply humanizing element in your collection was its depictions of friendships between the various social outcasts, like Shoko and the grandfather. These relationships are often complicated and painful, while simultaneously life-giving and crucial. Could you speak more about your focus on friendship?But this is of a piece with the melancholy that permeates the collection, one punctuated by moments of startling insight, grief, and even joy made all the more affecting for how hard-won they are. There’s no question that this is a remarkable debut. Korean society underwent rapid economic growth, instilling in people a hypercompetitive, materialistic mindset. The country may be wealthy but it struggles with rising inequality. In Hanji and Youngju, a failed romance between volunteer workers at a European monastery retreat explores a new kind of international community based on shared values (and shared privilege) as well as the attraction of contemplative places for a young, searching generation. Despite the characters’ best intentions, the story is full of missed connections: “We had resorted to every means, except fighting, to tolerate each other. We didn’t even have the desire to vent our emotions or bad-mouth each other to see how the other would react. You would need at least a shred of affection for fights to happen.” Choi introduces a cast of characters in seven short stories that vary in age, occupation, and motive, but all long for connection, typically with themselves, as well as those around them. The desire for intimacy and to be understood intensifies as relationships eventually deteriorate or become estranged from one another. It was no suprise that I ugly cried my way throughout the book. With simple words and precise details, Choi Eunyong paints her characters in the most realistic light and captures the very essence of human emotions that often times I feel so seen when I was reading this book. Altogether, Shoko’s Smile is simply one of the best books that I’ve read and I I’m already on the lookout for what the author will do next. I highly recommend everyone to read this. 5/5 shining stars.

Such is the grace and delicacy with which the characters open up themselves that the reader can’t help but be taken by surprise whenever they’re hit with epiphanies or moments of straightforwardness, such as: Shoko's Smile is an exceptionally touching collection of realistic, profound, and tender stories. Each is impassioned and complex but never bleak. They depict the reality of the female expe Heartbreaking and moving with great characterization, many of the stories contained an unexpected twist that would make me view the story in a whole new light. The majority of them also emphasized how when differences collide (albeit through upbringings, perspectives or cultures), it can unite others or tear them apart. The translation into English was very well done, and I especially enjoyed how certain Korean characters and honorifics were kept. Honorifics reflect and dictate the distance between two people—their hierarchy and intimacy—and this is true in Korean society, where honorifics often stand in for names.Written with sober detail, filmic precision and absolute control . . . an incredibly impressive collection told with realism, seriousness and moral integrity’ Observer Hanji and Youngju is a story of an enigmatic relationship between the narrator Youngju, and a young Kenyan man Hanji, both volunteers at a monastery in France. While as long as Shoko's Smile this story is more constrained in scope and more intense as a result. When it comes to collections of short stories, more often than not, I find myself rather unaffected by them. While most collections do have one or two good stories in them, the remainder tends to be either forgettable or plain bad. The stories in Shoko's Smile are by no means terrible but they did strike me as rather monotonous, dull even. I liked Eun-young Choi's restrained prose and that many of her stories hone in on life's quieter moments. Most of her stories are characterised by a sense of loss: there are those who are grieving the death of a loved one, those who regret not having done more to understand a friend or a relation of theirs, and those who long to be reunited with someone they care for. Generational divides also seem to be a recurring motif within this collection, as many stories feature children/parents or grandchildren/grandparents. In her homeland, author Choi is known for the plainness and directness of her style, and this comes through well in Sung Ryu’s translation. The translator has chosen to render the informality of some characters’ speech through spelling — dropping the g’s off the end of words and substituting “yer” for “your” and “a-crying” for “crying.” In places, this can be distracting.