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Y/N
Y/Na novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction.
It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on live streams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boyband, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic—in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star.
Then Moon suddenly retires, vanishing from the public eye. As Y/N flies from Berlin to Seoul to be with Moon, our narrator, too, journeys to Korea in search of the object of her love. An escalating series of mistranslations and misidentifications lands her at the headquarters of the Kafkaesque entertainment company that manages the boyband until, at a secret location, together with Moon at last, art and real life approach their final convergence.
Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant, Y/N is a provocative literary debut about the universal longing for transcendence and the tragic struggle to assert one’s singular story amidst the amnesiac effects of globalization. Esther Yi’s prose unsettles the boundary between high and mass art, exploding our expectations of a novel about “identity” and offering in its place a sui generis picture of the loneliness that afflicts modern life.
It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on live streams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boyband, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic—in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star.
Then Moon suddenly retires, vanishing from the public eye. As Y/N flies from Berlin to Seoul to be with Moon, our narrator, too, journeys to Korea in search of the object of her love. An escalating series of mistranslations and misidentifications lands her at the headquarters of the Kafkaesque entertainment company that manages the boyband until, at a secret location, together with Moon at last, art and real life approach their final convergence.
Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant, Y/N is a provocative literary debut about the universal longing for transcendence and the tragic struggle to assert one’s singular story amidst the amnesiac effects of globalization. Esther Yi’s prose unsettles the boundary between high and mass art, exploding our expectations of a novel about “identity” and offering in its place a sui generis picture of the loneliness that afflicts modern life.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published March 21, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,374 reviews
October 2, 2024
reading this feels like that one night when i accidentally smoked weed for the first time
August 25, 2024
This is just what happens when you stan boy groups instead of girl groups
Edit: if you take this joke review as serious and leave a self-righteous comment you owe me one (1) photocard
Edit: if you take this joke review as serious and leave a self-righteous comment you owe me one (1) photocard
March 19, 2023
I sort of feel like I just hallucinated this entire thing
April 2, 2023
“I could love only that which made me secretive, combative, severe, a moral disappointment to myself, and an obstruction to others.”
Ottessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, Melissa Broder, and the other sad weird women of literature can step aside. A new player has entered the field, and she’s wilder than all of them put together.
Esther Yi makes no compromise with the public taste in her debut novel, Y/N. Following a Korean American woman who upends her life in Berlin to pursue her obsession with a k-pop idol, this book is trippy, surreal, and supremely unconcerned with making itself palatable to a wide audience. The writing makes no pretense of being realistic, with characters who all speak in the same affected, pseudo-philosophical voice and make bizarre choices for reasons that remain obscure to the reader. The narrative is dominated by the main character’s inner monologue, a fevered stream of consciousness that becomes increasingly more absurd as the story progresses.
The most interesting aspect of the novel is, of course, how it incorporates fan fiction to explore obsessive fandom culture and parasocial relationships. I think it was brilliant of Yi to use self-insert RPF, arguably the most vilified and derided form of fan fiction, as a basis for her novel. I’m endlessly fascinated by the relationship between “high” and “low” culture, and the fact that so much of this highly literary work was written in the form of k-pop fan fiction feels revolutionary to me.
Even if I sincerely admire the concept behind Y/N, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I enjoyed reading it. There were several passages that I re-read many times and still couldn’t make sense of. Similarly, some of the dialogue toes the line between intellectual reflection and pretentious nonsense. While I realize that the narrator’s surreal interactions with other characters were purposefully written to be dreamlike and absurd, I can’t help but feel that many of them added nothing to the story or themes of the book. In general, I thought there were way too many secondary characters whose purpose in the narrative remained largely unclear.
Still, I’m impressed with Yi’s bold, unapologetic debut. I always root for authors who manage to bring something new to the literary scene, and she has certainly succeeded in doing so.
Ottessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, Melissa Broder, and the other sad weird women of literature can step aside. A new player has entered the field, and she’s wilder than all of them put together.
Esther Yi makes no compromise with the public taste in her debut novel, Y/N. Following a Korean American woman who upends her life in Berlin to pursue her obsession with a k-pop idol, this book is trippy, surreal, and supremely unconcerned with making itself palatable to a wide audience. The writing makes no pretense of being realistic, with characters who all speak in the same affected, pseudo-philosophical voice and make bizarre choices for reasons that remain obscure to the reader. The narrative is dominated by the main character’s inner monologue, a fevered stream of consciousness that becomes increasingly more absurd as the story progresses.
The most interesting aspect of the novel is, of course, how it incorporates fan fiction to explore obsessive fandom culture and parasocial relationships. I think it was brilliant of Yi to use self-insert RPF, arguably the most vilified and derided form of fan fiction, as a basis for her novel. I’m endlessly fascinated by the relationship between “high” and “low” culture, and the fact that so much of this highly literary work was written in the form of k-pop fan fiction feels revolutionary to me.
Even if I sincerely admire the concept behind Y/N, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I enjoyed reading it. There were several passages that I re-read many times and still couldn’t make sense of. Similarly, some of the dialogue toes the line between intellectual reflection and pretentious nonsense. While I realize that the narrator’s surreal interactions with other characters were purposefully written to be dreamlike and absurd, I can’t help but feel that many of them added nothing to the story or themes of the book. In general, I thought there were way too many secondary characters whose purpose in the narrative remained largely unclear.
Still, I’m impressed with Yi’s bold, unapologetic debut. I always root for authors who manage to bring something new to the literary scene, and she has certainly succeeded in doing so.
April 6, 2023
she is crazy but she is free
December 3, 2024
I got this from the library for free but I still want my money back
October 2, 2024
this is one of those literary fiction novels that you'll either adore or detest—no in-between. it's an astra publishing house acquisition, so you can rightly assume some level of weirdness; in the case of esther yi's y/n, weirdness abounds. it's everywhere. sometimes this weirdness is eye-widening. sometimes it will make your skin crawl. occasionally, you may want to roll your eyes.
given that the novel deals with the parasocial fan-artist dynamics bred by the kpop industry, it's going to produce a lot of contentious debates, especially if you as a reader come from the world of kpop consumption. it feels like a betrayal or perhaps rejection of y/n's messaging to try to trace its inspirations, if there are any at all, though i would be remiss in my duties as a reviewer if i didn't admit that the book's central figure (of worship), boyband member moon, bears a startling resemblance to park jimin from bts: former ballet/contemporary prodigy who was nearly kicked from the group due to his dance foundations, described as having plush lips, practices for long hours almost to the point of his own destruction, is sent into an existential crisis when he loses the ability to dance, etc. etc.:
this is jimin's origin story almost exactly, and it seems obvious the larger boy group is in some manner based off of bts. the y/n line, "I need to know that at this very moment he's looking down at his hands somewhere in the world," feels like an ironic callback to jimin's classic, "Remember, there is a person here in Korea, in the city of Seoul, who understands you." it's more than likely that these characters are amalgamations of a swath of idols, but i digress.
y/n attempts to toe the line between satire and surrealism, leaning heavily into one before careening back into the other by turns. because of this tonal choice, i don't think yi owes much authenticity or realism to the world of kpop, and in fact the glaring lack of realism (how often she turns concepts on their heads, or exaggerates them beyond any/all recognizability) made it much easier for me to buy into her world.
if you're familiar with the kpop industry, you're going to come up against a lot of discrepancies here; that fact didn't bother me much. after a point, it became clear that surrealism was guiding yi's hand, and for that reason, i believe she's able to get away with quite a lot, namely:
1. complete and utter pretentiousness. this book is dripping with overly ornate prose, little-known thesaurus words, european excursions (for the vibe of it all!), and lofty references that sometimes seem to make little sense at all. yi's language is so ambitious that she's bound to fail every now and again. and she does—often, and without remorse. having said that, she just as often lands on language so divinely unique, so completely bizarre, that i had to catch my breath from being bowled over by it.....
or even the following passage about moon's penis:
2. her replication of fan culture. the surreal/satirical dichotomy is leaned on HEAVILY throughout y/n. at times, yi lays it on a little too thick, and her attempts at reproducing the kpop industry's consumer dynamics feel alien and unbelievable (the boyband calls their fans "livers," as in, the body part, which i found pretty heavy-handed). by the end of the book, though, everything is so outlandish that i didn't even care about the minor details she'd mucked up or ignored along the way. i was enthralled by the idea of moon fleeing his own industry to hide away in a room of cherry blossom trees inhabited by old dementia patients.
3. her unabashedly distinct style. yi is one of those writers who can't escape her own literary inclinations, no matter where she goes or what she tries (if she tries at all). she can't run from her own voice in any corner of her novel. this means that, yes, every character in this book talks exactly the same (like pretentious little litfic books that have sprouted legs). and YET......I LOVED IT ALL THE SAME!!!!!! it had the overall effect of watching a child play dollhouse with inanimate objects, using each little plastic person as a vessel for their ultimate desires / dialogue. i thought it added to the surrealistic ambience of the book and of the narrator's unreliability.
my attention did occasionally flag over the course of the book, but i read it across a single month, so that's to be expected. when i was wavering between star ratings, it was because each time i picked the book up again, i had to readjust to its strange, singular style and buy back into the contract of its world-building.
satire like this would NEVER work for me if the prose wasn't so elaborately excessive, if each page wasn't teeming with detail and decoration. i think of elaine hsieh chou's disorientation, which was rendered so simplistically that it felt garishly cartoonish. in spite of its short length, y/n is so meaty—leaves readers with so much gristle and grime to chew on—that the satire feels like a wes anderson film. the dreaminess distracts to such a degree that i can forgive more than a few errors, and by the end, i was glued to the page.
yi is an aggressively experimental writer, so effortfully herself—so unashamedly attempting to impress—that you can't help but want to keep looking, even if you have to slow down traffic to do so, even if there's gore or suffering carefully arranged on the shoulder of the road.
i need to own a physical copy of this book and then i need to take it apart slowly and methodically, until i understand all of its secret crevices and trap doors. it was that startling. an impressive debut and a writer i will no doubt be following into her next books.
given that the novel deals with the parasocial fan-artist dynamics bred by the kpop industry, it's going to produce a lot of contentious debates, especially if you as a reader come from the world of kpop consumption. it feels like a betrayal or perhaps rejection of y/n's messaging to try to trace its inspirations, if there are any at all, though i would be remiss in my duties as a reviewer if i didn't admit that the book's central figure (of worship), boyband member moon, bears a startling resemblance to park jimin from bts: former ballet/contemporary prodigy who was nearly kicked from the group due to his dance foundations, described as having plush lips, practices for long hours almost to the point of his own destruction, is sent into an existential crisis when he loses the ability to dance, etc. etc.:
He'd been the child prodigy of a ballet company in Seoul, performing every lead role until the age of fourteen, when he was recruited by the entertainment company. Four years later, he'd almost failed to earn a place among the pack of boys because the company president, known as the Music Professor, had been skeptical of Moon's ability to subordinate the idiosyncrasy of his dance to the needs of the group.
this is jimin's origin story almost exactly, and it seems obvious the larger boy group is in some manner based off of bts. the y/n line, "I need to know that at this very moment he's looking down at his hands somewhere in the world," feels like an ironic callback to jimin's classic, "Remember, there is a person here in Korea, in the city of Seoul, who understands you." it's more than likely that these characters are amalgamations of a swath of idols, but i digress.
y/n attempts to toe the line between satire and surrealism, leaning heavily into one before careening back into the other by turns. because of this tonal choice, i don't think yi owes much authenticity or realism to the world of kpop, and in fact the glaring lack of realism (how often she turns concepts on their heads, or exaggerates them beyond any/all recognizability) made it much easier for me to buy into her world.
if you're familiar with the kpop industry, you're going to come up against a lot of discrepancies here; that fact didn't bother me much. after a point, it became clear that surrealism was guiding yi's hand, and for that reason, i believe she's able to get away with quite a lot, namely:
1. complete and utter pretentiousness. this book is dripping with overly ornate prose, little-known thesaurus words, european excursions (for the vibe of it all!), and lofty references that sometimes seem to make little sense at all. yi's language is so ambitious that she's bound to fail every now and again. and she does—often, and without remorse. having said that, she just as often lands on language so divinely unique, so completely bizarre, that i had to catch my breath from being bowled over by it.....
Only Moon, last to speak, walked to the edge of the stage, shielded his eyes from the lights, and peered into the crowd. "Mom, Dad, Older Sister," he said. "I can't see you. I love you. Therefore, where are you?" His use of "therefore" stunned me.
or even the following passage about moon's penis:
Its season was winter. There was something vague yet resolute about it, as if it had spent the night drinking and was now swooning in the depths of strange dreams, unafraid of what it had to confront in the secret world of itself.
2. her replication of fan culture. the surreal/satirical dichotomy is leaned on HEAVILY throughout y/n. at times, yi lays it on a little too thick, and her attempts at reproducing the kpop industry's consumer dynamics feel alien and unbelievable (the boyband calls their fans "livers," as in, the body part, which i found pretty heavy-handed). by the end of the book, though, everything is so outlandish that i didn't even care about the minor details she'd mucked up or ignored along the way. i was enthralled by the idea of moon fleeing his own industry to hide away in a room of cherry blossom trees inhabited by old dementia patients.
3. her unabashedly distinct style. yi is one of those writers who can't escape her own literary inclinations, no matter where she goes or what she tries (if she tries at all). she can't run from her own voice in any corner of her novel. this means that, yes, every character in this book talks exactly the same (like pretentious little litfic books that have sprouted legs). and YET......I LOVED IT ALL THE SAME!!!!!! it had the overall effect of watching a child play dollhouse with inanimate objects, using each little plastic person as a vessel for their ultimate desires / dialogue. i thought it added to the surrealistic ambience of the book and of the narrator's unreliability.
my attention did occasionally flag over the course of the book, but i read it across a single month, so that's to be expected. when i was wavering between star ratings, it was because each time i picked the book up again, i had to readjust to its strange, singular style and buy back into the contract of its world-building.
satire like this would NEVER work for me if the prose wasn't so elaborately excessive, if each page wasn't teeming with detail and decoration. i think of elaine hsieh chou's disorientation, which was rendered so simplistically that it felt garishly cartoonish. in spite of its short length, y/n is so meaty—leaves readers with so much gristle and grime to chew on—that the satire feels like a wes anderson film. the dreaminess distracts to such a degree that i can forgive more than a few errors, and by the end, i was glued to the page.
yi is an aggressively experimental writer, so effortfully herself—so unashamedly attempting to impress—that you can't help but want to keep looking, even if you have to slow down traffic to do so, even if there's gore or suffering carefully arranged on the shoulder of the road.
i need to own a physical copy of this book and then i need to take it apart slowly and methodically, until i understand all of its secret crevices and trap doors. it was that startling. an impressive debut and a writer i will no doubt be following into her next books.
May 3, 2023
Every review is like "she ate" and I'm like "his cuticles???"
That's how this book made me feel.
That's how this book made me feel.
January 10, 2024
biblically accurate representation of a fan fiction reader with a thesaurus at disposition
March 26, 2023
The premise sounded so unhinged and fun but this book ended up taking itself way too seriously...I found the attempts at intellectualizing fan culture/obsession to be pretty insipid, and the dialogue was honestly so terribly written.
May 27, 2024
“I love the world I hate simply because you live in it.”
this is truly the weirdest book i’ve ever read. i kind of thought i was going to like it, just from the title and premise alone, but i was a little apprehensive because so many of my goodreads friends did not vibe with this one. but from chapter one, and reading some of the most impressive writing ive ever read, let alone from a debut, i knew this was really going to work for me. i am a bit hesitant to recommend it, because i just know it is going to be too weird and too satirical, and the writing too purple prose and too stream of consciousness for a lot of readers. but if you’re looking for something very different, something that's really going to pull you out of your own comfortability, something unlike anything else you’ve read before, i would recommend that book wholeheartedly.
the very basic, surface level, premise of this story is that we follow a fanfiction writer (who goes by y/n of course) who become more and more obsessed with a kpop idol. there is a constant emphasis on the idol industry and how harsh it is - from eating disorders, to being overworked, to pushing your body beyond its limits, to also being stalked by people who call themselves fans. these are a constant throughline of obsessive fandom culture and how that enables capitalism even more, and how sometimes parasocial relationships can feel very manipulative and cult-like. and i feel like this is where the disconnect comes from (besides that insanity that is this book) because either people aren’t familiar with the kpop industry or they feel attacked because they do understand the kpop industry and they feel uncomfortable with their place in it. (and i say this as someone who has a youtube channel dedicated to park jimin and collecting his photocards lol)
“But his first-place ranking made the disturbing suggestion that my imagination, one of the few remaining places where I felt truly free, was actually the site of my dreariest conformity. I knew my feelings for Moon were neither unique nor all that extreme, and I even viewed mass popularity as his rightful due. But writing stories about him was supposed to have represented a higher level of devotion, an elitist kink in the plain template of fandom.”
but, to me, this is a book about depression - and it truly is one of the most powerful depictions of it that i have ever read. following y/n and seeing the way she justifies everything, and feeling so much disgust one page and then so much empathy the very next page, it is truly a roller coaster through a fever dream feeling reading this entire book. this is a story about consuming, yet wanting so badly to be consumed. Feeling so lonely, and hyperfocusing on the one light in your dark world so you can feel like you are somewhat living. this is a depiction of mental health for south koreans (and so many asian communities) where help can be nowhere to be found, both professionally and from your family. (and additionally, lack of resources, lack of empathy, and just lack of help everywhere to help people who need help be able to have access to help - from our young to our elderly!) and how industries, marketing, and capitalism will prey on individuals trying to live their lives escaping. and this is a story about giving yourself wholly to something so it’s all not for nothing.
“For the first time, I doubted the singularity of my love and thereby its truth. I glimpsed a future where I felt nothing for Moon, as one did, with both relief and melancholy, on the cusp of a breakup. I nearly fainted from disorientation. My love, which I'd considered, not without pride, a destabilizing force, was turning out to be exactly that which stabilized me.”
i also feel like this book is about identity and being a diaspora adult, going back to your home country, and experiencing a lot of feelings that you don’t really know what to do with. loving something that makes you feel more connected to your identity, but then seeing a lot of “fans” that you are supposed to relate to, appropriating and fetishizing your culture (and non koreans commenting on your fullent korean accent!!). and just seeing people view idols not as artists, but as perfect objects of their consumption and enjoyment. there are a lot of bold and important themes in these 200 pages, and i sadly do think a lot of readers are missing them.
again, this is a wild story. like, i really don’t want to give anything away - but there is a scene where y/n actually is able to give her idol her fanfic (which is very dark fanfic) and i was sliding off my bed reading it because i was feeling so uncomfortable. i really am tempted to give it five stars just because it really did make me feel so many emotions, while being unlike anything i’ve ever read before. but if you pick this up because of me and hate it, don’t blame me because i warned you 500 times this is a really weird book with a lot of uncomfortable and dark things! but this is a story i think that is really going to stick with me, and i absolutely cannot wait to see what esther yi writes next.
trigger + content warnings: depression, talk of body image, disordered eating, racism, fetishization, abusive relationships, a lot of talk of death, talk of suicide, suicide ideation, one sentence mention of school shootings, vomit, talk of disability, blood, accidental self harm, mention of death of pet in past (dog being poisoned by neighbors), and a big portion of this book discussed and shows dementia
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June 24, 2024
NON PERVENUTO
Secondo il New York Times è tra i cento libri più importanti dell’anno appena concluso.
Spero che gli altri novantanove siano migliori, più interessanti, più piacevoli.
Per me è stata lettura molto faticosa e protratta nonostante si tratti di sole centosettanta pagine scarse.
L’ho trovato interessante e avvincente come un trattato sullo stato dell’entomologia nel quinto secolo dopo Cristo.
L’ho trovato contorto e costantemente sopra le righe, esagerato e cerebrale e forzatamente eccentrico, con personaggi – tutti – irritanti e urticanti, di quelli che viene una gran voglia di prenderli a schiaffi e sperare che tornino coi piedi per terra.
È vero che le boy-band non mi interessavano neppure quando io ero un boy – mai concepito una band che si presentasse sul palco senza strumenti – e il K-pop mi emoziona come una buccia di banana spiaccicata sull’asfalto.
È vero che una protagonista ventinovenne senza nome, coreana residente a Berlino, che lavora come copywriter per un'azienda che vende cuori di carciofo in scatola: il suo compito è infondere in modo credibile all'ortaggio la capacità di provare amore romantico per il consumatore, desta più di qualche perplessità.
Ma certo il problema non è tutto qui: è il fastidio e la noia e l’incomprensione che l’io-narrante mi ha suscitato.
Per la cronaca, Y/N sta per Your Name, formula usata per le fanfiction.
Esther Yi
Secondo il New York Times è tra i cento libri più importanti dell’anno appena concluso.
Spero che gli altri novantanove siano migliori, più interessanti, più piacevoli.
Per me è stata lettura molto faticosa e protratta nonostante si tratti di sole centosettanta pagine scarse.
L’ho trovato interessante e avvincente come un trattato sullo stato dell’entomologia nel quinto secolo dopo Cristo.
L’ho trovato contorto e costantemente sopra le righe, esagerato e cerebrale e forzatamente eccentrico, con personaggi – tutti – irritanti e urticanti, di quelli che viene una gran voglia di prenderli a schiaffi e sperare che tornino coi piedi per terra.
È vero che le boy-band non mi interessavano neppure quando io ero un boy – mai concepito una band che si presentasse sul palco senza strumenti – e il K-pop mi emoziona come una buccia di banana spiaccicata sull’asfalto.
È vero che una protagonista ventinovenne senza nome, coreana residente a Berlino, che lavora come copywriter per un'azienda che vende cuori di carciofo in scatola: il suo compito è infondere in modo credibile all'ortaggio la capacità di provare amore romantico per il consumatore, desta più di qualche perplessità.
Ma certo il problema non è tutto qui: è il fastidio e la noia e l’incomprensione che l’io-narrante mi ha suscitato.
Per la cronaca, Y/N sta per Your Name, formula usata per le fanfiction.
Esther Yi
November 7, 2024
i hate asking this of books, but what was the purpose? what happened, where did it mean to go?
suddenly my parasocial relationship with bangchan is not that concerning
edit: every time i get a notification about this review it haunts me that i gave it 2 stars instead of 1, so im changing my rating
suddenly my parasocial relationship with bangchan is not that concerning
edit: every time i get a notification about this review it haunts me that i gave it 2 stars instead of 1, so im changing my rating
March 28, 2023
hell yeah
January 12, 2023
My therapist is getting an audiobook from me
June 1, 2023
3.5
When you fangirl so hard you become y/n irl
When you fangirl so hard you become y/n irl
May 25, 2024
Yeah I just finished and my brain is full of tiny twinky stars. The only thing I’m likely to write next in this review space is going to sound like blurb garbage, you know, like: “STUNNINGLY ORIGINAL.” Here is a coherent thought I’m thinking, though: this is one of those rare books where there are at least two conversations going on in every sentence. I know what I mean.
May 18, 2023
I could see what the author was trying to do here, but I was left wanting more from the story. Judging by the other reviews, it’s also most definitely a case of “you either like it or you don’t” in regards to the writing style, which I unfortunately didn’t. The satire felt half baked in a way that made the story feel almost disingenuous, cartoonish and ultimately uninteresting to me.
May 23, 2023
Author and critic Esther Yi’s debut revolves around an unnamed narrator, like Yi she’s a Korean American living in Germany. The narrator is disaffected, perhaps alienated, sometimes open to ideas as in the literature she regularly devours, sometimes almost jaded in her responses to the world she inhabits. One day she reluctantly attends an event featuring a phenomenally-successful, K-Pop group “the pack of boys” and is transfixed by Moon, one of its five members. Suddenly Moon dominates her thoughts, taking her away from an everyday shaped by a mundane job writing copy for a business selling artichoke hearts and a desultory affair with the demanding Masterson. She starts to delve into fan fiction, devising ever more elaborate stories which she posts online, part of the ever-expanding body of Y/N fanfic - in which Y/N (your name) provides a space for readers to insert themselves into the narrative. The narrator’s growing obsession leads to an encounter with representatives of Moon’s vast band of adoring fans, and eventually to Seoul in search of Moon himself.
Yi’s novel’s slippery, deliberately enigmatic, Yi has stated that she’s not so much interested in fandom and celebrity culture as she is in the state of being in love in its most extreme sense. Her narrator seems less a character than a manifestation of a form of existential quest, a symbol of a search for meaning that was once catered for by religion or philosophies offering ways to navigate the intricate process of living. For the narrator it seems intense feelings of lack, or the impression of a void, might be addressed through bonding with a love object created and fuelled by a capitalist system in which meaning and identity are tied to consumption. For the narrator Moon seems to hold out the possibility of transfiguration. But at the same time this pseudo-relationship seems to represent Yi’s commentary on cultural notions of all-consuming desire and the ways in which longing is often a fixation that has nothing to do with the person supposedly longed for. For Yi’s narrator this fixation also overlaps with their profound feelings of displacement, their liminal identity as both Korean and not Korean, something particularly marked in the later Seoul-based chapters.
Yi’s ambitious novel is short, closer to novella in scale but it’s also exceptionally dense, packed with gnomic interactions, and increasingly surreal scenes. The style is curiously formal, and the phrasing and dialogue can be disconcerting, almost jarring at times. But there are also some striking passages and moments of wonderfully dry humour. For me this was, perhaps, more interesting than it was entirely convincing but it could also be fascinating and furiously inventive, often totally subverting my expectations.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Europa for an ARC
Yi’s novel’s slippery, deliberately enigmatic, Yi has stated that she’s not so much interested in fandom and celebrity culture as she is in the state of being in love in its most extreme sense. Her narrator seems less a character than a manifestation of a form of existential quest, a symbol of a search for meaning that was once catered for by religion or philosophies offering ways to navigate the intricate process of living. For the narrator it seems intense feelings of lack, or the impression of a void, might be addressed through bonding with a love object created and fuelled by a capitalist system in which meaning and identity are tied to consumption. For the narrator Moon seems to hold out the possibility of transfiguration. But at the same time this pseudo-relationship seems to represent Yi’s commentary on cultural notions of all-consuming desire and the ways in which longing is often a fixation that has nothing to do with the person supposedly longed for. For Yi’s narrator this fixation also overlaps with their profound feelings of displacement, their liminal identity as both Korean and not Korean, something particularly marked in the later Seoul-based chapters.
Yi’s ambitious novel is short, closer to novella in scale but it’s also exceptionally dense, packed with gnomic interactions, and increasingly surreal scenes. The style is curiously formal, and the phrasing and dialogue can be disconcerting, almost jarring at times. But there are also some striking passages and moments of wonderfully dry humour. For me this was, perhaps, more interesting than it was entirely convincing but it could also be fascinating and furiously inventive, often totally subverting my expectations.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Europa for an ARC
December 19, 2022
Slapped
May 22, 2023
2.5
well as expected this was definitely a bit bizarre lol. i think i like the idea of this book and the topics it tried to grapple with more than the execution of it though. despite a few high points overall it kind of felt unrealized to me tbh.
"being practiced at love is exactly what ruins it" was a banger line though
well as expected this was definitely a bit bizarre lol. i think i like the idea of this book and the topics it tried to grapple with more than the execution of it though. despite a few high points overall it kind of felt unrealized to me tbh.
"being practiced at love is exactly what ruins it" was a banger line though
April 6, 2023
I HATED HATED HATED HATED this book. I HATED the ostentatious, incredibly annoying verbiage of this book. I HATED the smug opaque narrative jumble of this book. If I want a story about fantasized obsession, longing and yearning, I can always watch "Vertigo" for the umpteenth time, instead of reading a ludicrous novel length fortune cookie that has NOTHING in common with anything written by the great Thomas Pynchon, which, for some reason this awful novel has been compared to. It drones on and on and on and on without one atom of Pynchon's trademark wit, humor or wild imagination.
July 17, 2023
A beguiling, original novella that explores loneliness, desire, and obsession, and how they are driven by contemporary pop culture. Surreal and lush, Y/N is a brilliant reflection on what it means to devote oneself to art, to love, to an idea, and what happens when it all comes crashing down. It is a testament to the ways in which we build monuments out of our expectations and desires, how much we invent others to fit our own perceptions and ideas of love, and how we most often do want what is unobtainable most of all. A unique, dreamy interpretation of what it means to have a identity that is set apart from so many other lonely souls, this was compelling read.
Read
April 14, 2023my brain short circuited reading this, so many layers of surreal n creepy - paradise rot x perfect blue. obsession, delusion, conviction, yearning, distance, pressure. she ate.
June 14, 2023
He’d assumed that Y/N stood for “Yes/ No,” believing the slash to signify the protagonist’s fragmented sense of self. When I clarified that it stood for “Your Name,” he grew only more confused.
A mash-up of BTS Army and Can Xue style surrealism that didn't cohere for me.
The narrator of Y/N is an adopted Korean-German who works as an English copywriter for an Australian expat’s business in canned artichoke hearts in Berlin. The novel opens:
The pack of boys had released their first album in Seoul two years ago, and now they were selling out corporate arenas and Olympic stadiums all over the world. I was familiar with the staggering dimensions of their popularity, how the premiere of their latest music video had triggered a power outage across an entire Pacific island. I knew the boys were performers of supernatural charisma whose concerts could leave a fan permanently destabilized, unable to return to the spiritual attenuation of her daily life. I also knew about the boys’ exceptional profundity in matters of the heart, how they offered that same fan her only chance of survival in a world they’d exposed for the risible fraud that it was.
At least this was what I’d derived from hours of listening to Vavra. As her flatmate, I was subject to her constant efforts at proselytization.
The pack of boys a BTS-like K-pop band with an adoring army that the boys call "the livers" (the organ of the body, not in the sense of those who live). Our narrator, as the opening demonstrates, begins rather cynical of their attraction but within a few pages, and after one concert, she's as fanatical as any of the livers, believing that one band member, Moon, is speaking to her individally in his mass online video chat sessions to millions.
When Moon mysteriously leaves the band, she is sent for a session with a psychologist, a specialist in curing similar addictions, but when he points out that she is not really deeply infatuated with Moon, as she is in Berlin and he's in Seoul, this rather backfires as she immediately drops everything and gets on a plane to try and find him.
The Y/N of the title refers to a particular type of fan fiction, as her German boyfriend's ex-lover, another The pack of boys addict, tells her: Y/N fic ... she explained, was a type of fanfiction where the protagonist was called Y/N, or “your name.” Wherever Y/N appeared in the text, the reader could plug in their own name, thereby sharing events with the celebrity they had no chance of meeting in real life.
And the novel itself becomes rather surreal with two separate strands, Y/N fan fiction written by the narrator alternating with her own real-life pursuit of Moon, which is, if anything, even less real-worldly, almost spiritual.
She packs a suitcase and leaves the apartment, her ears cocked for the pocket watch. She seeks quiet places, like chapels and landfills. Whenever a sparrow chitters neurotically in her proximity, she stamps a foot to make it fly away. She walks and walks, ending up in a city of staggering proportions, but, with the repairman nowhere to be seen, she keeps walking, and this city slowly becomes another city, which becomes yet another city, until Y/N, too exhausted to take another step, falls onto her back on the sidewalk. Her suitcase collapses next to her like an obliging sidekick. Y/N’s view of the blue sky is obliterated by brand-new apartment towers that have yet to be occupied . . .
I put down my pen. I didn’t know what should come next.
As the author explained in an interview: "My narrator is an obsessive fan, but at heart she’s an intellectual who has a refined, and even pretentious, appreciation of Moon. She’s not supposed to be a fan. The object of her devotion is supposedly low culture, anti-intellectual, but she’s arriving at her deepest ideas about art, about freedom, through this devotion.
...
K-pop and fandom are very fraught arenas. K-pop is a symbol that, in my opinion, traffics in displaced spirituality. Stars are called “idols.” There are very few things in an average person’s life that one would call their idol. My narrator has no outlet for her enormous capacity for devotion. She doesn’t go to church, she can’t fight for a country, she can’t lose herself to sexual passion, she can’t embark on a great work of art. So what does she turn to? She turns to K-pop."
It's a fascinating concept, and this A New York Times review brings out the novel's strengths, but I must admit this rather left me cold as it was too abstract to really give me insight into K-pop idolatory.
2.5 stars.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
A mash-up of BTS Army and Can Xue style surrealism that didn't cohere for me.
The narrator of Y/N is an adopted Korean-German who works as an English copywriter for an Australian expat’s business in canned artichoke hearts in Berlin. The novel opens:
The pack of boys had released their first album in Seoul two years ago, and now they were selling out corporate arenas and Olympic stadiums all over the world. I was familiar with the staggering dimensions of their popularity, how the premiere of their latest music video had triggered a power outage across an entire Pacific island. I knew the boys were performers of supernatural charisma whose concerts could leave a fan permanently destabilized, unable to return to the spiritual attenuation of her daily life. I also knew about the boys’ exceptional profundity in matters of the heart, how they offered that same fan her only chance of survival in a world they’d exposed for the risible fraud that it was.
At least this was what I’d derived from hours of listening to Vavra. As her flatmate, I was subject to her constant efforts at proselytization.
The pack of boys a BTS-like K-pop band with an adoring army that the boys call "the livers" (the organ of the body, not in the sense of those who live). Our narrator, as the opening demonstrates, begins rather cynical of their attraction but within a few pages, and after one concert, she's as fanatical as any of the livers, believing that one band member, Moon, is speaking to her individally in his mass online video chat sessions to millions.
When Moon mysteriously leaves the band, she is sent for a session with a psychologist, a specialist in curing similar addictions, but when he points out that she is not really deeply infatuated with Moon, as she is in Berlin and he's in Seoul, this rather backfires as she immediately drops everything and gets on a plane to try and find him.
The Y/N of the title refers to a particular type of fan fiction, as her German boyfriend's ex-lover, another The pack of boys addict, tells her: Y/N fic ... she explained, was a type of fanfiction where the protagonist was called Y/N, or “your name.” Wherever Y/N appeared in the text, the reader could plug in their own name, thereby sharing events with the celebrity they had no chance of meeting in real life.
And the novel itself becomes rather surreal with two separate strands, Y/N fan fiction written by the narrator alternating with her own real-life pursuit of Moon, which is, if anything, even less real-worldly, almost spiritual.
She packs a suitcase and leaves the apartment, her ears cocked for the pocket watch. She seeks quiet places, like chapels and landfills. Whenever a sparrow chitters neurotically in her proximity, she stamps a foot to make it fly away. She walks and walks, ending up in a city of staggering proportions, but, with the repairman nowhere to be seen, she keeps walking, and this city slowly becomes another city, which becomes yet another city, until Y/N, too exhausted to take another step, falls onto her back on the sidewalk. Her suitcase collapses next to her like an obliging sidekick. Y/N’s view of the blue sky is obliterated by brand-new apartment towers that have yet to be occupied . . .
I put down my pen. I didn’t know what should come next.
As the author explained in an interview: "My narrator is an obsessive fan, but at heart she’s an intellectual who has a refined, and even pretentious, appreciation of Moon. She’s not supposed to be a fan. The object of her devotion is supposedly low culture, anti-intellectual, but she’s arriving at her deepest ideas about art, about freedom, through this devotion.
...
K-pop and fandom are very fraught arenas. K-pop is a symbol that, in my opinion, traffics in displaced spirituality. Stars are called “idols.” There are very few things in an average person’s life that one would call their idol. My narrator has no outlet for her enormous capacity for devotion. She doesn’t go to church, she can’t fight for a country, she can’t lose herself to sexual passion, she can’t embark on a great work of art. So what does she turn to? She turns to K-pop."
It's a fascinating concept, and this A New York Times review brings out the novel's strengths, but I must admit this rather left me cold as it was too abstract to really give me insight into K-pop idolatory.
2.5 stars.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
April 14, 2023
actual rating .5, girlies .. i didn’t get it and i’m sorry to say i never will
September 3, 2023
this odd little novel is definitely inside the top ten strangest books i've ever read!! which is fantastic because i love weird fiction!!
i was expecting it to be strange, but it truly leans into the surreal vibe, bringing the reader on a fever dream journey of obsession. things really go off the rails when our unnamed protagonist goes to korea to track down moon, the kpop star she's obsessed with. she meets an equally unhinged bestie, O, and their interactions are some of the best moments in the book.
somehow O delivers our narrator at the boy band headquarters, one of ten winners of a contest who get to enter the glass pyramid building. big time willy wonka vibes!! the matter-of-fact narration keeps things on an even keel during all the absurd twists.
i love how the narrator kind of manifests her wish fulfillment plot, seeking moon and slowly getting closer to him. when she finally finds him at a strange secret rest home, she has such faith that she will reach the climactic moment she's been aching for. but meeting your heroes is never quite what you expect.
this would be a great book club book, because there are so many fascinating questions here. much about identity, fandom, obsession, devotion, and parasocial relationships.
my favorite part is when
it's often gross, cringy, uncomfortable. but it's also wildly entertaining, cerebral, and truly surreal.
i was expecting it to be strange, but it truly leans into the surreal vibe, bringing the reader on a fever dream journey of obsession. things really go off the rails when our unnamed protagonist goes to korea to track down moon, the kpop star she's obsessed with. she meets an equally unhinged bestie, O, and their interactions are some of the best moments in the book.
somehow O delivers our narrator at the boy band headquarters, one of ten winners of a contest who get to enter the glass pyramid building. big time willy wonka vibes!! the matter-of-fact narration keeps things on an even keel during all the absurd twists.
i love how the narrator kind of manifests her wish fulfillment plot, seeking moon and slowly getting closer to him. when she finally finds him at a strange secret rest home, she has such faith that she will reach the climactic moment she's been aching for. but meeting your heroes is never quite what you expect.
this would be a great book club book, because there are so many fascinating questions here. much about identity, fandom, obsession, devotion, and parasocial relationships.
my favorite part is when
it's often gross, cringy, uncomfortable. but it's also wildly entertaining, cerebral, and truly surreal.
January 27, 2023
a dizzying philosophical account of fandom culture and celebrity obsession. it took me a while to warm up to esther yi’s writing style (one of my first notes on the text includes a screenshot with the caption “STILTED DIALOGUE!!”) but once i did, man was i taken in. there’s a stunning philosophical quality to yi’s writing that is at once accommodating of various perspectives and nonjudgmental. the text reads like a fever dream at times (think paradise rot), a journal entry at others, and often it drifts into a woolf-like stream of consciousness. initially this appears to be at odds with the contents - a korean-american’s journey to find and meet a k-pop idol - but it fits.
i have also never read an experience of fandom quite like this one. it touches on all the issues of celebrity culture, from obsession and commodification to the sense of community and hope that are constructed by fans. the sense of pride that often slips into entitlement, of a specific form of knowledge of the celebrity that each fan assumes they have, of the differences in age, race, culture, ethnicity that the fandom encompasses - somehow, yi touched on them all without minimizing or slipping into the cult-related rhetoric that journalists often use for fans. 4.5/5
i have also never read an experience of fandom quite like this one. it touches on all the issues of celebrity culture, from obsession and commodification to the sense of community and hope that are constructed by fans. the sense of pride that often slips into entitlement, of a specific form of knowledge of the celebrity that each fan assumes they have, of the differences in age, race, culture, ethnicity that the fandom encompasses - somehow, yi touched on them all without minimizing or slipping into the cult-related rhetoric that journalists often use for fans. 4.5/5
February 11, 2024
Well, this was an experience lol. And yeah, I can see why it’s polarizing amongst readers.
I’d be lying if I said I understood everything that was going on, but that’s what made it even more fascinating and intriguing. Explores fandoms and obsession in a totally unique way. The character’s voice is a combination of intellectualism and deadpan, yet the vibe of the entire story is absurdist and surreal. At a certain point, I had to stop myself from trying to figure out what the novel was trying to tell me and just go along for the wacko ride.
One of the strangest books I’ve read in a while, and that exhilarates me. Dug it very much.
Full review coming sometime.
I’d be lying if I said I understood everything that was going on, but that’s what made it even more fascinating and intriguing. Explores fandoms and obsession in a totally unique way. The character’s voice is a combination of intellectualism and deadpan, yet the vibe of the entire story is absurdist and surreal. At a certain point, I had to stop myself from trying to figure out what the novel was trying to tell me and just go along for the wacko ride.
One of the strangest books I’ve read in a while, and that exhilarates me. Dug it very much.
Full review coming sometime.
January 3, 2024
The only thing I know about this book is that the author 100% wasn't sober while writing it. ✌️
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