The Impossible Fairytale

by Han Yujoo, Janet Hong (Translator)

A chilling, wildly original novel from a major new voice from South Korea

The Impossible Fairy Tale is the story of two unexceptional grade-school girls. Mia is “lucky”―she is spoiled by her mother and, as she explains, her two fathers. She gloats over her exotic imported color pencils and won’t be denied a coveted sweater. Then there is the Child who, by contrast, is neither lucky nor unlucky. She makes so little impression that she seems not even to merit a name.

At school, their fellow students, whether lucky or luckless or unlucky, seem consumed by an almost murderous rage. Adults are nearly invisible, and the society the children create on their own is marked by cruelty and soul-crushing hierarchies. Then, one day, the Child sneaks into the classroom after hours and adds ominous sentences to her classmates’ notebooks. This sinister but initially inconsequential act unlocks a series of events that end in horrible violence.

But that is not the end of this eerie, unpredictable novel. A teacher, who is also this book’s author, wakes from an intense dream. When she arrives at her next class, she recognizes a student: the Child, who knows about the events of the novel’s first half, which took place years earlier. Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale is a fresh and terrifying exploration of the ethics of art making and of the stinging consequences of neglect.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Asian Literature, Asia, Literary Fiction

296 pages, Paperback

First published March 16, 2013

About the author

Han Yujoo is a South Korean writer. Her novels portray not so much the fate of people embroiled in some kind of conflict as their psychological state when they contemplate a situation or idea

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

And now Janet Hong and her editor Ethan Nosowsky win the TA First Translation Prize from the Society of Authors, from some very strong competition.

December 2018 update: Janet Hong is now, deservedly, winner of the LTI Korea Translation Award for her English rendition of this book.

Every time I see you enact the habits I've designed, I feel both an unnameable sense of happiness and unease. Every time you speak in a tone that isn't my own, I am both confused and relieved.

한유주 (Han Yujoo) followed the typical path for a Korean novelist, starting with short-story collections and winning a literary award (in her case the 2009 Hankook Ilbo Literary Award) before publishing her debut novel불가능한 동화.



It has been translated as The Impossible Fairy Tale by Janet Hong, and published by the excellent new Tilted Axis Press, founded by Deborah Smith, MBI award-winning translator of The Vegetarian. Their mission statement

Tilted Axis publishes the books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new.

An Impossible Fairy Tale certainly meets those criteria: not always entirely successful it is nevertheless a striking and worthwhile read.

The novel has two halves. The third-person narrator in the first tells the story of a class of 12 year-olds, focusing on two girls in particular. The first Mia (미아), a name that, significantly, could literally translate as either stray child or beautiful child:

Mia is lucky. One day, she receives a set of 72 German-made watercolour pencils from one of the two men who consider her to be their daughter. Mia has two fathers. One is not yet aware of the other’s existence, or pretends not to know, and the other is aware of the one’s existence, but chooses to turn a blind eye for some unclear reason. When someone learns of a truth that no one knows, all the surrounding relationships will drastically change. Nevertheless, even though they both function as fathers to Mia, only one of the two had given her a set of 72 German-made colour pencils as a gift. Because these colour pencils were manufactured in Germany and were not cheap ones made in China, they satisfied her taste and interest, enabling the father who gave the gift to gain leverage over the other father. Red, fuchsia, crimson, blood red, rose, yellow, orange yellow, citron, tangerine, flesh colour. And light green, emerald, forest green, grass green. With an overwhelming array of colours spread before her eyes, lucky Mia gains the innocent and childish confidence that she will be able to draw every object around her with 72 colours

[…]

When I grow up, I’m going to buy a fountain pen, says Mia. Do you know you can kill someone with a fountain pen? she asks. I read that in a book somewhere. If you drop the pen down on a person’s head from high up and at the right angle, the sharp tip will pierce right into the head. It’s because of acceleration. I read that from a detective story.

But of course, Mia has no desire to kill anyone; in fact, she doesn’t even understand the words “death” or “kill.” She is a lucky child, and she doesn’t possess enough feelings to kill someone, let alone has she had the chance to; she doesn’t yet know that some people can kill a person in the absence of hatred or loathing or malice or anger. She doesn’t yet know that rather than trying to aim the tip of a fountain pen at someone’s forehead from a tall building, it is far more effective to drive the pen’s pointed metal tip into someone’s neck, a fact she would have learned if she read more books. But she was only interested in detective novels, and because there were more things she didn’t know than what she knew, her world was simple; and for that reason, she is lucky. Anyhow, when I grow up, I’m going to buy a fountain pen, she says. I like the way it sounds.
Fountain pen.

Mia, who more or less has everything, who was always told she could have anything, thinks she could construct her world exactly the way it is with 72 colours, that she could fill in the shadows of already existing objects, each with its own shade, that she could erase even the shadows, that she could perhaps kill a person.

The second, is The Child, a rather anonymous figure in the class. Her name is never given (although at one point we get a hint that her first two initials areㅎ ㄷ) and she appears to be the victim of physical abuse from her parents, albeit this happens off stage.

She wishes she could be erased. But every time she tries to erase herself, she only grows darker. Every day, she grows darker. Enough for her body to gobble up her shadow. At school, she exists like a shadow. Or she has become a shadow and is absent.

This is an unsentimental view of childhood – the children’s favourite game when the teacher leaves the class is to strangle each other, or at least pretend to do so, one child in the class has severe learning difficulties and is bullied and abused by his classmates, and the live chicks sold by vendors outside the school gates usually meet grisly ends.

The Child breaks into the classroom after school hours, taking the unusual action of writing additional sentences in each child’s journal to emphasise the darker parts of their diaries. But her actions become increasingly sinister and the tension mounts towards a denouement that the reader has largely expected from the outset, but which still has a strong impact.

The second half of the novel takes an abrupt meta-fictional turn. The narration switches to the first-person, from the author herself who discusses the very nature of fiction, her explicit inspiration Maurice Blanchot’s Death Sentence.

I can package a certain story as a dream and tell it that way. I can disguise my childhood, and as I disguise it I can make allusions, and as I reveal details about allusions, I can make them appear fictitious, and in this way, I can deceive you all.

And the author finds herself confronted by her own character, as she and The Child debate who was responsible for The Child’s actions:

The Child killed Mia. From the very beginning, Mia's death was planned - it's there in my notes. I followed that plot and murdered Mia step by step, meticulously, logically. So perhaps the Child was not the one who killed Mia. (And the Child - she will come and find me - will read this journal.)

The second half was both more original but less well controlled. David Yoon’s review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) makes a very valid comparison to the more tightly controlled Fever Dream.

One of the most distinctive features of The Impossible Fairy Tale is the amount of word play, which in part seems a defensive mechanism used by The Child, and the author:

The cold Child is cold. The cold Child sheds cold blood. The cold blood is cold. Only statements that repeat the same words are good. Expressions that betray no meaning. Meaning that keeps coming back. Expressions that carry no other meaning.

For the translator, of course, this presented a formidable obstacle. Janet Hong, on her first novel-length translation, does an admirable job of coping, having worked with the author to render as much as possible into English. Indeed this translation of word play is one of the English version’s most striking features. To give some examples:

1. From the novel’s frontpiece, which I don’t think is a great one. A fountain pen plays a key role: in Korean the word is 만년필 (10000 year pen). The publisher’s frontpiece tells us In the Korean original, Mia says that it’s called a ten thousand year pen because it will write for ten thousand years: in the English translation, she says it’s called a fountain pen because there is a fountain of ink inside. but that isn’t, as claimed an example of this novel’s ingenious word play but rather Korean vs English etymology.

2. An example from the translator’s end note. The English translation contains the sentence:

The kitten looks up at the Child with pretty eyes as though it has no idea why the Child has snatched her hand away. Kitty cat, kitty cat. Kit Kat, kat. What does kat mean? Or kit? Tool kit. Tools hurt. Hammer, screwdriver, wrench.

The Korean original is a riff on 고양이 (cat) to 고양 (boost/flight/sacrificial lamb) to 야공 (night-assault) to 야구공 (a baseball) to 공구 (tool). Janet Hong observes that preserving the different elements made no sense in English so she started with cat (or kitten) and ended with tools, to preserve the join with the previous and later sentences but otherwise made up her own word association.

The resulting English sentence, however, doesn’t really inspire, albeit this may have been true of the original as well.

3. A more successful example, also from the translator. The sentences Her dirty running shoes are sprinkled with blood. One sprinkle, two sprinkles, three sprinkles. Hey Sprinkles, she calls out to the kitten.

The Korean original had 방울(droplet also small bell) – Janet Hong needed a word that could describe blood, be countable and be a pet name for a kitten; sprinkle was an inspired solution.

4. An example of the repetition in the text:

Forgotten words and lost words turn to bricks and are trapped inside the mouth. Brick pencil and brick fountain pen fall to the brick ground. Brick words and brick sentences fall to the brick ground. Brick world doesn't collapse. Brick world doesn't expand. Brick you become a brick and the brick hour stops. Brick I open my brick eyes and look at brick you.
...
What name should I call you? After I write here, I close my brick eyes and spew out brick breath.

The Korean original:

잊어버린 말과 잃어버린 말이 벽돌이 되어 벽돌 입안에 갇힌다. 벽돌 연필과 벽돌 만년필이 벽돌 바닥으로 추락한다. 벽돌 단어와 벽돌 문장 들이 벽돌 바닥으로 추락한다. 벽돌 세계가 무너지지 않는다. 벽돌 세계가 팽창하지 않는다. 벽돌 네가 그대로 벽돌이 되어 벽돌 시간이 정지한다. 벽돌 내가 벽돌 눈을 뜨고 벽돌 너를 바라본다.
....
나는 너를 어떤 이름으로 불러야 할까. 여기가지 쓰고 난 뒤 나는 벽돌 눈을 감고 벽돌 숨을 내뱉는다.

The English is almost a literal translation – Google translate gives a very similar rendition – although the lack of pronouns (brick pencil rather than a/the brick pencil) is natural in Korean but rather artificial in English.


The dialogue between the author and character becomes increasingly poignant and brings the novel full circle.

There is something I want to ask you, you say with your brick voice breaking.
How can I delay my death? How can I write my own death sentence?
Your brick mouth spews out brick words.
Did my illness begin before the story began? Or after the story began?
Your brick lips whisper bricks words. These are questions I hadn't expected. No. That's a lie

물어보고 싶은 것이 있어.
벽돌 목소리가 갈라진다
나는 나의 죽음을 어떻게 중지해야 할까, 혹은, 나의 죽음을 어떻게 선고해야 할까.
벽돌 입이 벽돌 말들을 내뱉는다.
나의 병은 이야기가 시작하기 전에 발병한 것일까, 혹은, 이야기가 시작되고 나서 나의 병도 시작된 것일까.
벽돌 입술이 벼골 말들을 솟삭인다. 내가 예상하지 않았던 말들이다. 아니다. 거짓말이다.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is published by a small UK publisher Tilted Axis who publish “books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new.” Their name refers to their aim to tilt “the axis of world literature from the centre to the margins ...… where multiple traditions spark new forms and translation plays a crucial role.”

It was founded by Deborah Smith, the English-Korean translator of Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” and winner with her of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

Smith has commented on the founding of Tilted Axis “The idea initially came out of my own work as a translator, getting an insider’s view of the publishing industry and discovering some of the implicit biases preventing certain books from making it through into English. So our main objective is to subvert or circumvent as many of those biases as possible by publishing under-represented writing, which is an intersection of original language, style, content, and often its author’s gender. To publish it properly, in a way that makes it clear that this is art, not anthropology. To spotlight the importance of translation in making cultures less dully homogenous. To push for better rates and recognition for translators themselves”.

The original author of this book is the Korean Han Yujoo, herself both a translator (in her case of English literature into Korean) and a publisher (her own micro-press Oulipo Press focuses on experimental literature).

The translator of this book is Janet Hong a writer and translator living in Canada. In fascinating end note to her translation she comments that just as she was embarking on the translation she read a very favorable review of the original book by a Korean literary critic who then “noted that the story relied heavily on wordplay …and that such sections would unfortunately be lost in translation”.

It is clear both from the translation that a kind of stream of consciousness wordplay, relying on word association and transitions between similar words is key to the novel – and the complexity of this is I think increased by the key role played in this by Korean characters and by what I understand to be the greater prevalence of onomatopoeia in the Korean language compared to English.

My first reaction when I hear of the attempted translation such a book is two-fold – firstly to ask whether the book itself is really in any sense the same book as was originally written; secondly to query if the effort in translation can really be justified.

To her credit the translator addresses effectively both these issues in her end note. The first by saying that she worked with the author on the translation (something I think which must be made a lot more valid by the author’s own translation ability and presumably English fluency). Secondly by stating (in what I think is an admiral sentiment) that the translation is a result of “a humble, passionate and joyous attempt [to share] this chilling, exquisite, mesmerizing tale with readers who otherwise would not have had access to the original”.

The book has two distinct parts. The first tells the story of two children – the first is two contrasting twelve year old classmates.

The first is Mia, a child with (for reasons not entirely clear) two fathers, from both of whom her mother seems estranged, a situation she exploits to her own advantage, by leveraging the guilt of the three parents to get what she wants. Mia herself could be described as pre/early-adolescent, feeling to herself misunderstood and unfortunate, but to others as being blessed with looks, intelligence and possessions. She talks about violent acts (being for example taken with a detective novel where someone is killed by the sharp end of fountain pen dropped from a great height) and thinks about killing others, but its clear her talk and thoughts are very theoretical and childish.

The second is quite literally anonymous, both to us and to her classmates – known only as “The Child”. She is clearly physically and mentally abused by her parents – and yet, as part of her anonymity and invisibility, the other children and more damningly the adults at the school, completely overlook and even rationalise the clear evidence and signs of that abuse (bleeding, bruises, even ripped off fingernails). The Child also thinks violent thoughts – but it is clear in her case firstly that her experience and knowledge of violence is much more real and mature, and secondly that the boundary between thought and action is much more blurred (for example when she murders a stray cat).

The children’s society is one marked by the almost casual acceptance of violence – the children by small chicks and then devise ways to kill them, their default game when adults are not present is the “fainting game” where they choke each other to the point of passing out.

As a fairytale this owes much more to the traditional fairytales, with their assumption of darkness and malevolence, than the Disney-fied versions of childhood innocence – and there is an unsettling undercurrent to the story which we know is going to end far from happily ever after.

Chapters alternate between the viewpoints of The Child and Mia, and the Child’s sections in particular grow in menace, undercut by the increasing use of rhythmic and often violent word imagery and associations. A repeated theme in this section is a series of forking paths outside of the school.

The second part of the book takes a distinct meta-fictional turn – it starts with a series of odd dream sequences, but then the narrator of the second part, seemingly a teacher is confronted in a class by an unexpected and familiar face. We realise that the narrator is the author of the first part of the book, and the other character her fictional creation The Child, and that time is somehow mixed between the events of the book, and the period in which the author meets her own creation (possibly 8 or 15 years later). The Child retraces some of her actions in the first part, reads the journals the author wrote when she was reading the book and debates with the author who was really responsible for The Child’s actions in the first part – The Child or the author who had planned out what she was going to do.

As an example in the journal, The Child reads (in what serves as an excellent description of the contrasting characters of Mia and her in the first part)

“Scary, fearful, sickening, terrifying, hideous, frightful, chilly”. These were probably meant for me. And below were these adjectives “premature, immature, unripe, young, delicate, childish”. These were probably meant not for me, but someone else. I’m sure of it

There are further hints that in writing the first part, the author based the character of The Child (and possibly Mia) on aspects of her own childhood. Before she meets The Child, she says

I can disguise my childhood and as I disguise it I can make allusions, and as I reveal details about the allusions, I can make them appear fictitious, and in this way I can deceive you all.

When The Child confronts her after class, the meeting is precipitated by the narrator falling down stairs (in the same was as happens to The Child frequently in the first part); further her initial reaction to seeing The Child face to face is:

The face is unfamiliar. The face watches me in silence. I see myself in that face. It’s actually mine. We may have had the same childhood. She’s me. You’re me. But I’m not me and I don’t look like anyone else. I sense that the writing about me has already begun

This impression is made stronger by a powerful section in the first part, which completely goes against the flow of the rest of that part, and features short paragraphs on each of the class members, featuring some incident from their childhood which they remember (seemingly as adults).

The second section, like the first, features the same stream of consciousness, word-association, wordplay. Unfortunately this technique is not always (in fact not often) successful and instead distracts from what from the core elements of each part – the growing menace of the first part and the meta-fictional aspects of the second.

As an example a bizarre dream sequence early in the second part, contains repeated variation around a nag which is nagging the narrator, a dog which has dried out, discussions of the word confusion having no opposite, some very odd discussions of the differences between lilacs and buttercups and lots of repetition of the word bricks.

Some of this effect may be lost in translation – for example I have no idea of what lies behind the choice of the nag that nags and what was in the original Korean, but whatever it was the effect in English is very weak. However I suspect that most of the fault is not barriers in the translation, but ones that the author has added herself in the original Korean. Disappointingly and surprisingly for someone who I understand started her writing career in short stories, Han Yunjo seems unable to write the tight prose that is really needed to add real menace to the first part and real insight into the authorial process into the second.

My thanks to Tilted Axis for a review copy.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s been back to back reads with strange meta-narrative, mobius plot threads (I followed this one with Bats of the Republic)

The Impossible Fairy Tale is weirdly unsettling and moves ahead with a grim inevitability following the intertwined lives of two 12 year old girls. The language skitters off on strange tangents and plays with words in a way that must have proven a unique challenge to translate. Violence and death constantly linger in the periphery but the tangents pulled me out of the story making me wish for the relentless energy of Samanta Schweblin’s David in Fever Dream, who kept the narrative on its creepy track.

The novel then shifts it’s focus halfway through and the book becomes something else entirely. I just couldn’t get invested enough to truly follow along and make the necessary connections. And I was frankly still catching my breath from the ending of the first half. Inventive and challenging, it just wasn’t what I was after.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very strange but interesting book. I liked it but I'm not fully sure how I feel about it. Very odd but worth the read (I think).

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really weird, strange book. I have no idea what to think about it yet, but I think I liked it? Asian authors have been killing it with unique narrative voices lately, and this is no exception.

[AMANDA · Rating 3 out of 5]

The weirdest book I have ever read. It reminded me a lot of Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, though it's not really like it at all. Some of the writing was incredibly beautiful, while other sections were downright bizarre and hard to fathom, or just simply upsetting. I'm actually at a bit of a loss for words on what to say about it. I'll put it this way though: if another Han Yujoo novel is translated into English, I will without a doubt read it. But... yeah... this book was strange and it made me feel strange and I'm probably going to feel this way for a little while longer.

[Bookteafull (Danny) · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 25% because therapy sessions for trauma are too expensive

Premise sounded promising and dark, but the writing?



This narrative was originally written in Korean and then translated, so I'm not quite sure who to blame or if the literature simply makes more sense in Korean. Either way - this shit was a fucking nightmare to get through. Well, attempt to get through.



I should have taken the first chapter as the glaringly obvious warning sign it was. For those who are delightfully ignorant, it reads as follows:

Dog.
See the dog.
See the dog drifting by.

That's it.
That's the entirety of chapter one.
Fuck me sideways, why the hell did I attempt to read more??????

Let me just share some of my favorite migraine-inducing sentences:

Third & Fourth sentences from chapter three:

The child's name is Mia. It could be Min-a, Mi-na, or Min-ha, or it could be A-mi, Yu-mi, or Yun-mi, but since she thinks of herself of Mia, let's just call her Mia.



My name is Danny. It could be Dan-Knee, Dah-nay or Dan-iee, or it could be Ny-Dan, Yan-Ny, or Ya-Nnad, but since I think of myself of Danny, let's just cal me Danny.

Ugh

What a fucking waste of paper.

From Chapter 5:

Mia doesn't eat carrots, but this doesn't mean that she eats every kind of food that doesn't contain carrots.

yeah.
I'll give you another second to process that one.
Again:



22% in (because I'm no longer keeping proper track now):

A planet is being destroyed. It collapses. Everything is collapsing. It collapses. It’s collapsing. The citizens of the planet that is being destroyed say over and over again, as though they’re singing a round, that everything is collapsing. It collapses. It’s collapsing. While they panic, the buildings sink and the roads twist apart. There is no way to save them. The planet’s queen no longer possesses the means to revive her planet, despite the fact that it is her machine body. The planet will remain extinct, until the very last trace testifying that this planet once existed disappears, until no one remembers the word fate anymore. It collapses. It’s collapsing. It has collapsed. It cannot be said that everything has collapsed. Because after everything has collapsed, anyone who could have used the past tense would not exist.

Existential crap and redundant sentence structuring ! MY Fa VOrI tE. xdbdjfh.



Then this book has the AUDACITY to have the following sentence:

Writing must be clear and concise. The meaning must be understood immediately.

(Page 54, 25 %)





I hate this book. \
Shit writing.
No quotation marks.
No transitions.
Long af paragraphs.
Contradictory statements.
Redundant sentence structure.
Multiple synonym lessons.
Waste.
of.
my.
Precious.
Time.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Impossible Fairy Tale is published by Tilted Axis Press.

Founded in 2015 and based in south London, Tilted Axis is a not-for-profit press on a mission to shake up contemporary international literature. Tilted Axis publishes the books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new.

The novel was written by Korean author Han Yujoo and translated by Janet Hong. Whilst I have zero knowledge of Korean, I believe from what I read in the English version that translation must have presented some serious challenges. If I have read the book correctly, there is a lot of word play, word association, word trickery involved and this must be every translator's nightmare (just because a word spelled the same can have several different meanings in one language - my favourite in English is "scuttle" - that does not mean the same word will have the same different meanings in another language. In fact, I doubt that ever really happens).

Fellow Goodreader Paul has far more inside knowledge about Korean language and culture than I do and his review is well worth reading for both those insights and for his comments on the book in general. (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

My gut feeling is that we mere mortals lacking in Korean language skills perhaps miss some of the important aspects of this book.

The book is split into two parts. The first part tells us the story of Mia and The Child (no name given), along with several other characters, although adults are mostly noticeable by their absence - they are referred to rather than active most of the time. You know a book is going to get a bit creepy when a child is given a title rather than a name. Mia has a relatively good life. In fact the book says Mia is lucky. She does not lack for things. On the other hand, The Child has a hard life. Somewhere outside of the book, her domestic situation seems to include a lot of abusive physical and mental violence. To begin with, The Child seems perhaps a rebellious, naughty child. But her actions gradual turn darker and darker until a final climax at the end of the first part of the book. This won’t be a surprise to most readers as there are plenty of hints and the general mood of the story indicates that what happens is going to happen.

The second part of the book is where things start to get really interesting. This second part takes the form of a first person narrative which the author writes to/about The Child. This becomes then an exploration of what it means to create a character in a novel (and what it means to BE a character in a novel). There are multiple references back to the story in the first part. For example, in the first part we read of The Child

She habitually eats paper. Without being aware of it, she tears the paper into little pieces and puts them in her mouth.

And then we read the author writing to The Child in the second half saying

You habitually eat paper. Without being aware of it, you tore the paper into little pieces and put them in your mouth.

There are other examples along the same lines.

And we see the author thinking about what it means to create a character when she writes

Every time I see you enact the habits I’ve designed, I feel both an unnameable sense of happiness and unease.

And we see the created character starting to take on a life of its own when The Child, in the dialogue written by the author, says

I’m going to write what you’re unable to write,…

In this way, there are elements of this book that remind me of An English Guide to Birdwatching, because both books exist in two halves where the first half tells a story and the second half the reflects back that story in some kind of meta-narrative fashion. The approach these two books take to this is very different, with Birdwatching taking a more theoretical stance and this book exploring a dialogue between the author and one of her characters. But there are definite similarities in the overall ambition of the books. You can tell by my ratings which one I preferred, although I am not sure I have got the balance right and may change my mind. What Birdwatching has in theory and intelligence, this book makes up for with atmosphere and drama, so it’s a difficult one to decide. Of course, there isn’t normally any real requirement to decide between books. They have similarities and they have differences, so perhaps best to leave it at that.

[Jackie Law · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Impossible Fairytale, by Han Yujoo (translated by Janet Hong), tells the story of The Child, a twelve year old girl living in Korea who, unbeknown to anyone at her school, suffers appalling abuse at the hands of her mother. She deals with her pain by inflicting suffering on others. She wants to kill.

The Child has learned that punishments are minimised if she is can get through each day unnoticed. She moves softly, interacts only when necessary, rarely speaks. She lives life on the margins, merging with the background of others’ everyday existence.

The reader is introduced to her classmates. Mia is a pretty girl granted everything she desires by her indulgent parents. She keeps two journals – one to be handed in at school and one for her secrets. As she lives a gentle, unconstrained life her secrets are few.

The boys in the class play rough games, hurting each other in the name of fun. They torture and kill insects and small animals. They mercilessly bully a child with special needs. Mia and The Child observe this behaviour. The casual cruelties of children are horrifically portrayed.

The Child acquires a key to the classroom and writes in her classmates’ journals. When her tampering is discovered the teacher demands that the culprit come forward, to no avail. The Child is worried that she will be discovered and attempts to hide what she has done. A chance encounter draws Mia into her web with devastating consequences.

The second part of the book picks up the story and turns meta, developing it from the point of view of an author completing the work. This change took some time to segue with before regaining my attention.

Throughout there is much play on words. The voice employed in both sections is detached yet compelling. There is repetition and a number of strange dream sequences but what is conveyed remains chillingly coherent.

The writing is savage, playful, visceral and intellectually stimulating. There is a raw energy to its progression, a dreadful realism at the heart of its depictions that make them grim yet gripping.

Unusual but never difficult, this is an impressive read.

My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Tilted Axis.

[Taylor Bradley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The prose is too exquisitely written and translated to receive less than three stars. The story is too repetitive, formless, inert to receive more than two stars. Which will it be? Two stars or three stars. The reviewer flips a coin, specifically a 100 won coin, to determine the rating. Heads is 3 stars, tails is 2 stars. Look at the coin. It is tails. 2 stars. This book is unlucky.

[Barry Welsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listen to my review on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6dGX...

Read my review on Substack -https://barrywelsh1.substack.com/p/th...

Today I'm reviewing "The Impossible Fairytale" by Han YuJoo. The Korean title is "불가능한 동화" and it was originally published in Korean in 2013, with the English translation following in 2017. The English translation was by celebrated translator Janet Hong.
Han Yujoo has an interesting background. She studied German literature at Hongik University, Hongdae, and then completed a master's degree in aesthetics at Seoul University, one of the most prestigious universities in Seoul. Han is also an accomplished translator, having translated books by Geoff Dyer and Michael Ondaatje. She even runs her own micro-press focusing on experimental fiction called Oulipo Press.
In recent years she has been a teacher at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and Korea University's creative writing department.
'The Impossible Fairy Tale' is her first novel, and it's a striking piece of work. It's her first full-length work translated into English, but she does have a short story available in the 'Future of Silence' collection, which is well worth tracking down.
The novel's translator Janet Hong has built up an incredible body of work over the last few years, encompassing novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by writers such as Ha Seong nan, Annco, and Hong Yeon sik.
This English translation was published by Tilted Axis – a small printing press created by Deborah Smith, the young acclaimed translator of 'The Vegetarian' by Han Kang. Tilted Axis is a not-for-profit press "on a mission to shake up contemporary international literature." – "Tilted Axis publishes the books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new."
'The Impossible Fairytale' is a great example of this goal – as it is very original.
It was nominated for a National Translation Award in 2018, Won a Literature Translation Institute of Korea translation Award, and was a Finalist for the PEN translation prize 2018.



So, it's a very prestigious book that made waves at home in Korea and continued the trend of Korean novels, making a big splash internationally. But what's the novel actually about?
It has an engaging and unusual structure and is generally quite challenging in various ways.
The first half of the novel is a primarily traditional narrative. We are introduced to 2 middle school girls about 11/12 years old. The year is 1998.
Mia lives with her mother. She has some kind of issue with her father – but is essentially a loved child with a relatively easy middle-class life.
The other girl is referred to as the Child – and goes unnamed throughout the story. She has an unstable home life, and it quickly becomes apparent that she is quite damaged.
The story contrasts their two lives, and there is a growing sense of danger and unease. One of the girls has quite disturbed behavior and begins to act in increasingly dangerous ways.
At the halfway point, an extremely violent and transgressive act occurs.
It seems like the novel will continue in a certain way.
A plot has been set in motion.
However, here the novel makes a sharp pivot to something else.

It's an unconventional approach that some readers will no doubt find off-putting. So what is Han Yujoo doing here? And where does it take the rest of the book?
The next section becomes, in part, a reflection on the act of storytelling. First, Han Yujoo – or a character representing a writer is introduced. This person reflects on why they write. What are stories? What is the act of creation?
Then one of the characters from the first half of the book appears in the writer's new "real" world.
This fictional character confronts the writer.
Challenges her – why did you create me? Why did you make me do these awful things?
Very bracing and challenging – but quite gripping and fascinating at the same time.
A sense of dread lingers over everything, and the nature of the confrontation is tinged with horror.

Han's writing style makes for a very uncomfortable reading experience. However, it's also very clever.
The first half – uses this technique that sorts of mimics how young children think. But, again, the effect is disturbing – you are inside the heads, inside the minds of the children.
You witness their dysfunction, their fears, and their hopes firsthand.
It's definitely not an easy read.
But it is absolutely gripping and compulsive – the first half almost has thriller-ish elements.
Then after the change – it becomes like a memoir – a writer reflecting on their writing life – then changes again – a fictional character invades the "real" world – and there is something horrific about this.
It's very difficult to do this kind of thing successfully
The shift in tone will probably put some people off.
But Han YuJoo clearly has more significant themes she wants to tackle

It's also a book that seems like it must have posed some challenges to the translator.
There is a lot of wordplay in the novel
The writer plays around with words and does all sorts of unusual things.
Janet Hong, the translator – writes in an afterword that she was worried about capturing this in the English translation.
This Afterword is fascinating – it gives an insight into the struggles of translation.
Ultimately she says that her aim is fidelity, not just to the literal meaning but also to the spirit of the original text.

My final thoughts are that I would recommend this to anyone who wants a compelling, challenging, and wildly creative reading experience.

[Marie-Therese · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult book to rate as it opens and closes with passages of exceptional beauty but most of what lies between is either very flat and, at this point in time, somewhat clichéd*, or clearly hampered by translation issues having to do with rhyme, onomatopoeia, and other linguistic peculiarities that make what were likely effective elements in the original grindingly awful, almost unreadable in this translation.

I'm not sure that detailing the plot at any length would help a reader decide whether this is a book they'd want to pursue, so I'll just say that there is some beauty here, that the latter half is much better than the deeply tiresome middle-school set former half, and that I think this is one of those books that just loses something in translation. It's clear in the last third that Han is doing something with words, with the way words relate to one another and the associations words have for native speakers that just cannot be replicated in English and it's clear that this is probably the most interesting part of her book and we, as English speakers, can't access that. As just another sad story about South Korean tweens/teens this is nothing special; as something that's likely kind of Oulipian and linguistically complex, this English translation is tantalizing but ultimately unsatisfying.

* Do we really need to see another kitten killed? Come on, Korean teens, this is getting ridiculous!

[Leah Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has all the ingredients of something I should love. Strange Asian magical realism about dark, disturbing children? Twisted fairy-tale elements? Surreal and unsettling writing? A surprise meta-narrative? Yes to all of these things. And while I think The Impossible Fairy Tale does a lot right, I found it falling surprisingly flat for me by the end.

My absolute favorite element here was the writing itself. It's strange and disturbing and unlike anything I've read before. The narrative will circle around itself, starting with an idea or concept and discussing it in a strangely repetitive fashion before veering in a totally different direction. There are large chunks that literally feel like you are in a dark fairy tale: it's confusing and gets under your skin, but also feels strangely glimmering and magical. I was totally enchanted by it, and I'll read anything Yujoo writes in the future for sure.

And the first half of the story is actually fairly strong. It's definitely got that fairy tale style where the reader is kept at arm's length from the characters so there is an emotional distance, but the mirroring of Mia (the Good Child) and The Child (the "Bad" Child) was deftly done and very interesting. In fact, there are a lot of aspects of the story (from characters to plots to colors) that are mirrored so cleverly. It makes you feel off-balance because it's repetitive but also... not quite the same. Like fun house mirror versions of things you read about.

My issue is the same as almost everyone else's: the big shift right in the middle. I actually loved the idea (someone writing a story suddenly confronted with a character they thought they had made up) but it went nowhere. The plot was moving along steadily, there's a big event, the characters come to life (or were possibly alive all along?) and then bam, dead in the water. It meanders around for another 40% of what feels like filler. I think there was SO much potential when The Child confronts The Author, but we got nothing out of it. It was a waste of paper, really, and I found myself insanely frustrated with this section. What was the point? I have no idea.

3 stars is usually a pretty "it was okay, I'm neutral on it" rating, but this book I both loved and hated. It was magical but frustrating, and didn't live up to either the hype or the amazing premise. I'm happy I read it because the writing is truly fantastic, but I'm also really sad about the (lack of) direction it went in to.

[hans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite surreal and nightmarish. The mellow and emotionally-driven prose were enticing and to read both POVs of the kids wandering their minds through fear and anxieties giving me a haunting perspective on how disturbing a 12-year-old can be. Structured in two parts, the plot brought me into a tale of two classmates; Mia and a nameless child known as The Child with contrast lifestyles and luck following their days at school when an unexpected incident happened— someone was sinister enough to add ominous sentences to their classmates’ notebooks leaving the teacher baffled with anger. This incident has caused uneasiness to few students, especially the perpetrator who later plotted a series of events to eliminate her wrongdoing that soon resulted in a terrible and violence ending.

I love how the highlighted theme can be both absorbing and alarming. It revolved on the issue of fear and neglect and how these kids’ minds can echoed a nuance of brutal and cruelty in between their unflinching personalities and innocent characters. I find the characterization as gripping much and quite devastating too to think that their feelings and existence nearly invisible in the eyes of an adult.

Not much a fan to the plot execution and the way it was bleakly narrated esp in part 2 where the focus changed into the teacher’s perspective; raw and vivid yet the thought-provoking exploration was too dreary and fragmented that somehow it gets quite underwhelming for me to digest the character’s view— I honestly dragged my willpower to finish reading it until the end.

This would be a good catch if you’re into experimental narrative that interlaced a reality with the absurdities of one’s mind; on morality and psychological insight as well the unsettling emotional conflict that can be both twisty and tricky to grasp yet carrying an interesting antinovel elements. 3 stars to this!

Thank you Pansing Distribution for sending me a copy to review!

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of reading this with a Korean book club. Though I read the translation, I often turned to compare certain phrasings in the original Korean book and was also able to learn of differences/what was lost in translation during the club discussions.

One thing that was lost in translation was the ambiguity of the Child's gender in the original. In Korean, you could essentially refer to a subject without necessarily referring to their gender. Thus for those who read The Impossible Fairy Tale in Korean, the reveal of the Child's gender at the end came as a surprise and served, also, as a commentary on the different socialization boys and girls go through. Why was it more believable for the Child to have been a boy rather than a girl?

Another effect lost is due to there being a lack of capitalization in Hangeul. Thus "child" becomes disorienting. The reader can confuse the other children with the Child. One club member's analysis of the Child was that the Child could possibly be a representation of the violence or evil within all children.

This isn't to say that the translated version is any less stunning.

Prior knowledge of Maurice Blanchot and his Death Sentence, Kripke and rigid designation, Wittgenstein, Spinoza, etc. may or may not add to your reading experience. Even without it all, The Impossible Fairy Tale is daring, unsettling, and in some sense heartwrenching.

What does it mean for an author to atone?

If the author's world is the world she writes and is limited by language, then the moment the writer puts pen to paper is the moment of contact violence. You write, you speak and you kill all other possibilities. The color white signifies both death and creation—purity, blankness. Potential. Following this thought, I could sense the empathy of the writer—both in the book and in reality. The Child, if an agent of the writer, a catalyst of aesthetic violence, used writing as a means of marking the other children. Atonement, then, lies in the author's erasure of the children's journals. She erases their conception of self and its violation in the first half of the book, returns it to the aching, blank whiteness of potential. Perhaps, she wanted to let these characters she birthed loose. To allow them the possibility of control over their narratives off the page.

In chapter 37, a description of a green hair tie made me realize the story's structure is much like a Mobius strip, or a hair tie twisted and turned in on itself. Part I and Part II collapse into each other and become an investigation of language and fiction, the use of aesthetic violence in writing, the responsibility a writer has to the world and characters they create, the possibility or impossibility of fiction as a mechanism for reaching truth, the everyday violence in the lives of children, the truths about innocence/ignorance we want to ignore, and the proximity of language to sin. Might be common of many experimental writers, but Han takes a stance on writing that I identify with—that it doesn’t necessarily provide any answers. Only sharper/sharpened questions.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s a warning: There are plenty of vertigo-inducing moments in Han Yujoo’s debut novel The Impossible Fairy Tale. The strange but straightforward plot from the first half turns in and back on itself in the second half like a Christopher Nolan film, to dizzying effect. As the narrator states: “even as you’re being deceived, you’re not deceived, and even as you’re not being deceived, you’re deceived still. In this way, the sole objective of the stories I want to tell is to throw you into an unclear state, to make you believe while you’re not able to believe.”

I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we laud Yujoo for her brilliance with form and construction, we should applaud her plot. The novel opens in 1998 in “an ordinary residential area in a city outside Seoul,” a place that is “both everywhere and nowhere.” Mia is a lucky 12-year-old student spoiled by two fathers who rival for her and her mother’s affections. Her days are filled with the banalities and cruelties of children: visits with her new deskmate; the boys playing a fainting game in the back of the classroom; one boy loudly declaring how he killed four small chicks simply to watch them die.

Into this boisterous mix comes a student known simply as The Child: a “luckless” girl whose “eyes resemble the eyes of a fish.” When she sneaks into the classroom one night and writes an additional sentence in each child’s journal, she sets in motion a series of events that bolster the dark ambitions of the children, ending in a terrible murder.

And that’s when Yujoo pulls the rug out from under us. Part 2 opens with the book’s writer giving a lecture on narrative construction in 2013, and when she looks out at her students she sees The Child from Part 1 sitting at a desk, filling the author with “both an unnameable sense of happiness and unease.” She has questions the author didn’t expect, such as is she alive or is she dead, and who is responsible for the murder: her or the writer?

Experimental fiction is often derided by those outside high literary circles as cerebral and unemotional, as some authors focus exclusively on form at the expense of plot and connection. Han Yujoo, however, is not an experimental writer so much as a writer who experiments with narrative construction, meaning her work is a victory of form that packs an emotional wallop. She pulls the reader into the text using traditional experimental techniques such as clever use of second person, then goes beyond, establishing a more powerful — and confounding — connection through shared memory, repetition and heart.

Finishing The Impossible Fairy Tale, then, is like waking up from a dream so real it feels like a forgotten memory. With her shifts and slights of hand, Han Yujoo makes us question the narrative constructions we lean on to understand and move through our own worlds, leaving us in a state of unknowing that is both terrifying and exhilarating.
I write weekly book reviews for The Gazette. Read more at laurafarmerreviews.com

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the strangest book I've read so far this year. It might be the strangest book I have ever read. I am not entirely convinced I completely grasped what was happening at times. It's surreal. But it is also haunting, and arresting, and so unique. The story, such as it is, of an unnamed child and her tangential relationship to Mia, a "lucky" classmate who has so many things The Child has never had, is slow-moving, almost a clinical analysis of the lives of students, both ordinary and dissonant. The writing is abrupt, short, declarative sentences that analyze and contradict themselves. It is not always easy to totally follow the plot, even though the events are simple, because the writer (our narrator, who is, it seems, both the author herself and a character) is more concerned with words: their meanings and their inability to assign meaning. The way they can be used to cloak the truth. About two thirds of the way through the novel, after events have barely reached their climax, the plot suddenly flat lines into the uneasy life of a writer who lives with the guilt of creating characters only to throw them mercilessly into events they cannot avoid. Is this book fiction? Yes. And no. Is it a memoir? And essay on the nature of writing? Yes. And no. It defies classification. The central question of the novel (if you can call it that) I thought was very similar to that of the movie Stranger Than Fiction: what responsibility, if any, does an author have towards his/her characters? Is writing a dangerous form of playing god? Unlike Stranger Than Fiction, this novel is a dark, raw, unyielding examination of the question. It is gorgeous and terrifying and SO WEIRD. I adored it's fundamental strangeness, but it is by no means an easy book to make your way through. There is a reoccurring image in the book of a dog paddling and moving with the current of the river. Is the dog being swept away? Is the dog swimming? The experience of reading Yujoo's praise was like being forced into a river- I sometimes didn't know if I was choosing to move forward and I sometimes felt like I was drowning, but a strong current carried me through to the end. A lovely experiment in literary art.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I should never have written from the beginning. I should never have attempted to write from the beginning. But the story has already begun, and a story that has begun must go on. Like every unlucky narrator, I am fated to finish this story. Whether or not I wish to. Whether or not I will it."

I keep saying that contemporary Korean Literature is consistently ground-breaking. In terms of form, structure, and language of course but also when it comes to themes, ideas, and concepts. It is obvious that Han Yujoo's novel, translated very brilliantly by Janet Hong, is no different. And it's her debut!

The first section is a straightforward, if twisted, portrait of childhood: unsentimental, violent and devoid of its feted innocence. The prose brims with clever wordplay and repetition, deftly highlighting linguistic elusiveness and general ephemerality.

In the second section, it suddenly shifts gears. The unexpected metafictional turn reminded me of J M Coetzee's Foe. Miltonic, the creation confronts the creator, demanding the cause of its existence. The Child of the first section meeting the writer figure blurs the nature of reality and the reality of fiction.

What is the driving force in the Child's life if every single action is premeditated by the writer? Can there be accountability free will? Who is going to take the blame for it all? It's language as a defence mechanism from life's banal cruelties, a makeshift refuge, a prison as well as a granter of freedom.




(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[enricocioni · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the night of the day I started The Impossible Fairytale, I dreamed I was one of first three people in the city to read it. We met to discuss it every Wednesday. We were like Macbeth's witches. When we went our separate ways after the meetings, we told everyone else about the book. We recited passage after passage. And the book spread from person to person like an enchantment. It was like in Sleeping Beauty where everybody has fallen asleep, except instead of sleeping everybody was reading The Impossible Fairytale.

There is something witchy about this book. It is often concerned with finding the proper names for things. Its sentences are short and repetitive, lending its long paragraphs a hypnotic quality. There is a scene that could be interpreted as animal sacrifice. There are superstitions. There are disquieting dreams. It's rich in wordplay, which the translator, Janet Hong, did a heroic job of conveying in English. It's rich in strange imagery, starting with the black dog swimming downriver in the first chapter. And everyone who's read The Prisoner of Azkaban knows that black dogs are omens. If a mutilated copy of The Impossible Fairytale were lucky enough to make it through one of the many coming apocalypses, I can imagine a band of salvagers coming across it poking out of a sand dune, and mistaking it for a book of spells.

For my full review, head over to my blog, Strange Bookfellows: https://strangebookfellowsblog.wordpr...

[Bunyip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible!

The first half is like a if a book were a painting, made up of thousands of tiny brushstrokes until a full scene emerges. Tiny brushstrokes that overlap and cover each other or blend together.

I read the subject of this novel as an expression of an author's attempts to be erased and eternalised in the same movement, or in the same story. She's trying to make characters that are as real as she is, and she does this by breaking them down into tiny pieces, and then those pieces down into tinier ones. The action of constantly breaking down proves the existence of the thing, because a fake thing or a lie would eventually vaporise under the pressure.

The conflict then, I suppose, is that the main character does not want to exist and that the breaking hurts her.

The bricks were my favourite part. When the objects of the story won't flow with it, they become bricks. There are whole paragraphs with every second word being 'brick', making the entire page into a brick wall.

IT'S VERY VERY GOOD AND I LIKED IT A LOT.

[V · Rating 4 out of 5]

The plot of this book never once flowed in an expected direction, yet all the emotions behind the characters, Mia, The Child, and even Inju, felt real and fully developed. The intricate wordplay in this story showcases the highly skilled translation of Janet Hong. The way that Han Yujoo explores with her words, creating seemingly simple sentences and minutely changing a syllable or a tense to create a new meaning, a new dimension to the text was reflected so beautifully in Janet Hong's translation that it has me itching to see the original text so as to fully understand the mammoth task that she undertook.

As this novel was more abstract and conceptual than I initially expected, it turned out to be much more work as a reader than I wanted. However, it was nonetheless a fascinating book and leaves me excited to read more from both the author and the translator.

[Indi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Your face is melting away.

Reading this book is like being stabbed in the neck with a knife. No, it's like a dog floating down a river. No the dog is swimming. No, you're wearing a green hairband around your wrist. Having a dream where everything is bricks. Children are throwing chicks and killing them. A Child, no The Child, who cannot be named and has no name, walks through snow. She can leave no trace. No, there's no snow. This book is a metaphor. For what? Who knows. Who cares.
I kept hoping something that made sense would happen and it never did.
The only good thing about finishing this book was finding out that people who read it were interested in The Witch Elm by Tana French so I learned she has a new book coming out in October.

[Ariell · Rating 4 out of 5]

weird and intriguing.
I reviewed this for the magazine Words Without Borders .

"For a book full of so much mystery, the creative mission of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale is remarkable for its author's openness about choices regarding how to tell stories, how an author reveals information, and the dissecting and peeling away of the layers of artifice inherent in the reading and writing of fiction.

Broken into two parts, Part I begins with Mia, an average twelve-year-old in an average neighborhood attending an average school in South Korea in the 1990s...."

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

trigger warning: physical abuse, violence, abuse towards animals, death

this is a rather unconventional book, and its cruel, violent and surreal world won’t please everyone. personally, I really loved it. the first part absolutely stood out to me. the writing style is quite exquisite and the way the story alternates between the two characters (and the duality of their two lives) is so interesting to read. the second part didn’t seem as well accomplished to me. it was a bit overwhelming in its repetition and form, and maybe too meta.

overall, one very good book and one hell of a good example of translation.

[Julie]

Started March 15, 2020 for book club, and now abandoned -- sadly, because the premise/concept sounded like it would be my jam (to the extent that I voted for it as a pick!). I was somewhat expecting it to feel like a Korean version of Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox -- in terms of violence, in terms of authorship, in terms of a writer character grappling with what they've written. I'm also super fond of HHhH, a nonfiction take where the real-life author upfront struggles with his subject matter. While listening to book club discussion, I also wound up thinking a bit about The Pillowman, one of my favourite plays -- because of that blurriness between reality & fiction, and the violence of children, and things being written and coming into being.

Unfortunately, I can't actually say how much The Impossible Fairytale compares against any of these, because I petered out at the 28% point. Julie vs Literary Fiction is a common problem, and in this instance, I just could never get past the flowery, experimental, disjointed prose -- I ran into a sheer brick wall with it.

If we hadn't been mired in a pandemic and stay-at-home lockdowns, I might have been able to muscle through and see if I ever clicked with the text, particularly since the first half & second half apparently differs a lot focus-wise -- but as things stand, I just don't have the attention span for any sort of reading these days, let alone something I'm not jiving with, so I couldn't hack it.

[Chitra Ahanthem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale, translated from the Korean by Janet Hong is a book that you should read if you love the writing craft as much as you like character arcs, plots and narratives, definitely a must read for those of you who love to immerse themselves in the world created by authors and if you don’t tend to judge a book by whether you like the characters or theme.

Divided into two sections, the book clinically throws the reader into a world that is laced with disquiet and menace. The first section dwells on the tumultuous worlds of young teens where they want to be the center of attention and where they have left their innocence behind and just about beginning to come to terms with the adult world: where they see things differently from earlier. And no, this isn’t about coming of age, rather it is a narrative that looks at suppressed violence in the society and how that would sit in the world of children when the gloves are off.

The second section of the book will throw you off balance: it is where the author brings her fictional self into conversations with a protagonist from the first section debating over plot points and narrative turns, where the latter demands reasoning for the way she has been portrayed. One strand links both sections - the psychological subtext where the elements of part horror on the part of readers upon reading the first section merge with characters come into life for authors. The writing is taut and gripping, you know there are mind curve balls but you still get gobsmacked!

[K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trigger warnings: child abuse, graphic animal abuse, animal death, murder, blood.

Uh. WTF did I just read?? I can't even remember where I heard about this book, but wherever it was, I heard good things about it. And the first half of the book was definitely an engaging story. The first half tells the story of two young girls, growing up in South Korea, and the ways in which their very different lives overlap. It ends on a shocking note, and I was honestly left staring at the page in horror.

And then the second half of the book happened. The second half, in which one of the characters from the first half appears in the author's life and the word "brick" is used so much that it loses literally all meaning. And I just............didn't understand it. It was ridiculously meta and every time I thought it had reached peak meta, it found another untapped supply of meta to add to the pile.

So yeah. It wasn't a BAD book. It definitely had its moments. And I found the translator's note about having to change things to make sure the word play that Han used came through to the English translation completely fascinating. But overall, I...did not enjoy this.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a great book hidden in here somewhere - I fully respect and appreciate the author's intentions, but the final result did not fully work out. Loved some sections and lines, many parts I felt needed to be highly edited further, and the novel was far too long for what it was, but there is something being said here that is worth listening to. Do I think it succeeds at expressing that message? Not really, but I like the effort put into trying something different.

The first part of this book gets a 3.5 from me, the actual Impossible Fairytale. The 2nd part....I guess a 2.5 or 3? This author has a lot of potential but it's not fully realized here. I'd read more from her in the future for sure.

[Marisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

I had such high hopes for this one and I am very sorry to report that it left me so very conflicted. There is no denying that Han Yujoo has serious writing chops, or that she has a very interesting premise going into this novel. However, I felt held at arm's length for the majority of the novel and then the second half... well, who the hell knows what was going on there.

Read my full review here!

[Elizabeth Addison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this walking down the street, and as I turned the last page I said “WOOF” out loud. I don’t really know why. This book was beautiful and terrible to read every moment I was reading it, but when I wasn’t reading it, I didn’t really think about it. It was mesmerizing and made me think about identity and authorship and point of view, but it also made no sense and I can’t begin to analyze it. It’s very Separate.