{"id":33849,"date":"2014-07-17T09:33:35","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T13:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=33849"},"modified":"2014-07-17T10:03:21","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T14:03:21","slug":"our-happy-time-by-gong-ji-young-translated-by-sora-kim-russell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/our-happy-time-by-gong-ji-young-translated-by-sora-kim-russell\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Happy Time by Gong Ji-young, translated by Sora Kim-Russell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Our<\/a>Not to discourage anyone, but feel free to stop reading any further and just go to your favorite bookstore, walk to your nearest library, click online, or visit your most literary buddy’s shelves, and open to the first page of Our Happy Time<\/em> as soon as you possibly can.<\/p>\n

Yunsu sits on death row, condemned for committing multiple murders. Yujeong lies in a hospital bed after her third suicide attempt. Yunsu confesses to\u00a0a tragically\u00a0difficult\u00a0life in numbered Blue Notes; Yujeong reveals the meaninglessness of her overprivileged existence in alternating Chapters.\u00a0And yet, hope is on its way …<\/p>\n

On condition of her medical release \u2013 and to bypass further psychiatric treatment which has clearly\u00a0failed her \u2013 Yujeong agrees to accompany her maternal Aunt Monica on her weekly visits to death row inmates. Yujeong, the only daughter in\u00a0a wealthy, accomplished family, is a former pop star and current art professor. Aunt Monica is a nun …\u00a0as truculent as she is devout, as candid as she is caring, and quite possibly Yujeong’s only relative who has given her unconditional, albeit often tough, love. The visit requirement is for a month, but as the next\u00a0Thursday approaches, Yujeong finds she can’t stay away.<\/p>\n

Yunsu freely admits to his violent past, from assaults to theft to murder. Like Aunt Monica, he\u00a0was also the only relative that gave unconditional, albeit often extremely tough, love to his younger brother. Abandoned by their mother, abused by their father, the two brothers suffered a horrific childhood; only Yunsu survived. One of his brother Eunsu’s\u00a0few moments of pure joy was singing the national anthem: “Whenever I sing this song, I feel like we’re good people.<\/em>”\u00a0Hearing Yujeong’s televised rendition made Eunsu\u00a0especially delighted; once more before his own death, Yunsu desperately longs\u00a0to hear Yujeong\u00a0sing.<\/p>\n

And so the two souls \u2013 both so damaged beyond their youth\u00a0\u2013 meet, share, understand, and slowly\u00a0begin to heal …<\/p>\n

Over one million readers who bought Our Happy\u00a0<\/em>Time<\/em>\u00a0in Gong Ji-young’s native South Korea can’t be wrong, not to mention Gong has sold over ten million of her many books in\u00a0just Korea alone making her one of the most acclaimed\u00a0and<\/em> successful (two traits that are sometimes mutually exclusive in the fickle literary world) among Korean writers. Her compatriot, the internationally mega-bestselling Kyung-sook Shin<\/a>, has certainly begun serious inroads onto English-reading shelves, especially with her Please Look After Mom<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0Stay tuned: Time\u00a0<\/em>just pubbed Stateside this month … Gong’s success, too, with Western readers will\u00a0hopefully prove to be inevitable.<\/p>\n

Tidbit<\/strong>: According to the\u00a0PR sheet sent with the galley,\u00a0Time<\/em> is Gong’s “first novel to be translated into English.” Perhaps that should be ‘… translated into English under the auspices of a major publisher [Marble Arch\/Simon & Schuster]’? Because a quick search for other Gong titles-in-English turns up\u00a0Human Decency<\/em>, translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton (Bruce Fulton is a noted professor of Korean literature; his wife Ju-Chan is his frequent collaborator), published in 2006, and\u00a0My Sister Bongsoon<\/em>, translated by Park Jung-eun, published in 2010. Yup, I ordered both.<\/p>\n

Tidbit2<\/strong>: For those in need of more Time<\/i>, the novel went celluloid in 2006 with the English title,\u00a0Maundy Thursday<\/a>. <\/em>In 2007, it got graphic with an absolutely visually stupendous Japanese manga adaptation (an online translated-into-English version is available here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2005, 2014 (United States)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not to discourage anyone, but feel free to stop reading any further and just go to your favorite bookstore, walk to your nearest library, click online, or visit your most literary buddy’s shelves, and open to the first page of Our Happy Time as soon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,37,66],"tags":[6608,75,10,11,5810,13,212,5809,39,44,1051,195],"class_list":["post-33849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-fiction","category-korean","category-translation","tag-bookdragon","tag-death","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-gong-ji-young","tag-love","tag-murder","tag-our-happy-time","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-siblings","tag-sora-kim-russell","tag-suicide"],"yoast_head":"\nOur Happy Time by Gong Ji-young, translated by Sora Kim-Russell - 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