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When I was a kid, my parents would send my brother and me to Korea every summer to visit my grandparents. While I was there, I remember scouring the bookstores my aunt would take us to, trying to find any book that was in English. When I found a book, I would beg my aunt to buy it and I would spend the rest of the summer reading and re-reading the book to keep a semblance of familiarity with me. In a country where I could barely speak the language, books are what kept me grounded.
I remember it being a comfort to have something I could turn to when I got overwhelmed with trying to speak to my cousins in my broken Korean. But every summer, the days would go on and I would forget the book. An anchor that I felt myself pull away from the more time I spent making my immediate surroundings my home.
“home isn’t always a place you’ve hailed from but a place you’ve created”
As I’ve grown older, my Korean has not improved by much but my perspective has. When I was a kid, I read books to keep my connection back to America. As an adult, I find myself seeking out books to find my connection back to Korea. Not only to seek to understand the nuances of its culture, but to feel the sense of home one can only feel when reading about a familiar place.
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, a slice-of-life novel, did exactly that. Even those who have never been to Korea can find a cozy home within the pages of the book. An understanding that home isn’t always a place you’ve hailed from but a place you’ve created.
If you’re looking for Book Club questions for this novel, you can find them here on my blog!
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop Overview
This slice-of-life novel takes place in a suburb of Seoul, South Korea. Here, we meet Yeongju, a burned-out career woman, whose life events bring her to open up a quaint little bookshop as a means to survive and ultimately, find a way back to herself. Along her journey, she comes across the most unassuming people whose rich inner lives are explored in tandem with her own.
The author, Hwang Bo-Reum, artfully crafts an intricate ecosystem of characters who breathe life into the noble pursuit of creating a meaningful life outside of society’s labels and expectations. I found myself in the characters. I found myself rooting for each of them as they figured out their journeys and I found myself clutching my chest as they exposed their heartaches. It was a book like no other.
Why You Might Love This Book?
You love the attention to details
I am obsessed with Hwang’s writing style. Her attention to all the mundane details about each character’s habits and ways of being truly brings them to life. You know when a talented author can make something as boring as a button seem interesting? She’s got that down pat.
Her writing style is reminiscent of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman. In Murata fasion, she can take something so ordinary and make it extraordinary. Cafes and bookstores are often overlooked as they can be found everywhere in Seoul. Yet, Hwang’s carefully curated details bring The Hyunam-Dong Bookshop to life and has you wishing it existed on your own block.
Characters you could know in your own life
Although I love a good sci-fi or fantasy novel, I sometimes find myself craving the familiarity of something more down-to-earth. Books are magic in the sense that they can make even the most fantastical of characters relatable. What I tend to find more impressive is making everyday characters fantastical.
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookstore introduces a host of characters from various walks of life working through their individual internal struggles. There’s the neighborhood “ajumma” who is worried about her son’s future while trying to rediscover her identity outside of being a mother. The coffee roaster who is unhappy with her marriage, yet feels the societal pressures of enduring the relationship. The young man who spent years working towards a “good” job to no avail. The Hyunam-Dong Bookstore has it all.
Though their problems are not out of the ordinary, you can’t help but cheer each character on as they find their path to happiness and contentment. Before you know it, each character becomes a dear friend.
A sense of renewed interest for your own life
The thing I love about Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookstore is that it makes you examine the way you’re living your own life. I think it’s very easy to get swept up in the grandiosity of what life can be and forget that each day, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can hold the significance of the world.
It’s a reminder that life is made up of the small choices and actions we decide to take each day. In a world inundated with messages of how we should be, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookstore is a reminder to reflect on how we are and can be much more than the roles we’ve been assigned by society.
The message is simple yet powerful
I love that Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookstore is a slice-of-life story that centers around community and the power of being authentic to yourself. It’s a reminder that a sense of belonging is something you can create. That home and familiarity is a place you can create. If you’re looking for a cozy pick-me-up of a book, I highly suggest you give this one a read!
You can find Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookstore here!
