Going to university, marrying a decent man and getting a respectable job – Yeongju did everything she was supposed to. But then all of this falls apart and she tries to abandon her old life by opening a bookshop. “Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop” written by Hwang Bo-reum and published in 2022 in Korea, tells Yeongju’s story: Even if she doesn’t know for how long her bookshop may run, she lives there “day by day”, hesitant to plan too far ahead. Whether her small business will start to bloom one day or not, she doesn’t know from the beginning.
One day she hires a co-worker, Minjun, her barista, who recently faced some difficulties in life as well. For him, “university life was a series of part-time jobs, with any free time spent studying.” Afterwards he applied for several jobs but didn’t get the one he wanted.
Throughout the book, several characters go in and out of the bookshop, each of them bringing their own story along. There’s the woman, Jungsuh, who started out as a contract worker with the hope of becoming a permanent employee one day and after eight years in the company, she still hasn’t received a permanent contract. She seeks peace at the bookshop and eventually helps Yeongju as well. There’s the woman Jimi, who is unhappy in her marriage and wants a divorce – and a boy called Mincheol who doesn’t want to live his life according to his parents’ wishes.
In 40 chapters, 297 pages exactly, the book encompasses the stories of the characters introduced above and you can follow easily even if you haven’t read the book after a while. Furthermore, in quite each chapter, you’ll also find an important lesson for life.
“To find happiness, do what you enjoy”
I particularly like this book because it gives hope that if we don’t get the job we wanted to have in life, if we’ve applied for several ones and failed a couple of times, even though the moment one has been waiting for didn’t come, the characters in the book don’t think that their “life is a failure because of that.”
It motivates that if you can’t or don’t want to fulfill your parents expectations, for instance, as portrayed in the book with the Korean value system (going to a good university, marrying and getting a great job), instead of pursuing what is recognized and valued by society, to do what you like. Reading this, written by author Hwang Bo-reum surprised me positively. My Korean friends, too, recently told me that it’s not their goal anymore to study very hard, to have less leisure time or time for friends, just to get a good job in a well-known Korean company later on. So to gain a deeper understanding of Korea, I would recommend this book to everyone who has yet solely the information that, since from an early age on, Koreans may be just torn to perform and to fulfill certain expectations.
“Work plays an important role in life, but it isn’t solely responsible for our happiness or misery”, – and sometimes hard work, e.g. following the American Dream, doesn’t pay off. It’s okay to go an alternative way, to find something else that suits you better or is best for your current situation. All the characters in the book who have faced disappointments in life try to make the best out of their situation. Additionally, the author Hwang Bo-reum writes: “How others judge where they stand – be it high or low, good or bad – doesn’t matter to them. The fact that they’ve progressed and are happy where they are is sufficient.”
Learn to live in the moment
Life is truly precious and you never know what’ll happen in the next few minutes. The book advices us to try to focus on a single action of the moment, putting aside the past and the future and to completely engross yourself in what you’re doing at a certain time.
“A day well spent is a life well lived” is written on the last page of the book.
Are you curious now what happened to the characters throughout the story - and what you can take away from it?
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