Review
"The shimmering, lucid tones and silver melancholy of
I'll Be Right There give readers a South Korea peopled with citizens fighting for honor and intellectual freedom, and longing for love and solace. Kyung-Sook Shin’s characters have unforgettable voices—it’s no wonder she has so many fans.” —Susan Straight, author of
Between Heaven and Here and National Book Award Finalist
“A wonderful, heartbreaking story that lingered with me long after the last page was turned. As the powerful story unfolded, I enjoyed peeling away the complicated, dark layers of every character. Kyung-sook Shin’s beautiful depictions of love and sweet adolescent confessions will take you back in time to your first heartbreak.” —PP Wong, Editor-in-Chief,
Banana Writers"Tender and mournful, the latest novel from best-selling South Korean novelist Shin (
Please Look after Mom, 2011) considers young love and loss in an era of political ferment...Shin's uncomplicated yet allusive narrative voice delivers another calmly affecting story, simultaneously foreign and familiar."
–Kirkus
"Shin's perspective on relationships is nuanced; she doesn't shy away from what is complex, complicated or painful in everyday human connections...There is also vibrancy and richness in the lives of her characters, and an understanding of love and solitude that is universal." —
Electric Literature"Spectacular...Shin’s searing, immediate prose will remind readers of Nadeem Aslam’s
The Blind Man’s Garden, Edwidge Danticat’s
The Dew Breaker, and Aminatta Forna’s
The Memory of Love, and their stories of ordinary lives trapped in extraordinary sociopolitical circumstances." —
BookDragonAbout the Author
Kyung-sook Shin, the author of seventeen works of is one of South Korea’s most widely read and acclaimed novelists. Her best seller
Please Look After Mom has been translated into more than thirty languages. She has been honored with the Man Asian Literary Prize, the Manhae Prize, the Dong-in Literary Award, the Yi Sang Literary Prize, and France’s Prix de l’Inaperçu, as well as the Ho-Am Prize in the Arts, awarded for her body of work for general achievement in Korean culture and the arts.
Sora kim-Russell is a poet and translator originally from California and now living in Seoul, South Korea. Her work has appeared in
Words Without Borders,
Azalea: A Journal of Korean Literature and Culture,
Drunken Boat,
Pebble Lake Review,
The Diagram, and other publications. She teaches at Ewha Womans University.
See all Editorial Reviews