b, Book, and Me by Korean author Kim Sagwa discusses the reasons for bullying and being bullied. If only you could become an ocean, a fish, or a book to escape such fate.
b, Book, and Me synopsis
Best friends b and Rang are all each other have. Their parents are absent, their teachers avert their eyes when they walk by. Everyone else in town acts like they live in Seoul even though it’s painfully obvious they don’t. When Rang begins to be bullied horribly by the boys in baseball hats, b fends them off. But one day Rang unintentionally tells the whole class about b’s dying sister and how her family is poor, and each of them finds herself desperately alone. The only place they can reclaim themselves, and perhaps each other, is beyond the part of town where lunatics live―the End.
In a piercing, heartbreaking, and astonishingly honest voice, Kim Sagwa’s b, Book, and Me walks the precipice between youth and adulthood, reminding us how perilous the edge can be.
Book review
One wants to be the ocean and the other two want to be a fish and a book. “Those who no longer play in the water are called adults.” The first narrator, Rang, thinks adults are boring and that there are only a few good things to look forward to in the future, like free coffee from b. Nobody cares about her, it’s like she is invisible and the mirror reflects the light away from her. b, Book, and Me is set in a small seaside town that is very unlike Seoul. The more it imitates Seoul, the more it becomes… not Seoul and foolish.
This book is about being bullied and bullying and the role that poverty, social inequality and the heavy burden of a sick younger sister play in that. Rang and b have a lot in common but think they are different. The first is silent and the second wants to scream and swear and eventually unleashes her anger at someone even more vulnerable. Rang is socially uncomfortable but no one explains to her why kids get mad at her or feel uncomfortable around her. If you want to read an upbeat book, then this is not it. It is a very intimate and vulnerable account of two young girls’ thoughts and (surreal) journeys. You get to know them really well as you spend all your time inside their heads.
The prose reflects their moods, supporting your perception of their feelings. The more disturbed they are the more incoherent the narrative becomes. Kim Sagwa uses the same interesting writing style as in her other book Mina. The girl called Rang has a vivid fantasy, making you curious about what she will think and do in the next scene. She could be described as weird, but then again, if you could read my thoughts… what is to say that my thoughts are ‘normal’. The sentences are usually short and the story is easy to read. I like the effect of the short one word or one sentence chapters: the dramatic pause makes the scenes intenser.
At the same time, both girls sound the same. Their voices resemble the voice of the main character in Mina. What frustrated me in Mina were the tacky dialogues. Here the dialogues weren’t that great either, but it was alright because they were less prominent in important scenes.
I both like and dislike Kim Sagwa’s writing style. I’ll read her next book and probably feel the same. She manages to draw me in and then fails to impress. Yet she also doesn’t disappoint: some scenes are really intense and on point. I know this sounds ambiguous, but it is the most accurate description of how I perceived b, Book, and Me.
Translated from Korean by Sunhee Jeong.
Interested?
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