[DeepL Translation - needs review] Gas explosion at K city train station, my brother is missing......
Author Haejin Cho's warm, deep perspective and fluid prose
A mesmerizing and beautiful young family coming-of-age novel
There is a forest with many trees and a lake. In that forest, no one is hurt and no one is a failure. The forest is existence itself, mystery itself, essence itself. Call it a cool place, call it a womb, call it a utopia. Perhaps everywhere that is not real is a forest, so ...
A post-apocolyptic novel from the perspective of survivors of a global pandemic that has caused chaos to the point of social collapse. There is looting, gangs, starvation, violence and mass migration as people try to find somewhere safe from the disease and destruction.
At only 200 odd pages long this was a short novel but super interesting, I could barely put it down. Although it was quite graphic (heed the content tags) the storytelling was rich and the characters all had their own voices. The plot is also fast paced.
From a learner's point of view I wouldn't say the language was super hard, and there was very little slang or dialect. Each chapter was named after the character from who's point of view we were seeing.
However speech wasn't marked by any punctuation which took a little getting used to and some of the vocabulary was pretty uncommon, especially to do with the military. It wasn't too much to look up as you came across them though.
The characters thoughts about meaning in life how we confront mortality and death were quite haunting.