Hello, it’s been a while. I have been taking a break from the world of blogging; hopefully now I can get back into it. August brings us Women in Translation Month, so here goes…
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If one word comes to mind when I’m thinking about the stories in Heuijung Hur’s Failed Summer Vacation (translated from Korean by Paige Aniyah Morris), it is ‘disconnection’. Disconnection in the characters, yes, but also in the fabric of the stories themselves.
My favourite story is ‘Imperfect Pitch’, which introduces us to Baek, who drifts through life and spends most of his time checking a fancafe for the titular rock band. The band are defunct, but the cafe just about keeps going. The story begins with Baek reading about the death of O, a long-time fan of Imperfect Pitch, and a driving force behind the fancafe.
From there, the story splits into three strands: there’s the fancafe in the present day, where it becomes apparent that no one really knew O, despite her centrality. There is the time Baek went to Imperfect Pitch’s farewell show, buying a ticket from O and picking it up from a station locker, without ever meeting her. Further back, there is Baek’s discovery of the band at university, and the time he performed one of their songs at a student society concert.
In each strand, we then see people ultimately failing to come together despite being in institutions meant to facilitate that (the fancafe, the student music club). Likewise, the three strands remain separate on the page, apart from a striking moment that merges Baek’s student performance with the final Imperfect Pitch show – and which highlights Baek’s isolation even back then.
(An extract from ‘Imperfect Pitch’ is available on the Wasafiri website.)
Failed Summer Vacation is full of striking images and imaginative turns, leading to stories that don’t necessarily lend themselves to easy interpretation, but instead nag at the mind. A good example is ‘Loaf Cake’, which begins with the narrator’s partner (housemate? companion?) Sand leaving the house, after which she, the narrator, loses the ability to speak.
The narrator then needs to find a new means of connection, and she begins to find this with a baker named Snow and his delicious creations, especially the loaf cake that the narrator devours each time she visits his shop. Then Sand returns, but he appears to have walked so far that his very self is crumbling away. It’s the images and sensations that linger longest: as so often in these stories, there’s the nagging sense that true connection lies just out of reach of Hur’s characters.
Failed Summer Vacation is published by Scratch Books.
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