This book is so strange. I'm not sure I know how to review it. Yi does an excellent job at taking a character and really diving into the messiness of their brain, to really look at them full stop. I loved that, and the way we deal with the narrator and her obsession. I felt myself jumping from feeling to feeling about her, and never knowing quite where to land. Overall, the look at obsession, the look at fandom, and the look at letting yourself be taken over by feelings was so raw and real, it was hard not to love this book.

That said, there were certain parts that took me out of the story. It felt like the author was often playing with real world v. a world of her own creation, and I couldn't find my footing here. I think that was often intentional, but in moments it felt like it was almost leaned on too much and it just lost me. Overall, I think people who love unique storytelling will adore this book, and I definitely enjoyed my time with it.

Writing in the first person, Esther Yi has delivered an unusual debut novel with an unnamed protagonist.

FIRST SENTENCE: "The pack of boys had released their first album in Seoul two years ago, and now they were selling out corporate arenas and Olympic stadiums all over the world."

THE STORY: She lives with her roommate in an ordinary life until she becomes fascinated by the boys lead singer Moon. He is everywhere and he is nowhere.

WHAT I THOUGHT: A difficult, literary book, beautifully written, but like trying to move through a confusing maze. I chose this book because of curiosity about why fans become so attached to boy groups. There were quotes on which to linger and consider. And I learned what Y/N means. It's not Yes/No. It is Your/Name.

BOTTOM LINE: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED IF this sounds interesting to you. It has gotten many positive critical reviews.

DISCLAIMER: I received a free e-copy of "Y/N" by Esther Yi from NetGalley/Astra Publishing House, Astra House for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for a copy of this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Y/N is a genre bending novel on obsession and the dangers of para-social relationships. Our main character Y/N becomes obsessed with a member of a K-pop boy band, Moon, after seeing them in concert. This turns her life completely upside down.

So much so that with all prior connections severed, Y/N travels from Berlin to South Korea in search of Moon after his indefinite retirement. Y/N uses her deep and unnerving knowledge of Moon during this hunt as well as her supposed connection with him. This is somewhat sure to her self insert fanfiction of Moon she claims to not have written after herself.

Y/N’s journey is a great showing of how far the mind can go to conjure up fantasies and illusions of people we don’t even know to our own detriment.

Esther Yi’s writing solidifies all of these themes beautifully!

For this I give this whacky novel 4 out if 5 stars!

5/5 stars.
The novel has a very surreal, Kafkaesque vibe. The language is ostentatious and an experience to read in itself. The narrative is disjointed and fragmented and you never know quite what’s happening and then you suddenly find your bearing only to lose it again.
On the surface it’s a critique of stan culture and the strangeness of parasocial relationships which I really enjoyed because I’m obsessed with reading about the intersection of the digital age and human experience.
But then there’s also lots of veiled critiques of other social aspects, one of them being our consumption of art, which definitely applies to the literary field (not literature itself but the circus around it). It’s very Barthes-y (Barthes-esque?) which became so much more obvious to me when the similarities in titles clicked in my head (S/Z and Y/N duh). I kept thinking 'what is the author trying to say here, what is the meaning of this paragraph?!’ but that literally plays into one of the many questions that the book navigates: can we just enjoy art (literature) without running around like headless chickens trying to uncover the meaning of it? But there is no one absolute meaning, in fact it actively resists being defined because the pleasure is in the plurality of the text of which we, as readers, are active producers of.
Anyways it’s a really interesting (and extremely stressful) read but one that is strangely gratifying too.

Ehhh…maybe I just don’t care enough about K-pop? Or about fanfic?

This was blessedly short and Yi is a lovely writer. And I like weird stuff, but not if I doesn’t ever coalesce into something coherent. And while I see what Yi was attempting to do here, it didn’t quite happen.

I do like the concept of fans going too far because it’s an interesting meditation on popular culture and obsession, so the concept behind this was potentially intriguing.

But I’m not crazy about fever dream style narration, or protagonists whose perspective doesn’t differentiate coherently between fantasy and reality. It’s also hard to like a character like this, who isn’t interesting enough to balance out the pathetic nature of how she spends her life.

A bit more balance and less nonsense fantasy world stuff would have gone a long way here. Yi’s skill as a writer is evident, but the plot and its execution here are a tough hang.

under the veneer of cultural critique, Y/N is a story about a woman who finds obsession and unrequited love more bearable than plain old loneliness. She’s looking for something greater to lose herself in, many in her place have chosen cults, men, alcohol, art, religion… but she decides to do a little bit of everything when she starts following Moon, member of a superstar global kpop band.

far from a condemnation of fandom, i see it as a condemnation of the doubly exploitative system behind mass market popstars, the impossible demands of appealing to everyone while keeping up the illusion of intimacy, the financially and emotionally drained fans who flock to them as a safe haven…

but if you’ve ever been a hardcore fan of anything you know this is kind of a recipe for disaster.

it’s about a woman who falls for a manufactured and impossible story and is forced to reckon with the humanity of its characters

i was a bit skeptical at first, at how the prose held the reader at arm’s length, it felt like the author was overcompensating the pedestrian and derided subject matter with inscrutable, convoluted prose. but as i dove deeper into it and acclimated to the particular voice of the narrator, it opened up like a flower in bloom, melting its cold core to reveal more and more of the fragile character at the center of it all

another anti heroine that captures something of the age we live in, almost identity less, history less, alienated, she finds language and connection difficult, but she”s also quite brave, radical she’s really deep down the delusional girl we’re urged to become on tiktok. but she commits to the delusion, not disimilar to my year of relaxation’s narrator.

it’s an incredible debut, gives lots to chew on. can’t wait to see what Yi will write after that

I received an eARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

3.0

*I received this as an eARC. Thanks to NetGalley and Astra House.

I typically enjoy literary fiction, but this one just wasn't for me. I really thought I would enjoy this too because as the name suggests it's an illusion to fanfiction (Y/N aka self-insert fanfiction) and in particular centering around K-pop. I see what Esther Yi was trying to do, and I acknowledge it, it just wasn't presented in the way for me.

It's a woman's slow descent into madness as she becomes more and more obsessed with a member from a k-pop group. The beginning of the story had me hooked but as the story progressed my attention waned. I was sucked in at the beginning because of such poignant lines. However, as I continued to read it felt like i was trucking through words to make it to these stunning one-liners. And that can only last you so long before you don't want to continue reading. I probably would have DNF'd this if I wasn't provided an eARC or if it wasn't this short.

Unfortunately for me, the ideas were there but I did not jive with the author's writing style. I don't NOT recommend it, but I sure hope you enjoy literary fiction if you're going into it.

Dream-like, poetic, and incredibly unique—this is the kind of book you find yourself thinking about long after you've turned the last page.

I feel like this is a book that defies genre. I was expecting one thing going in and got something completely different by the end, but enjoyed it nonetheless! Extremely surreal and dreamlike, Yi's novel examines fandom, celebrity, purpose, and the sense of self we all long for. While I went in expecting something akin to Eileen or A Novel Obsession, I was pleasantly surprised at how quiet and strange this novel was. While this was a tiny bit disjointed at times, I definitely recommend this to anyone fascinated by K-pop, celebrity culture, and the lengths we go to find what we need.

What a strange little book! Y/N follows an unnamed narrator as she falls into the world of K-pop and grapples with fandom, obsession, loneliness, connection, and being understood.

I found myself so uncomfortable while reading this book, so I guess the author’s intentions came through! The protagonist got a little unhinged as the story progressed, and strangely enough I actually wanted her to meet the K-pop group meme ER she was pursuing, just to see what would happen. She got a rude awakening, to be sure, and it was fascinating. It really showed how fans can attribute certain qualities and personalities to celebrities without ever actually knowing them. There’s a part in this where the protagonist said that Moon, the boy band member she had yet to meet, was more than himself and basically existed for consumption, and that was incredibly disturbing because it’s something you can often see in spaces dedicated to pop culture. Spend any amount of time on Twitter and you’re bound to see someone say a celebrity deserves to have to put up with bad behavior from the public because that’s “what they signed up for”. It strips the celebrity, who is still very much a person, of their humanity, and we see this with the character of Moon.

While I don’t think that every aspect of this book worked for me, I did like the writing and the potential for deeper conversations surrounding fandom behavior.

The premise of Esther Yi’s debut novel Y/N—a woman who plunges deep into parasocial devotion to a K-pop idol—is “blissfully stupid,” she professes. “Blissful” seems fair enough. After all, given the state of the world, who doesn’t need a little escapist fantasy? But I can’t help but wonder, for Yi, where exactly the “stupid[ity]” she speaks of resides. Is it in the unattainability of love with a celebrity? Its lack of functional purpose? The ridiculousness of a consumer culture where such impossible romance is not only marketed, but in high demand?

Or, when Yi says “stupid” does she simply mean the beautiful, quiet blankness that might spread across one’s brain when faced with the image of a flawless boy? Because, on first read, Y/N is anything but.

Yi inhabits the voice of her protagonist—a writer with a mind-numbing copywriting job—with effortlessly crisp lucidity. Surrounded by intellectuals who busy themselves with mincing metaphysical questions about where their cells might die, have higher humanities degrees and treat art and politics as hobbies, she is existentially troubled, out-of-sync. She has a boyfriend, Masterson, who’s as gently condescending as he is caring. But even the simplest sentiments from him such as “I want to feel at home with [you]” and “how are you?” evoke within the narrator a kind of dissociated resistance—“personally, whenever I asked “how are you,” I actually meant, “I am not you… I did not like to be related to.” On the contrary, the narrator’s obsession with Moon, her K-pop idol of choice, seems, if not satisfactory, more generative. “He feeds my imagination more than you do,” she tells Masterson, to which he answers, “Of course he does… because he exists in your imagination.”


BUY IT NOW





Upon the announcement that Moon is retiring and leaving his group, the narrator embarks upon a journey to Seoul to find him and ask questions that seem as impossible to answer as they are troubling to her to pose. Interspersed with scenes from the self-insert fanfiction she writes, that uses the moniker “Y/N” or “your name” to allow a fan to imagine inserting themselves into stories of romantic encounters with the idol of their choice, Yi’s book becomes a heady calibration between the surreal and banal that recalls Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs—lacing together a cast of seeking, sublimating characters as they move through archetypal spaces, notice their strangely spectral bodies, are pulled along vortices of desire.

Y/N is frighteningly, coolly adept at vivisecting experiences of fandom obsession without suggesting it is above them. Fannish relationships to idols are not monolithic, ranging from fans who actually want to date the objects of their affection, to those who prefer to keep them at a distance like uncanny, virtual creatures. These perspectives tend to be revealing about each person’s traits and idiosyncrasies; that the narrator takes an esoteric position seems significant. She projects her existential angst onto Moon with desperate piety, yes, but wants, above all, to prove that she’s unique, not at all like the other fans. Analogous, perhaps, to the haughty ambivalence she feels towards scripted social performances of connection and being-human. A thorough knowledge of fan subculture allows Yi to wield humor, and a kind of self-deprecating cruelty in her unsparing excavation of it. Watching Moon’s v-log and wondering if she should open or close her mouth, the narrator notes that “even the possibility of looking dumb in front of him was a privilege beyond my reach.” Moon’s fans are called “Livers” because [They keep the band] alive, like critical organs.” But Y/N isn’t solely a tongue-in-cheek parody or criticism of fandom either.

What I’m stuck on is this: “blissfully stupid” is perhaps the most common negative accusation cast against K-pop fandom and its blinding fantasy, but it is also for the most part true. It bears mentioning that I am, at the very moment of writing this review, listening to Volcano, by Han Jisung of K-pop band Stray Kids, set on an infinite Youtube loop. Since my job involves a fair amount of cultural criticism, it would be easy for me to make an argument for the aesthetic value of this song despite its pop-music context; a narcotic, dreamy melody cut with harsher rap-anthem swells, its lyrics leaning into the melancholia of subterranean queer guilt. But that’s not all I’m here for. The truth is that Han Jisung has the face of a woodland creature, the off-kilter swag of someone who’s overcompensating and a very pretty mouth. My enjoyment of this song is absolutely not cerebral, it’s mostly shallow and horny. And the real provocation of Yi’s novel is that it doesn’t try to reject, reclaim or put extraneous value on fandom so much as treat its “blissful stupid[ity]” seriously, as a means towards new forms of philosophy and phenomenology; stranger modes of inquiring, believing and knowing.

Spoilers follow in review at link

Not sure I get what this book was trying to do but I really liked reading it. Uniquely written, it offers a layered, immersive account of the experience of being a fan, of its highs and lows and of how complicated yet meaningful of a thing it can be. Even if I tried there's nothing I can say to accurately describe what it was like to read this book or convince anyone to do the same. You’ll just have to pick it up and see for yourself.

Very surreal, almost like a fever dream. I'm not quite sure if I liked it, although the more I think about it, the more I find meaning in things that didnt make sense to me while reading.

There is a point near the end of this short novel, which is rooted in K-Pop fan fiction, where the protagonist/narrator has an exchange with the abruptly retired pop star she has fallen in love with from afar that is thought provoking. She tells Moon that she isn’t like other fans; she’s special; and it speaks in some way to how we think *all* romantic partnerships work—she’s the right one for me; he’s the right one for me; they’re the right one for me; and vice versa. We believe we’re meant to be with this other person because of something we hold inside for them, or them for us, but until they agree is it only a delusion? And when they agree does it simply become a shared delusion? Are fan obsessions really that different from connecting with someone on an app or having a brief conversation with a stranger in person and thinking, This could become something more than a moment. We could have something together?

The book itself struggled to transcend its aesthetic roots, in my opinion, and couldn’t quite overcome the protagonist’s rapid turn from distaste of Moon and his pop group to obsession with Moon, after attending one concert. It was routinely either not grounded enough or not weird enough or not dark enough. I was led to believe this novel was about stalking and it is not that. Probably better for the world.

*thank you to Net Galley and Astra House for providing me a digital arc in exchange for an honest review*

Y/N is about an unnamed Korean protagonist living in Berlin when her roommate introduces her to the biggest Korean boyband in the world. After seeing a member named Moon in concert, she dives head first into a parasocial infatuation with this member.

Let me stop right here and say, I can relate. I’m a huge fan of kpop. I had a similar experience with all of the groups I currently stan. I get it. So this made the first part of this book so enjoyable for me. I laughed at loud at the nuance of kpop fandom so perfectly described in this book.

Now on to the rest, the title “Y/N” is a reference to a theme in fanfiction where the reader can replace “your name or Y/N” with their name every time it appears in the story. Our protagonist starts to write Y/N fan fiction about her beloved Moon and embarks on a strange and quite surreal quest to meet Moon.

Esther Yi manages to blend fiction with obsessive reality and by the end of the book you don’t know when lines have been crossed, but you do get to follow our protagonist down a dark and strange journey of obsession.

At times you don’t really know what you just read. You wonder if this is really happening or just all part of the fan fiction story. Did it lose me completely at times? Yes. Did I want to keep reading? Yes.

I definitely think it makes good commentary on obsession and fandom. While it didn’t represent every normal and not so extreme part being a kpop/pop culture/celebrity obsessed person it did capture the lengths a lot of fans go to. The ending threw me for a hell of a loop.

Overall, I’m glad I read it and I would love to see more from Esther Yi.

I had to DNF this fairly early on. At the very beginning, it seemed promising. Post-concert, things got very unhinged very quickly and untethered from reality, without being earned. I don't DNF books all that often but I just struggled so much with the mental descent of the main character, I couldn't hold on. I don't want to give too terrible of a star rating since I didn't finish, so I will give this a three, so as to not tip the average star rating in any direction.

This was interesting read. The main character felt incredibly distant and exhausting. The book itself is very overwritten but i did like it included parts of the fan fiction she was writing.

What a fun and quirky read.. I don't think I have ever read a book like this before. It was deep while also being entertaining.

I knew I had to get my hands on Y/N as soon as I read its perfect first chapter in the Paris Review a few months ago. This is a really excellent debut novel. The prose is clever and poetic without being cumbersome to read. The narrator is so wonderfully strange.

Y/N is a novel driven by singular obsession. The unnamed narrator, a Korean American woman who lives in Berlin, lets her roommate take her to a K-pop concert, and she immediately becomes obsessed with Moon, the youngest member of the group. "I was being sent to the other side... My First Time, experienced at the age of twenty-nine, made me wonder about all the other first times to be had. The world suddenly proliferated with secret avenues of devotion." Loving Moon becomes a quasi-religious experience for the narrator, and she realizes she is willing to "trad[e] in a real-life adult lover for a boy star who doesn't know she exists."

I've been telling everyone who will listen about this book. There is no way to describe it and do it justice. I will say that the first chapter is by far the best, and things slow down a little bit in the middle, but overall this is an excellent read, certainly the best debut novel I've read in a very long time. I love Esther Yi's fake K-pop lyrics. This will appeal to fans of Nabokov and Calvino.

This felt very reminiscent of Untold Night and Day to me, but definitely still super unique. Dreamlike writing and interesting premise. I really enjoyed this one, though it’s genuinely so hard to articulate any thoughts about it. I had no idea this was going to be so surreal and absurd and was expecting a more straightforward story based on the summary, but this slayed so hard — I honestly love a book where I sort of don’t know what on earth is going on. Absolutely crazy for a debut. 100% a book for the hot girls
4.5/5 stars