This is a really wonderful reflection on grief and mental health. It was very interesting to have these stories of emotional vulnerability all haunted by an acknowledged darkness. Also I do understand the lack of quotation marks are an artistic choice, but I found it difficult to parse what exactly was dialogue and what wasn't without them.
Overall, it was a very sweet work about community and love despite all the cruelty that exists in the world.

Rating: 3.5

"If you spot someone who looks just like you, it's your shadow, and once your shadow rises it's over for you, because shadows are very persistent, because you can't bear not to follow it once it's risen"

One Hundred Shadows is a magical realism novel inspired by the 2009 Yongsan apartment disaster in Korea.

Through this novel, Hwang Jungeun offers the voices of the working class and underprivileged people who had to witness the destruction of their homes, businesses, and livelihoods.

Upon reaching the limit of the suffering they can endure, a strange phenomenon happens to these people; their shadows begin to appear and separate from their bodies.

I really enjoyed reading this book because, like any other magical realism book, it haunted me in a mysterious and strange way.

I also liked the fact that the book wasn't completely depressing. The characters in this book, still try their best to stay positive despite experiencing the most bizarre phenomena and about to lose everything they have.

My only complaint about this book is that the dialog is written without quotation marks, which makes it hard to understand. I really had to read it very slowly in order to understand it properly. (I will definitely reread the book in the future for further clarification)

Anyways, thanks to Netgalley for the arc copy!

The landscape of Eungyo & Mujae's world is disappearing and people's shadows are rising. Don't follow the rising shadows.

This book is a quick and easy read, but forgettable at best. I was curious where the story was going and was intrigued by the principle of shadows rising, but ultimately felt the story was about 100 pages too short to really make an impact, or even make the themes that the author was touching upon apparent enough to feel. I did really enjoy the writing style, as it was captivating enough to have me read this in 2 or 3 sittings.

Reading some reviews, perhaps I should know the context on which this story was based (the Yongsan Tragedy), but still I feel there was more to be explored in the story.

One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun is a brief and poignant look into the life of Eungyo and Mujae. They live and work in the frustration and claustrophobia of abject poverty, and people’s shadows have started to rise. Don’t ever follow your shadow…

This book was moving. It had aspects of critiquing the surrounding culture, when it comes to social issues such as poverty and gentrification. It was filled with incredible descriptions that had me feeling as if I was there, with the characters. At times there was a dark feeling that hung over this book, but that feeling was right for the story, the characters, and the ever mysterious rising shadows.

The budding romance between the two main characters was offbeat but endearing!

Overall, this was a short but worthwhile read.

Thank you Hwang Jungeun, Kensington Publishing, Erewhon books, and NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

#OneHundredShadows #NetGalley

A calm mix of magical and social realism, rising shadows and urban development projects and the people who hang onto life as well as they can.

Have you ever felt anxious over the future’s uncertainty that it feels as if a shadow is constantly looming over you like an unfortunate rain cloud, initially lurking in dark corners making you think you’d just imagined it, waiting for the right moment before it takes on a more tangible form encompassing all your cracks and crevices until you can barely break free from it and it ends up consuming you whole? In this cross between magical realism and reality itself, Hwang Jungeun portrays the day-to-day life of the working class through the eyes of Eungyo and Mujae, two friends in their 20s who work in a slum electronics market in Seoul. Around them, shadows are on the rise, threatening to control those who follow it.

Despite being less than 200 hundred pages long and appearing immensely mundane at first glance, One Hundred Shadows is packed with social commentary, depicting the stark differences between the Seoul we see on modern media and the Seoul Hwang Jungeun grew up in, having worked at her father’s electronics shop herself. I found so much meaning in Eungyo and Mujae’s fleeting conversations, from their repetition of the word “slum”, rolling the word around on their tongues until it lost its meaning, to their mishap on a remote island leading to the book’s perplexing conclusion.

While I was utterly entranced by the somber setting and the sort of ethereal way this book was written, a part of me wishes the fantasied aspect took on a heftier role. There were several mentions of the shadows in the form of anecdotes, but it seemed more like a distant phenomenon than the fearfully common occurrence it should have been. I felt like it wasn’t fully integrated into the storyline and I was desperate for that link. The lack of quotation marks also left me quite confused – a personal pet peeve – that I had to double back quite a lot to figure out who was talking.

Overall, this book had the potential to join the ranks of Human Acts and The Memory Police, raising awareness to the jarring reality behind the glamour of South Korea, but ultimately fell short in terms of establishing a deeper emotional impact on its readers.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the ARC of this book!

I really enjoyed the lyrical nature of the book and the development between the lead characters as well as the historical context of the book. It brought attention to an event I had not yet heard about in an interesting way and felt somewhat slice of life in a location that I was unfamiliar with. Unfortunately it wound up feeling a bit unfinished in terms of the social commentary I was expecting and the shadows themselves weren’t well explained.

I’m willing to bet some of the nuance is lost in translation, so I’m giving this a 3.5/5 to account for that, rounding to four stars.

I love the Asian fiction that is around at the moment however sometimes I do find they can be a little lost in translation if that makes sense. I liked the idea of the storyline however there were times where I did feel a little lost and found it hard going. I really wanted to love it but sadly I struggled.

Rating: 3.0

I found it quite difficult to stay engaged and focused with this book, and it felt that way until the end. Normally I would have DNF'd something that I struggled to stick with, but there were bits and pieces of the story that I thought were worth staying for, only to be a little let down.

I understand the issues with translated books, where sometimes things don't come across as intended, or it's lost in translation. And unfortunately, I feel like this was one of those times because it left me feeling unsatisfied. There was potential, but it didn't come across as much as it was supposed to.

I thought the writing and translation were very good - there's a spare elegance to it, and I love a novella. I think the blurb comparing this to Yoko Ogawa's book The Memory Police was a good comparison. I am not familiar with the other author used as a comparison. The pace of the book is slow and it's subtle, so I don't think it's for everyone, but I really enjoyed it and I think it will find its community of readers. I needed to do some reading on my own about the 2009 Yongsan Tragedy to discover that the setting is based on real events.

Thank you NetGalley for approving me to read this arc.

"One Hundred Shadows" is a novella written by a South Korean author in which we follow Eungyo who is a helper in a repair shop. Her workplace is about to be removed alongside other as a result of urban redevelopment which is heavily based on real life event called The Yongsan Tragedy that happened in 2009. Besides that people around are followed by shadows and it is well known to not follow your shadow if it wanders away.

This book is very enigmatic and I am genuinely conflicted about how to rate it well. The story seems really simple but if I am honest nothing really gets developed at the end. We have some kind of relationship with electronics shop employee Mujae that from the description on the back cover is supposed to be a romantic one but I don't really see the romance to be fair. The shadows problem stays the way it is till the end as well. We also don't see the moment when our main characters have to move from their regular workplace. The idea felt really interesting and this story is really well written but I'm not the biggest fan of metaphors there and I definitely read better examples of Asian literature.

You can immediately sense the authors skill in crafting character and setting the exact type of mood they are going for. As always it’s important to know the historical context the author responds to, and with that knowledge this novel is short, haunting, and still hopeful with the two characters leading en way.

I really love this book. The storytelling and the format/structure is not really new to me and i really love it. I love how the characters, everyone of them build the world in this book. I also love the main characters. I love Eungyo’s character, she seems to be more of a character that's too observant and she made the story so quiet until the last chapter. This is a short read but i really enjoyed reading this. I would love to reread it again.

Thank you netgalley for letting me read this book!

The last thing I want to convey in rating this work two stars is that it’s bad. It isn’t. But it is frustrating.

One of the most important things to remember when reading translated works is the perspective they’re coming from—One Hundred Shadows is first and foremost a valuable and thoughtful piece of Korean lit that functions as a remembrance of the people impacted by the Yongsan apartment building tragedy, as well as a criticism of redevelopment and the impact on society and its microcosms.

For further context, in 2009, renters occupied an abandoned building in Yongsan District, Seoul, to protest inadequate compensation for urban redevelopment. Without negotiation or any prior run-through of their plan of action, the riot police were dispatched. Five protestors and a police officer were ultimately killed in the resulting conflict, and upwards of twenty others were injured. Families of the victims have yet to receive any degree of justice ten-plus years on. Accordingly, this is what I’d consider an important book. It even scored an introduction from Han Kang.

There were parts of this that I really enjoyed. I struggled to get through the first 35%, and then sort of hit a stride with the writing and felt very engaged until the end. The writing is at times quite lyrical and visual, and I think the latter half of the book is where this shines through the most. Hwang Jungeun is clearly a talented author, and the atmosphere was the best part of the book. While the dialogue was definitely too simplistic and repetitive, it did add to the dismal vibe. Lots of cool stuff happening here.

My problem is that this book apparently doesn’t want you to know it’s important. It feels unfinished. I really struggled with the way this was structured, the intertwining of the ‘shadows’ with the portrayal of life in a slum, and the total lack of provided context. There are no footnotes, no notes in the introduction on the cultural context, and no provided translations or equivalences. As a reader, I don’t want things spoonfed to me, but in translating a work for an international audience, certain things are incredibly helpful for understanding the work’s perspective, none of which were present here. For some reason, there’s a translation of “fox rain” at the beginning, which I found pretty unnecessary for appreciating the book as a whole, really only the first paragraph of the story, and this is the only piece of context provided in the entire thing. I don’t mind doing my own research, but I really think this book could gain something by providing some groundwork.

As is, it came off very disjointed and incomplete, especially the bit about the rising shadows, which was admittedly what I was initially most interested in. Honestly, the idea was mostly abandoned, only brought up to add atmosphere when the writing was petering out. While the descriptions were at times creepy, nothing was really done with the shadows. I think I would have enjoyed the book much more if it either went all in on being a mundane portrait of life in this slum, or all in on the magical realism. It wasn’t able to pull off both, and the shadows only came up a few times throughout. There was so much more that could have been done with them thematically.

Ultimately, I appreciated what this book was going for, but I believe there’s room for significant improvement both in the writing and the translation efforts.

This book was short but I still have decent amount to say, so I'll start with the premise. Shadows can be dangerous, and so are capitalists.
However, it's also a quaint burgeoning love story between two people who have life paths that have brought them to similar points.

"One Hundred Shadows" was a quick read for me, and would probably be for anyone considering the short length of the book. Reading it was a fine way to spend the day. It flowed naturally, and there was nothing stilted about it for me. I really enjoyed the two main characters and the stories about their lives that were woven into the story. If it had just been about them without any fantastical elements, I would have enjoyed it just as much. Even the fantastical parts felt grounded in a type of realism, though. None of the elements about shadows really detracted from the story in the slightest. In fact, one of my gripes with the story is that I wish there was more lore about how the entire concept of it worked. But maybe that's because my media literacy is a tad dull these days.

In the end, it felt almost unfinished? It was very open ended, which doesn't bother me much. However, it felt like there were so many other threads that were begging to be tied up, but were left dangling at the end of the book. Knowing it was a short novel, I wasn't expecting to be lore rich and full of plot twists and whatnot. Were there things I'd change about it? Sure. But it was a nice piece of translated literary fiction, which is totally in my wheelhouse, and I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Would recommend for Korean literature fans, fans of translated fiction. and readers who enjoy subtly written themes with maybe a dash of surrealism.

I really wanted to love this book, the premise had a lot of promise but there was something about the structure that made me really struggle to get into it.
I found it particularly challenging having no speech marks to indicate when a character was talking, resulting sometimes in some confusion. I also found the dialogue a little clunky, but that may be a product more of the translation

In an exploration of the poorest areas of Seoul and lives of the people that live there, Hwang Jungeun gives us a fantastical, slightly supernatural rendition of the struggles of a forgotten class in the capitalist hellscape that is Seoul. The novella is inspired by the Yongsan tragedy of 2009, a peaceful sit-it by forty renters who were protesting the evictions from their homes and business sites due to urban developement, which turned into a violent clash once the police got involved, resulting in five casualties.

I’m not sure I fully understood the novella and its use of the fantastical elements: I interpreted the rising of the shadows as a way to represent depression and the loss of control one feels in late stage capitalism, but sometimes I felt the narrative disputed this kind of reading. I also have to say I wasn’t a big fan of the dialogues, which felt meandering and were a series of repetitions ad nauseam.

I found the novella to be very quiet: the few characters in it feel like the only living beings in über populated Seoul, incapsulated in their own world, which is very fitting with the theme of the novel. It suggests a hint of loneliness but at the same time of closeness towards the community they have created in the business venture they all work in.

Despite this I didn’t find the characters particularly compelling, but I appreciated the hopeful tone the text suggests.

While it might not have worked that much for me, the book still has merits, and I do think it’s still worth reading! Also it’s a very short read, and you breeze through it while still getting its impactful punch.

Access to the ARC acquired thanks to NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I decided to read this book because the premise sounded interesting. It's a short book and it's easy to read, although I didn't like how it was narrated since it seemed childish, especially regarding some dialogs, and for me it lacked profundity. I also felt like the author tried too much to seem unique in the writing, but this could be that I don't have all the context of Korean society.

Maybe it could've been better to have some footnotes providing context since it seems like it was primarily a social critique, but the book doesn't really offer much information about it with a few exceptions, and that is also quite short.

The concept of the shadows rising seemed intriguing at first, but then I felt like they didn't had much importance at the end, I think that could've been explored more in the narrative.

At the end I finished the book not really knowing what I read and ended disappointed. But maybe if you know about Korean culture and its society you'll find this book more enjoyable than I did.

A small book with a powerful impact.

One Hundred Shadows follows two young people, Eungyo and Mujae, who work in an electronics market slated for demolition in a socioeconomically disadvantaged part of a South Korean city.

The narrative is constantly shifting, from portrayal of the realities of life for the working poor, becoming fairytale-like at times with elements of magical realism, and moments of lyricism. There are little stories told of the people who have spent their lives making the market their home and a part of their personal and family history interspersed throughout, highlighting the humanity that hasn't been considered by those in political and economic power.

"I wonder if they call this kind of place a slum, because if you called it someone's home or their livelihood that would make things awkward when it comes to tearing it down."

In the two protagonists, Hwang Jungeun powerfully portrays the feelings of despondency and futility (Mujae) and anxiety and fear (Eungyo) that come with constantly living with the looming threat of economic insecurity and having one's place in the world disrupted and taken away, whilst being powerless to resist the forces causing it.

The ending was perfect. I'll be thinking about this story for a long time to come.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of One Hundred Shadows in exchange for an honest review.

This is a short yet thoughtful and lyrical novel that deals with the topics of class, poverty, and gentrification.
Eungyo and Mujae's relationship develops as the shadows of the people at the electronics market they work at start behaving strangely.
While the story is relatively simple, it's very poetic, and provides an atmosphere that is captivating and eerie, walking the line between literary and magical realism. This drew me in from the onset and I enjoyed learning more about these characters who have been excluded from the capitalist success of the society that surrounds them.

This novel does not include quotation marks which, though they didn't affect my enjoyment, may be an issue for some.

Although I do wish it had been a little longer and had explored some of its themes a little further, I found this to be a really enjoyable and pleasant read.