Untold Night and Day

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He must like you – didn’t I say so? But he isn’t a salesman, Blind Owl.’ The German-language teacher generally chose a name for Ayami culled from whichever novel they were reading. She found Ayami’s real name much too strange, and not at all to her liking. She’d told Ayami that her real name made her uncomfortable and that, where possible, she wanted to avoid having to pronounce it. She had also asked not to hear it pronounced: ‘Whatever you do,’ she said, ‘just don’t say “Ayami”. And the same goes for calling me “Yeoni”.’ title story translated as Highway with Green Apples by Sora Kim-Russell: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Don’t worry too much about finding another job. As long as you have the resolve, it will all work out, though it may take a little time. Take my advice, and write a letter to the foundation. They’ll be sure to respond.’ When the engineer comes the day after tomorrow, I’ll tell him to take a look at it, see what’s going on, OK?’

Bae Suah was born in Seoul in 1965. She studied chemistry at university and wrote her first short story as a way of practising her typing on a new word program. Since 1993 she has published fourteen story collections and six novels. Untold Night and Day is her first book to be published in the UK. As night morphs into day, Ayami and the theatre’s director begin a loose quest to report the inexplicable disappearance of Ayami’s German-language teacher. Characters appear and disappear like spirits; Bae twists together interludes of parallel lives and doppelgangers so that images, and sometimes entire paragraphs, are reiterated word-for-word like an endless hall of mirrors folding over on to itself. And dreams are integral to the book: a freelancer and poet named Yeoni says to her friend Buha, who asks her, “Please take me to another world,” that she will “invite you into the ecstasy of my dream.” It’s also unsurprising that Yeoni reads aloud passages from The Blind Owl, the classic novel by the Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat, in which the protagonist struggles constantly and vainly to reconcile reality with fantasy.

Wikipedia citation

So I came to Untold Night and Day with spectacularly low expectations, persuaded grudgingly to buy the thing by the fact that according to the cognoscenti it was meant to be The One. The Best Thing she has ever written. For me, this was make-or-break. Either I would get to the end of the book this time or I would never read another thing by her ever again. Untold Night and Day is a deliciously complex novel that satisfies at each layer as the reader continues to decipher its codes and hidden meanings.”

Let’s get out of here.’ The director grasped Ayami’s arm. ‘I saw a police station down at the bottom of the hill. Let’s ask there.’The man walked over the subway ventilation shaft at the edge of the square. He wore thin summer clothing, and walked with both arms held away from his sides, twirling his empty hands. He walked over the yellow lights set into the paving stones. He walked alongside the white railing of the flower bed, and he walked into the shadow of the statue on the tall plinth. Ayami stopped. Was the man merely out for a night-time stroll? The man also stopped. They stood unmoving for a few moments, regarding each other from a distance. With the lights off, the interior of the auditorium seemed as though submerged in murky water. Objects, matter itself, were softly disintegrating. All identity became ambiguous, semi-opaque. Not only light and form, but sound, too."

And you haven’t forgotten what I wrote in the letter, that I made the decision to leave you a long time ago, far longer ago than you imagine? So in that sense, we’ve already parted?’

My Book Notes

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. The director tapped on the table with a finger. Without fully opening his eyes, the young policeman raised his eyebrows enquiringly. Ayami and the director explained the situation, and asked whether it might be possible to put out a missing person announcement. The young policeman asked if the missing person was a family member; they replied in the negative. Very well, the policeman said, how long might the person in question have been missing for? He didn’t sound convinced.