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Critique de clemia
I've heard such nice things about this book. I even believed it to be THE next John Green's kind of book. Not that I am a fan of his work, but you get the idea. My expectations were very high.
The book getting published in French in the coming days encouraged me picking it up. Also, I chose to read it in english because the French version is translated from English and not Korean, which I find pretty disapointing.
So...it was good. But nothing incredible.
Yunjae is special. His amygdalae never grew and so his understanding and ability to feel emotions did not grow either. But he was loved deeply by his mother and his Granny. His mother making him try very hard to blend in with others and his Granny letting him live however he wanted to.
One day, on Christmas Eve, Yunjae was the direct witness of the terrible murder of his Granny and six other people by a desparate and possibly crazy individual. His mum, also targetted, was badly hurt and fell into a coma.
So here is Yunjae, left alone, looking a bit like a psychopath. He soon meets with Gon, a teenager who was abducted when he was a kid. Gon is as full and vibrant with emothions as Yunjae is flat and almost lifeless. However, Gon is mostly filled with anger, rage even, and the fear of not being enough. Not strong enough, not intelligent enough, nothing. So he makes himself visible by hurting others. That is how he starts bullying Yunjae, who stays without a reaction to his provocations.
The relationship between the two young teenagers will evolve, they will grow up and decide what kind of person they really want to become.
This story tells the power of friendship and the importance of understanding others, but also coming to grips with our own emotions and understanding of ourselves. We easily forget how our lifes can be managed only because of how we feel, never taking the time to analyse those emotions and where they come from.
The fact that it all happened in Korea was new and interesting in the young adult genre. The story was efficiently told and written. The very short chapters matched the condition of the narrator, and it was all very direct. However, there was no originality in the story and it was very predictable, until the very end.
The book getting published in French in the coming days encouraged me picking it up. Also, I chose to read it in english because the French version is translated from English and not Korean, which I find pretty disapointing.
So...it was good. But nothing incredible.
Yunjae is special. His amygdalae never grew and so his understanding and ability to feel emotions did not grow either. But he was loved deeply by his mother and his Granny. His mother making him try very hard to blend in with others and his Granny letting him live however he wanted to.
One day, on Christmas Eve, Yunjae was the direct witness of the terrible murder of his Granny and six other people by a desparate and possibly crazy individual. His mum, also targetted, was badly hurt and fell into a coma.
So here is Yunjae, left alone, looking a bit like a psychopath. He soon meets with Gon, a teenager who was abducted when he was a kid. Gon is as full and vibrant with emothions as Yunjae is flat and almost lifeless. However, Gon is mostly filled with anger, rage even, and the fear of not being enough. Not strong enough, not intelligent enough, nothing. So he makes himself visible by hurting others. That is how he starts bullying Yunjae, who stays without a reaction to his provocations.
The relationship between the two young teenagers will evolve, they will grow up and decide what kind of person they really want to become.
This story tells the power of friendship and the importance of understanding others, but also coming to grips with our own emotions and understanding of ourselves. We easily forget how our lifes can be managed only because of how we feel, never taking the time to analyse those emotions and where they come from.
The fact that it all happened in Korea was new and interesting in the young adult genre. The story was efficiently told and written. The very short chapters matched the condition of the narrator, and it was all very direct. However, there was no originality in the story and it was very predictable, until the very end.
