A woman ditches her fast-paced corporate life to open a bookstore. It’s like this book was tailor-made for me.
To be clear, it takes a while before we learn about Yeongju’s past life and what prompted her to open the bookshop.
Instead, this book by Hwang Bo-Reum and translated by Shanna Tan starts with Yeongju opening the bookshop, then just kind of sitting around for a while as though expecting people to find their way to the bookshop on their own.
It’s not until a customer explains to Yeongju that it’s her responsibility to bring in clients that she goes about the business of marketing her company and figuring out how she wants to stock her bookshelves, and how to recommend books to her customers that they want to read, not just what she likes to read.
There isn’t much of a plot, much less action. To the extent that there is, I would probably say it gets started when Yeongju hires her first full-time staff member, Minju, to make coffee for bookshop patrons.
Minju has his own history, and it also takes a while before that gets revealed. He’s in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. He studied hard in school and got good grades, but couldn’t manage to get a job after graduation. He eventually gave up on getting a job and decided to do nothing for a while until his money ran out. When he applied to be a barista at the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, he was expecting it to be a part-time job for very little pay. So he’s surprised when Yeongju offers him a full-time gig with a decent salary so he doesn’t have to worry about money while he’s working for her and he can be comfortable.
She also warns him she doesn’t know if she can keep the bookshop open for more than two years. He hadn’t been planning to work as a barista for that long anyway.
But it turns out he really likes coffee and is committed to making the best coffee he can. When the store isn’t busy, Yeongju notices him making coffee. At first she thinks he’s just making coffee for himself, but then realizes that he’s fiddling with the machine and doing things a little different every time, trying to figure out how to improve his brew.
He even takes over ordering from the roaster that supplies their beans. The owner of the roasting company recognizes how good he is and invites him to her factory to get familiar with the roasting process. That becomes a regular excursion for him and he comes to know the owner very well.
There are several patrons of the bookstore we get to know better, including an author who comes to the bookshop for a discussion of his book, then hosts a series of seminars, and flirts a little with Yeongju.
It’s hard to say what this book is about, other than the healing power of books and the need to take a break from work.
There’s even a chapter in which the reader gets to sit in on a book discussion hosted at the bookshop about a book about the nature of work and how problematic it is that society expects everyone to work themselves to death and define themselves by their professional accomplishments.
They talk about the “Protestant work ethic” and how that philosophy was imported into South Korea and how that has affected them. I found that surprising because I tend to think of the “Protestant work ethic” as a uniquely American concept, given that America started out as a Protestant sanctuary from Europe. I hadn’t realized how much of that had spread to the other end of the globe.
But work and how people identify with their work is a common theme throughout this book. I don’t think the author even set out to write a book with a theme, much less a plot. She said she would just sit down to write and see what the characters would do. When a new character was introduced, she would come up with a backstory for them.
She did say she knew she wanted the name of the bookshop to start with the character “hyu,” which apparently means “rest.”
That said, as an entrepreneur in a capitalist society, Yeongju doesn’t get much rest once she decides to commit to drawing people to the bookshop. Even as she hires employees to help out around the shop, she still runs herself ragged hosting more events and doing more things to try and draw in more customers.
I loved this book so much. I’m not even sure I can explain what it is about it I loved so much, because it’s not the kind of book I’m normally drawn to. I normally need a plot to draw me in, but I found myself going along with the meandering, thoughtful story of this book. I loved all the characters, and I loved the various discussions about work vs rest.
This is the perfect book to curl up with a good cup of coffee and savor.