Our Happy Time
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
With over a million copies sold in South Korea, this is a gripping and passionate death row love story for fans of Please Look After Mother, vividly told by a major Korean talent.
Yu-Jung – beautiful, wealthy, bright – is lying in her hospital bed, recovering from her third suicide attempt, when she receives a visit that will change her life. Her no-nonsense aunt, a nun, appears by her side, and suggests Yu-Jung might accompany her on a charitable visit to death row. At her lowest ebb, Yu-Jung is resistant. But something compels her to go to the prison. There she meets Yun-Soo, a convicted murderer who will soon be put to death. And, though repulsed by his crimes, something about the depth of his suffering strikes a chord in her. Shaken by their encounter, she returns to visit him the next week. And the next...
Through their weekly, hour-long meetings Yu-Jung and Yun-Soo slowly reveal to each other the dark secrets of their pasts, the hidden traumas that have shaped their lives. In doing so they form a deep, unbreakable bond, helping one another to overcome their demons. But Yun-Soo’s hands are always in cuffs, the prison-officers are always in the background, and they can never lose sight of the fact that their happy time together is tragically brief.
Poetic and vividly told, Our Happy Time is a passionate and heart-breaking love story. It is also an important, hard-hitting and compassionate fable for our times – a story about crime, punishment, and forgiveness from a major Korean talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestselling South Korean author Gong's first novel to be translated into English presents the dramatic, not to say melodramatic, story of two unlikely friends helping each other find peace and forgiveness. Former pop star Yujeong, still haunted by a dark childhood secret despite her wealth and success, wakes up in a hospital bed after her third suicide attempt. Her aunt Monica, a strict yet loving nun, offers Yujeong a choice: she can begin a monthlong, in-hospital course of treatment or return to her home but if she chooses the latter, she must accompany Monica on her weekly visits to the death row inmates at Seoul Detention Center. Desperate to evade therapy, Yujeong opts to go with her aunt. It is on death row that she meets convicted murderer Jeong Yunsu, who grew up in severe poverty. Despite very different backgrounds, the two feel an affinity in their shared, deep sense of pain. They begin to open up to each other, in the process moving toward forgiveness of those who have hurt them, and acceptance of the Christian faith that Monica gently urges on them. Yujeong and Yunsu's unlikely friendship plays out in overwrought, clich d fashion, but with moments of beauty. Many readers will find the tone overly preachy, but Gong's sincerity at times breaks through the heavy-handed moralizing.
