Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

REVIEW: Shoko’s Smile by Choi Eunyoung

Shoko’s Smile is a short story collection translated from Korean. It follows the lives of young women in South Korea, and their relationships and bonds.

My favourite stories in this collection were Shoko’s Smile and Xin Chao, Xin Chao. Shoko’s Smile is a story about two girls that meet when one of them is an exchange student that comes to live with the other for the few weeks she is visiting. It sees the mark they make on each other’s lives. The characters are flawed, it looks at mental health and loss. Xin Chao, Xin Chao is a story where a Korean and Vietnamese family become friends with each other whilst they’re living in Germany. Their children become best friends. But the past causes trouble for their friendship.

This short story collection left me feeling a little underwhelmed. I liked reading about the intimate lives of these different women, and I have not read a short story collection about Korean people so that was an interesting change.

I would recommend this short story collection, although I found the first stories were the strongest.

Choi Eun-yong’s short stories collection, Shoko’s Smile, brings an intimate connection between people across boundaries of time and space, redefines love and loss that easily makes me lost in the seven stories included in this volume. It is easy to take for granted the emancipation of women and how technological advance make our daily lives more bearable today. But Choi Eun-yong’s stories take us to revisit how society changed in the past few decades, with her stories that seem to take points of view from people growing up in the 1990s as political and societal changes happened in South Korea.

The titular story Shoko’s Smile remains my favourite among the seven stories. It brings the viewpoint of Soyu, a Korean teenager who received Shoko, a Japanese high school student of the same age who happened to participate in high school academic exchange to Korea. Soyu and her family members hosted Shoko during the one-week visit, during which Soyu’s grandfather and mother also interacted with Shoko. After the brief visit, Shoko remained in touch with the family, sending letters in Japanese to Soyu’s grandfather and in English to Soyu. Most of the time, the letters would contain contradictory remarks, symbolising the differences between Shoko’s smile that appears on the outside with her inner desire to escape the world she lives in. Soyu was shocked at the extent of the conversation between her grandfather and Shoko who was practically a stranger, even telling her something that she never knew about her grandfather. Sometimes, it’s easier to tell ‘sensitive’ things to strangers rather than those closest to us, for the sake of sparing the ‘awkwardness’ of confiding our secrets. Choi Eun-yong using creative sentences and symbolisation of the smile and letter exchanges could recall this usually unexplainable situation in the brief friendship between Shoko and Soyu.

Many of Choi Eun-yong’s stories feature women who find themselves understood in the weirdest circumstances by another woman whom they encountered by chance. In Xin Cháo, Xin Cháo, the friendship between the narrator’s mother and Mrs Nguyen found themselves due to their husbands’ shared workplace. The year was 1995, many Vietnamese families in the past moved to East Germany during the GDR era as part of Gastarbeiter ‘guest worker’ to contribute to industrialisation of fellow socialist countries. The narrator found herself in that part of the country as her parents were both German majors and worked there after graduation. Yet in this strange context, they found themselves drawn to this situation, formed a close friendship that is bridged in a second language, German. However, the warmness of Mrs Nguyen toward the narrator’s family could not survive the argument about South Korea’s involvement to aid the US military forces during the Vietnam War, when Mrs Nguyen’s family losses were revealed as the casualties of the war. Sometimes people who understood us the most are those who were wounded and hid their wounds deeply, ‘to make the situation comfortable’.

Shoko’s Smile is an intimate collection, filled with stories that depict the raw intimate connections between people who sometimes find themselves in the worst period of their lives and encounter strange connections with other women. The stories also show how sometimes even some connection made in the shortest period of time, such as the one week of connection between Shoko and Soyu in Shoko’s Smile or the three months in Hanji and Youngju, could have long-lasting impacts on the lives of the persons involved and reveal their innermost vulnerabilities. It also shows how memories of the past could change, as some gaps are revealed to bring a clearer picture of the past, that the past could finally be seen in a different light through each new fact revealed by the characters. Translated beautifully by Sung Ryu, who also co-translated Kim Bo-young’s I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories, this collection reveals the rawness of human’s connection and brings the changing political backdrops in South Korea to celebrate those who lost their relationships and families in the turbulent tide of history.

Shoko's Smile is a collection of short stories about women. Each story was unique and had complex female characters in different situations. The characters were not necessarily likeable, but the author brought out their emotions and vulnerability through her writing.
The stories revolved around fractured relationships, forgiveness, immense hardship, loss, tragedy, death and regret. Choi also incorporated politics and historical events into her stories.
My favourite stories were Xin Chao, Xin Chao - a bittersweet story about two families; one Korean and the other Vietnamese, living in Germany, whose strong bond was never repaired after mention of the Vietnamese War and The Secret; a heartbreaking story of a grandmother who is kept in the dark about her grand daughter's death in the Sewol Ferry disaster. Instead, the terminally ill grandmother is told that her grand daughter is teaching in a remote place in China.

Oomfph. These stories pack a punch, realism that haunts. Most are first person - a Korean woman looking back at earlier events, each different enough from the last with differing concerns and histories - although later ones are in third person. Why do I bother mentioning the nationality? Because several of the stories involve other countries which was a surprise! Someone else described these stories as portraits, and they’re right, it’s more accurate than simply ‘stories’. They feel like lived experience, and interactions as good writing should. I’m really glad this collection has been translated, I’m giving it 4 stars now but I plan to re-read in a few years and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets the extra star then.

With thanks to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Slice of life short stories are my thing, so reading the description of this book when I found it on NetGalley recently, I knew I had to give it a chance - and I am so glad I did, as Eun-Young Choi delivers incredible depth and pathos in this book, that I truly have such an incredible appreciation for after reading this collection.

A winding road of stories that delivers little bubbles of everyday life, this book certainly gives us characters that deliver such incredible emotion throughout and some beautiful stories that really give you something. Stories such as 'Xin Chao, Xin Chao' are brilliant and leave you learning something and taking in a story that is packed with poignancy and has such a heartwarming and maybe bittersweet ending.

These plots are emotional, bittersweart, heartbreaking and honest and stand together incredibly well in this collection. Alongside 'Xin Chao, Xin Chao' stories such as opening story, 'Shoko's Smile' are raw and human and feeling like you could very much see this story play out where you are too - there's something incredibly captivating about stories that you know could be played out in reality and this author captures that in this book.

An incredible collection of very human stories that feels like looking into the lives of extraordinary people.

(I received an ARC from NetGalley for honest review).

I'm a huge fan of Korean fiction in translation and short story collections, so I was doubly excited about this once I heard about it. Unfortunately, I found this to be a disappointing read. The writing was very plain to the point of being bored, and none of the stories were compelling to me at all. As a whole I just found this to be a very unimpressionable collection. There was nothing egregiously bad about it, but there was nothing memorable about it either.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC!

Shoko's Smile is a thoughtful and well-balanced collection of short stories.

Choi is an empathetic storyteller, and her characters are at the heart of her fiction. Each story offers an astute exploration of a complex relationship (whether that's with family, friends or a romantic partner), often touching on the tension between the personal and the political. Choi's understated prose lends every scene a sense of poingancy.

Shoko's Smile also deserves praise for being such a brilliantly curated collection. While the stories are bound together by the common theme of connection, each piece has its own distinct power and weight.

Shoko's Smile is an unassuming collection with hidden depths; I'm looking forward to reading more translations of Choi's work.

Whenever I think of this collection of stories, I recall the powerful scene where Shoko’s grandfather just stood there with his apples and juice boxes in a plastic bag. Tears in his eyes. It takes skill to write and translate a scene that makes the reader sympathize so strongly with a character, both while reading and when thinking about the book weeks later. I wasn’t there, but I can still see her grandpa standing there like that.

The two grandpas
The title story, Shoko’s Smile, illustrates how a person’s eyes and smile can contradict each other, like the English and Japanese letters Shoko sends to the narrator and the latter’s grandpa. Although Shoko makes everyone feel comfortable, the narrator notices a difference in the way she smiles. Shoko’s struggles are central to this story, but the two grandpas are the true stars.

Unique friendships
All stories in this short story collection are very touching and have memorable characters. They are about people who find friendships in unexpected places. Friendships that are not perfect, as nothing in life is. There is misunderstanding and caring, thoughtfulness and suffering. Children have the power to care sincerely, as Sister, My Little Soonae shows, but it is incredibly difficult to see others suffer. Especially if you’re not in a position to do anything about it, as the following quote illustrates, “I did not enjoy beholding the naked face of someone who could neither escape her pinned-down life nor manage to love it.”

The tales demonstrate the impact that (historical) events such as the sinking of the Sewol ferry or the war fought in Vietnam still have on everyday life. How long do you keep apologizing for something a family member or your ancestors did? The story Xin Chào, Xin Chào is about the sensitive relationship between a Korean and a Vietnamese family in East Germany. The author could not have chosen a more interesting setting for this story. There is always more beneath the surface, and time will often reveal what was previously hidden, changing your memory of people you know.

There’s beauty in sadness
People make assumptions without knowing what happened. And so do I. Whatever happened between the main characters in Hanji and Youngju? Their story was my favorite: it’s beautiful and a little sad. The same goes for Malja’s story in The Secret, another great story that made a deep impression on me.

The stories in Shoko’s Smile show both beauty and sadness as if you were reading a book about missed happy endings. But sadness is not the feeling that stays with you, it’s the small and beautiful moments that show that people care that do.

Well written I was involved from the first story.Really interesting to read a book that was translated from Korean a culture that I would like to know more about.Will be recommending #netgalley#johnmurray

As is often the case with short story collections, I felt some of these were better than others. But the ones I liked, were really great. I haven't read any Korean literature in translation before - I had wondered if it would be similar to Japanese writing, and this did have a quirkiness to it, but of course that may be just this particular book!
Anyway, it's easy to dip in and out of and deals with all sorts of issues - love, family, death, grief.

As far as I can say the translation of this short story collection is well done.
As usual for japanese or korean books this has a more neutral tone to it, but the sories are still packed with emotions. We follow the characters in their everday life and their struggles sometimes felt too real, I didn't expect to be so touched by some of the narrations. I actually didn't want to continue reading, because I didn't want to leave the first two stories behind. Common ground of all are the characters; they're are searching or griefing, which makes them quite relatable.
I wasn't able to get something out of every story though. It's just a hit or miss with some of them, I didn't particularly like the themes of faith or religion. But I'm sure other readers will love them more than I did.
Overall this was a very good collection and i will revisited some stories again in the future.