I couldn’t stand it because I had been afraid of being loved from the beginning.” “I couldn’t stand her love, which did not reject even the ugliest of my faces. Such is the grace and delicacy with which the characters open up themselves that the reader can’t help but be taken by surprise whenever they’re hit with epiphanies or moments of straightforwardness, such as: This trait is also noticed throughout each story itself. The display of the stories is interesting as well: it’s almost as if the characters’ awareness, or honesty, about their own needs is gradually increasing across the book, from the tough Shoko to the sentimental grandmother in “The Secret” (first and last stories in the book, respectively). But Choi and her frank, sensible writing set just the right pace and put just the right weight in the storytelling, so the weight of these themes is not belittled, yet it doesn’t make for an unpleasant or overwhelming read either. There is a lot to unpack here: the dilemmas of wasted youth, depression, family conflicts, loss. The book is opened by the homonym story “Shoko’s Smile”, first published by Choi in 2013. These feelings intensify as the characters’ relationships slowly die when they grow distant from each other.

In seven short stories, Choi presents a set of characters that range in age, profession, and motivation, but share a longing for connection, or reconnection, often with themselves, but with other people too. Originally released in 2016, Shoko’s Smile hits the market in its English version on the 1st of June 2021, translated by Sung Ryu. This is the general theme you’ll notice throughout Shoko’s Smile (2021), the debut collection of the awarded South Korean writer Choi Eunyoung. Generational and cultural differences apart, humans and their needs are not different at the core.

Shoko's Smile by Choi Eunyoung