“I think I first saw this in the bestseller section [Actor Park Jeong-min’s PICK, “The Real Thing”]. I also understood that actor Park Jeong-min had recommended it, and hearing that made me even more curious about the novel.”
“[I like long novels] I tend to like long novels, but since The Real Thing is a short-story collection, it reads really easily and quickly × 2, you know? So [Gaeul’s Book Club reading journal / Recommended for people who find reading difficult] I think it would be a really good book for people who find books difficult and want to challenge themselves.”
“[Munsu: left behind by Granny Jangsu, a shaman with no god] And since the subject itself is shamanism, [Granny Jangsu / Sin-aegi: Granny Jangsu, who left Munsu and became the tutelary deity of a spirit-afflicted person] it feels very fresh, but also has that eeriness. And I didn’t know this, but when I looked it up, [honmono: real / nisemono: fake] I found that “honmono” means “real.” So, between me (Munsu), who goes mad and devotes myself to it like that, and Sin-aegi, who received the spirit initiation, which one is the real one? At the end, the two of them perform a gut ritual like mad [Spoiler warning]. That scene was, as expected, the most memorable. [A book that made me think a lot about “what does ‘real’ actually mean?”] It was a book that made me think a lot about what it means to be real.”
“[Author Sung Hae-na, born in 1994] So I understand that this author is young, and our generation really is one that grew up watching videos rather than reading books, right? I heard that when the author writes, she writes in a way that makes it play out like a video, and I felt that too. I was impressed, thinking, “So a picture can form in my mind just from imagining it.” But I think it would be fun if this came out as a drama or a movie. I think that would be even more fun, because a gut ritual has such strong imagery.”
