Kyung-Sook's work is one to make people reflect repeatedly on how loneliness is an unabated state of being from which we, as humans, will never truly break through or escape, unable to draw away from its growing mends that progressively flourish to swamp the world in its blazing flames of devastation, withdrawing from the usual way of displaying life's downs and lows in a self-improvement type of way and, hence, reaching out to convey, in its completion, the longing of lonely people— doing so by diligently crafting self-aware young adults who are conscious of their bound for loss and that, despite their dread, won't give out, although they might get consumed by it eventually.
After coming close to finish this reading, it came to my mind Demian, that I've read a couple months ago, and how it goes about self discovery in a place of solitude through which a person passes by in order to marinate in their essence but also acknowledges that state as a consequence of becoming out of tune with the world around oneself due to the recently discovered inner self nature. I'll Be Right There, however, brings an approach to this topic weighted way further on its characters, for those aren't individuals who have chosen to go in search for the deepest part of their selves over aspirations, impulses or motivations— other than that, it comes down on them more harshly than the struggles Demian's main character goes through because Shin Kyung-Sook's characters are people who were subjected to the position of loners (and that, even this way, might spend the rest of their lives lost from their true identity).
Carved in the shape of Jung Yoon and her 3 former friends, I'll Be Right There introduces us to the guileful way the past can weight down on someone— with such phenomenon explored by how each one of the characters deflect their trauma upon specific objects from their current lives as in a strive to relief the void settled inside their chest each due to previous particular and quite specific experiences, that are responsible for forcing them into facing an aspect of life far more black and white throughout which they wouldn't be able to more than survive (and even this, barely) without something to rely the pain of the unspoken.
Shin Kyung-Sook's book is a search for balance between the past and present that won't ever disregard life's bearings— no matter how bigger the love—and won't, also, come in terms with people's yearnings (let alone the fictional ones), once its beauty is settled in her raw and almost cruel narrative.
