Welcome To The Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: A Review

I read this book over a long, long time, curled up in my bed with my feet tucked in my blanket.

Each word of this book is placed with such intention and brings me a sense of quiet peace. My copy of this book is peppered with bookmarks, each page of this story feeling unique, yet part of the whole book. Welcome To The Hyunam-Dong Bookshop is going to hold a special place in my heart for a long time. I connected deeply with this book, with its quiet musings and thoughtful characters.

Yeongju is the main character, yet not the only focal point. Her musings are interwoven with the lives of the other characters and visitors to the bookshop. Each chapter feels like another story, yet connected as a whole. 

Though there is no action filled plot, or suspense to drive the story forward, as the author so beautifully puts it in her acknowledgements, this is a story of taking small steps, of taking a break from being caught up in a world constantly pushing us faster, faster, faster. This is a story that invited me to take a pause, and soak into the thoughts and lives that these characters lead, the doubts and realisations that they hold; the journeys that they go on, not searching for a destination, but tentatively walking forward and waiting to see what emerges.

I don’t even know how to put my thoughts into words, but I know that I will recommend this book to every single person that I can, because it connected with me so deeply, not just because it was a ‘book about books’, but because the thoughts and musings that the characters have made me sit in awe, and place another bookmark, so that I could come back to it. 

One example is from page 24, where Yeongju muses this: 

“She’d read somewhere that authors often get people opening up to them, as if being a wordsmith somehow meant they would understand things that even the closest of friends couldn’t.”

That paragraph was the moment I truly felt connected to the book, that it spoke to some quiet part of me inside. I got this book by accident, seeing it in bookstores yet never picking it up, until one day we exited one and my mom handed it to me, saying she thought it seemed like an interesting book.

She’d not read it. Neither had I. And yet it came into our lives at just the moment that I could appreciate it.

This is a story including the conversations and small moments that create someone’s life as they go about their days, and being able to sit and walk through these moments with these characters is something I am going to hold dearly.

Yeongju’s journey as she opens a bookstore and figures out how to keep it running is the setting of the book, and as I read every page, seeing the depictions of life as a bookshop owner, I fell in love with that idea a little bit more. It’s certainly not a laid-back lifestyle, but it is restful, and I love the core idea Yeongju settled on at the end of the book; that as long as she found the courage to follow herself and sincerity to stay true to her roots, everything would work out alright for Hyunam-Dong Bookshop.

Hwang Bo-Reum and Shanna Tan have done a beautiful job with this book, and through Shanna Tan’s translations, I can feel the soul that Hwang Bo-Reum created with her words.

This book doesn’t grab you by the collar and force you to find out what’s next, it simply exists; its door open for you to wipe your shoes, carry a cup of coffee, and walk through;

Maybe leaving with something new in your handbag.