Recitation by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith (Deep Vellum)

There are some books you read and can’t put down. Once you come to the last page, you’re saddened by the fact that the story has ended because you want more. Then there are books you read, reread, and try to read but the more you read, the angrier you get as there’s no plot or point to the story. 

Bae Suah’s Recitation falls in the latter category. Perhaps there is something lost in translation from the original Korean. Suah is a South Korean writer and translator who made her literary debut in 1993 with A Dark Room in 1988. Bae had no formal training in writing nor did she have a literary mentor to help her and it shows. She started writing as a hobby but left her full-time job after getting her first story published. 

Recitation starts off with a woman named Kyung-hee talking to some people she met at a train station. We never know who she is talking to or why but she tells them she had the idea of visiting the houses she’s left behind. We do learn that the people listening to her were from the same city as Kyung-hee. She tells them in her hometown she was a theater actor specializing in recitation. 

The people who first talk to Kyung-hee meet her at the train station. They offer to accompany her to her hotel or wherever she was staying, but she tells them she doesn’t have a reservation anywhere, that she is waiting for a man who is going to let her use his living room for a few days. 

She explains to the people who talk to her that she is a “part of a community of wanderers who let out their homes free of charge”. She continues by saying, “If someone comes to visit whichever city I’m living in, I give them somewhere to stay, and then when I go traveling, other people in other cities will let me use their living rooms, veranda, guest room, attic, or even in the off chance that they have one, a barn”. 

The people become intrigued with Kyung-hee’s story. They listen to her as she tells why she started traveling, the people she’s met, the experiences she had. This may sound like the beginning of an interesting tale but it becomes one long boring monologue. You discover that Kyung-hee doesn’t really have anything to say, or rather she speaks a lot but doesn’t say anything that makes any sense. 

Anyone who is not familiar with Bae’s writing may become frustrated as they try to decide who is actually speaking. Bae switches from Kyung-hee to other characters, to the unnamed people who first started listening to her, and then to a daughter Kyung-hee doesn’t claim to know. Not only is the writing confusing, but I found it pretentious as well. In the end, I wonder why I even bothered to read this book at all. If you’re a glutton for literary punishment, you could challenge yourself to read this. As for me, I was just glad that I was able to finish it. ~Ernie Hoyt