Wondrous and strange ... What we learn about this unnamed narrator... is delightful in its specificity ... The main pleasure of Y/N is not so much its somewhat skeletal plot, which floats in and out of surreality like an adult Phantom Tollbooth, as its corkscrew turns of language ... In its clever compactness, Y/N resists the junkiness of the internet where they reside, the fanfics and the livestreams and endless comments.
A strange, funny, and at times gorgeous new novel ... Full of characters that squirm and run together, as if the reader were trying to decipher an out-of-focus eye chart, the book evokes how precarious identity itself can be. It also explores the consequences of subsuming your entire life in a desire for what may or may not exist ... Y/N is about the messiness of attempting transcendence ... Y/N unfolds as a series of digressions, false starts, and near-misses, with the book’s structure mirroring the thwarting and misdirection of the narrator’s desire ... Where Yi’s book feels new is in its acute awareness of how globalization amplifies this sense of incompletion. Not only are characters stuck wanting things they can’t have or don’t want once they have them but they are also incessantly reminded of all the people they will never matter to and all the things they will never acquire. Yi salts her novel with products that promise satisfaction and technologies that hustle connection and professional services that will take your money to teach you empathy.
Intricate ... We are forced to ask ourselves if Y/N truly means to be what it masquerades as: a zeitgeisty narrative of parasocial relationships. More than one character remarks on the likeness between Moon and the narrator, and these peculiar doublings, together with a claustrophobic sense of existential yearning, seem to point towards much older stories ... This is a curious, cerebral work, shot through with moments of tender poetry and a vertiginous self-awareness.
Yi speaks to some of the most pressing ideas in today’s culture with wit and grace ... Yi explores how gender discrimination and racism (particularly fetishization) can be the outcome of such constructed realities, as characters repeat Korean stereotypes and parrot a culture they have no real link to ... Y/N is one of the most daring novels of the year. Yi has set a new standard for internet-influenced literature by showing that online and literary narratives exist hand in hand, creating the world with every word.
In this sharp and humorously perverse novel, Yi examines the sort of identity-altering, obsessive fandom that is only destined to disappoint if one looks too closely.
Yi lays out her sentences with cold precision for a stilted narrative imbued with minimalistic prose and self-aware irony. The narrative shines when Yi leans into the outrageous and humorous ... Unfortunately, our narrator is remarkably one note ... The novel acts as less of a critical critique of the culture and more of a mirror of our time. I found myself wishing Yi would raise the stakes and take us deeper into this world of obsession and self-destruction. Nevertheless, Y/N is a fast paced debut full of intriguing sentences and apt-observations steeped in humor.
Yi brings a distinctive voice and lush prose to her depiction of the narrator’s fixation, which culminates in a contest for fans to meet the band and intertwines with the narrator’s Y/N stories ... The narrator’s feelings for Moon are complex and varied, which makes her quest endlessly intriguing. Strange, haunting, and undeniably beautiful, this shines.
From its earliest pages, the novel employs pop music as a way to wrangle with art and literature on a grand scale ... A surreal quest that seems tailor-made for the present moment. A heady, immersive journey into musical fandom and cultural dislocation.
