Acclaimed South Korean writer Sagwa introduces readers to "b" and Rang, two adolescent friends who are bullied at school and face struggles at home. The only place they can reclaim themselves, and perhaps each other, is in the part of town where the outcasts live—the End.
... haunting ... Surreal and luminous, b, Book, and Me turns a dark mirror toward teen bullying—often ignored or enabled by adults, and a shameful global phenomenon.
At turns raw and piercing, dreamy and surreal, Kim’s latest import—urgently Anglophone-enabled by scholar/editor/Seoul-based translator Jeong—is a pressing indictment of today’s too-often onerous transition toward uncertain adulthood.
... the text is broken into short, sometimes-dreamlike sections that capture...teenage angst and moods ... A dark, dystopian view of South Korean adolescence, hopelessness, and the cruelties children are capable of inflicting on each other.
