Book Introduction

Novelist Kim Ae-ran has returned with a new collection of short stories after eight years since 『The Outside is Summer』. Featuring the acclaimed story “Home Party,” which won the 2022 Kim Seung-ok Literary Award for Excellence, and “Good Neighbor,” a winner of the 2022 Oh Yeong-soo Literary Award, the collection titled 『I Said Goodbye』 includes a total of seven short stories. It showcases Kim Ae-ran's powerful emotional appeal and dilemma-based questions, while also presenting a slightly cooler and more ruthless side of her than before.

The main protagonist of this short story collection can be said to be ‘space.’ As expressed in the story, “Many events in plays begin with ‘invitation’ and ‘visit,’ ‘intrusion’ and ‘escape’” (from “Home Party,” page 42), the narratives unfold as characters visit someone else's space. It could be an elegant and stable space that hints at the homeowner's aesthetics and leisure (from “Home Party”), or a foreign detached house that makes a month-long trip, a “luxury enjoyed for the first time in life,” possible thanks to cheap prices and low accommodation costs (from “The Little House in the Forest”). Alternatively, it might be a rented house that has been lovingly maintained but now needs to be prepared for a new tenant (from “Good Neighbor”), or a bookstore that has opened by spending all the accumulated money after quitting a job (from “Lemon Cake”).

The importance of space in 『I Said Goodbye』 lies in the fact that it functions not merely as a background for the story but embodies the characters' lives themselves. Particularly for Kim Ae-ran, who has skillfully depicted the significance of a ‘one-room’ space in our society, some spaces serve as indicators of someone's economic and social status, and are also comprehensive and complex locations that contain the nuances of an individual's history. Therefore, the conflicts surrounding space in this collection can be seen as a confrontation of the standards of each other's lives. Entering someone else's space is, in other words, an event that transcends the boundaries of a life lived as ‘me.’