This started out as part of my mini reviews post (coming soon), but as I was writing, I realised that the review was getting too long for a mini review post, so I decided to make it a post in its own right! It also felt kind of fitting to start February with a post on a (nonfiction) book about love!
모든 순간이 너였다 – 하태완
Every Moment Was You by Taewoan Ha
2018 [EN: 2025] | NF: Illustrated Poem-Essay | Korea | 271 pages
Short mediations and reflections on being in a relationship and falling out of one, on moving on and finding happiness. Dotted with illustrations (see the Korean cover below for the vibe).
(Read the original review in Korean here).
Although I read this book in Korean, there is an English translation, so I will be including a translation of my review here. Please note that I can’t comment on the quality of the English translation specifically.
The pictures are pretty, but unlike some other illustrated poem-essay books, the illustrations are not particularly frequent – certainly not frequent enough to carry the book by themselves, and unfortunately, the rest of this book fell a bit flat. It didn’t offer any particularly new ideas or insights, nor did I find it particularly moving or touching.
In addition, the author’s views on love and my own don’t match up on many levels, so there were quite a few snippets that didn’t speak to me or really broke the general “love and loss and life” vibe the book was going for. Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since it’s always good to be exposed to different viewpoints, but they weren’t new or interesting viewpoints necessarily. Regardless, this is extremely subjective and so I’m not going to hold it up as one of the book’s shortcomings.
Far more significantly was the lack of any kind of structure or cohesive ordering of the poem-essays (I’m not even asking for compelling – just cohesive). Because of this, even if the snippets are all about the same few themes, they lack the weight to carry any significant message and left me feeling hurled forwards and backwards between repetitive ideas flung into random sections of the book. This meant there was little forward progression or building from one snippet to another – which would be fine if they weren’t also repetitive. Don’t get me wrong – the book is sectioned… except the poem-essays don’t actually seem to have been separated into the sections with intentionality so much as randomly sprinkled here and there.
I think if you’re someone with a lot of personal experiences of passionate love crumbling into heartbreak, or are someone for whom a little bit of jealousy is inherent to their experience of love, then this book might speak to you more, since you can insert your own experiences into the (lack of) narrative, allowing the poems to carry more weight. As I am not such a person, this book did very little for me.
I will admit that if you’re someone who regularly reads and significantly enjoys this type of book, you might like it more than I did. I’ve read multiple of this type of book, and whilst there are quite a few I liked, there haven’t been really any that I absolutely love. I would still say there are better ones out there than this, but especially if you’re looking to start reading them in English, then this might be a good place to begin since it’s already translated. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad example of the genre – it’s just not particularly good one either and didn’t speak to me personally.
On the other hand, the repetitive content showing up at random points is basically like spaced repetition and the language isn’t particularly difficult, so if you’re studying Korean and want a book to try and out that’s not too hard this could be a great option.
I keep referring to the texts in this book as poem-essays, and you might be slightly confused as to what that means exactly.
In Korean, they call them essays, but a lot of them are closer to what we might think of poetry in terms of form – although the language is more like an essay rather than a poem in that they’re comprised of quite straightforward, full sentences just broken up over multiple lines. Please see an example from the Korean of one of the more poem-like essays below for your reference! (Translation is my own (and very rough!) as I don’t own a copy of the English translation.)
My Person
When it comes to relationships,
the amount of time you’ve spent together isn’t that important.
Even someone you’ve only known for a couple of days,
if they’re the first to acknowledge your pain and hold out their hand
Then having that kind of person at your side
is what matters most.
Buy this book!
I am very passionate about supporting authors, libraries, independent bookshops and generally any bookshop that isn’t Amazon! Therefore, I will always try and make it as easy as possible to buy books from sources that aren’t Amazon by providing links. Bookshop.org UK links are affiliate links that help support indie bookshops as well as myself without affecting the price you pay. Delivery is UK-only, but US-based customers can also check out Bookshop.org US. All other links offer international shipping, but please also consider supporting your local bookshop or library!
English (Translation): Bookshop.org UK (ebook only) | Blackwell’s
Korean (Original): Aladin | Ridibooks (ebook)
Verdict
In conclusion, if you particularly like this genre of book, you can give this ago. Alternatively, if anything I said made you think “actually, that sounds like something I might like”, then you should also give it ago – things that don’t work for me might work for you!
I do think that if you read this as a dip-in-and-out book the lack of structure or arc might not bother you so much (and perhaps neither will the repetition).
Since I didn’t hate every minute of reading it and there isn’t anything problematic about it – I just didn’t really enjoy it – I wavered between 2.5 and 3 stars, since I’ve given a similar book 3 stars that had a similar issue with the structure and development. However, reflecting further, I think the content and illustrations of that book pulled it up to a 3 where it should really have been 2.5 according to my own star rating descriptions:
These books are usually similar to 3-star books, but they often have something slightly problematic or a fairly significant flaw in the writing/structure of the book.
The illustrations of this book might have been enough to boost it to a 3 star rating if there had been more of them, but alas, it is not so. So I ended up going with 2.5 in the end.
That’s all for now! Do keep an eye out for my January mini review and wrap up posts coming your way shortly!
Keira x
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