Review: 'Y/N' by Esther Yi

Sometimes, especially when you're trying to resist it, a book, a film, a song, or a piece of art will just grip you by the neck and pin you to the wall, not letting go. And what may also happen in this situation, is that whoever is responsible for creating the beauty that has you in a grip will become all you care about. Welcome to the fandom experience, welcome to parasocial relationships. Even if you have some experience with this phenomena, however, you are not prepared for Y/N by Esther Yi, the weirdest book I have read in quite some time. Thanks to Astra and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My apologies for the delay!

Pub. Date: 3/21/2023
Publisher: Astra Publishing House

It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on livestreams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boyband, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic—in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star.

Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant, Y/N is a provocative literary debut about the universal longing for transcendence and the tragic struggle to assert one’s singular story amidst the amnesiac effects of globalization. Esther Yi’s prose unsettles the boundary between high and mass art, exploding our expectations of a novel about “identity” and offering in its place a sui generis picture of the loneliness that afflicts modern life.

We are well and truly in an age of parasocial relationships with people you'll never know, pared with a heavy sense of disconnect to the actual life around you. Not to wax to philosophical myself, although that very much fits Y/N, but I think we have reached a weird point in society where we have never been more connected and have never felt more disconnected. We have so much access to the lives of others, through social media especially but also through global news which make crises at the other side of the world feel like they're taking place next door. And yet all of this input leads many of us, myself included, to also kind of withdraw from the onslaught, which means that the actual connection and contact you can have with those around you, dissipates. And this can then lead to you actually feeling lonely while not being alone. So, it's a weird time, socially. How do you approach something so weirdly complex? Through an absolutely insane book, and that is what Y/N is. I don't think a different approach would have worked for the themes this book is working with, but it nonetheless makes this a difficult book.

Our narrator is dragged to a K-pop boyband concert by her housemate, very much against her will, only to fall utterly in love with Moon, one of the singers. What follows is hard to describe. Our narrator becomes obsessed with Moon, starts writing self-insert fanfic (hence the title Y/N for 'Your Name'), and flies to Korea to track him down. Our narrator is also a young Korean-American woman living in Germany, who, I feel, is desperately looking for meaning, complexity, something real, something shattering. Her lack of a name is symbolic of how empty she feels, I think, and to a certain extent this makes it hard to relate. But I don't think Esther Yi wants you to relate or find answers. She wants you to get lost in the labyrinth of life with her character, to get so lost in the word-sauce that nothing means anything and everything means something. You have to be solidly along for the ride with Y/N because Yi will expect you to follow or get left behind. 

I think this is Esther Yi's debut novel, which I find astounding because her voice feels so fully formed. Don't get me wrong, I sometimes had no idea what was going on in this book, but I never felt like Yi had lost the plot as well. Her writing feels very steady, even as the novel becomes more and more fantastical and absurd. The only thing I can compare it to is, to steal a line from H.G. Wells, a scientist gazing at creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. There is something clinical and detached about the writing, as if Yi is just as fascinated as we are about what is going on here, while at all times being in control of what is happening. But this approach does not lead to it feeling cold. Instead it feels like a fever dream, way too close to the skin. Esther Yi accomplishes all of that with a writing style that is incredibly dense, philosophical, and yet intentional. As you can perhaps tell from this review, I am very much in two minds about the book, always flipping back and forth. And I continue to think this may be the point. I can't wait to read something else by Esther Yi and I would wholeheartedly recommend this to readers willing to get lost.

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

Y/N is utterly absurd, but in a fascinating way. Esther Yi dives into themes that are current and ideas that are timeless, into the digital loneliness of the 21st century, and the lure of obsession and meaning.