No-One Writes Back

 

No One Writes Back / Jan Eun-Jin
translated from the Korean by Jung Yewon
Funks Grove, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2013, c2009.
203 p.

This isn't an epistolary novel, but it does revolve around letters, both the writing and sending of them, and it also involves travelling. 

I first saw it mentioned by someone during a Women in Translation month. I found it in my library's online collection so decided to read it, and I'm so glad I did. It's a thoughtful and reflective read, with a lot to discover. 

Jihun left his home 3 years prior to the opening of the story; he brought along an MP3 player and his blind dog, Wajo. They've been travelling ever since, and as they go, Jihun lets chance lead him. If on any day he gets into conversation with a stranger, one who is willing to give him their address, he'll mentally assign them a number, and write them a letter. And each day as he leaves the random motel he's chosen for the night, he finds a payphone and calls his friend at home, who has agreed to check in and see if anyone has written back. If just one person writes, he will go home. But the title alerts us: no one writes back. 

We enter Jihun's story near the end of it -- one morning as he heads out with Wajo, a woman selling her book as a street vendor follows him. She sticks to him like a limpet and though mostly unwilling, Jihun ends up with a new travelling companion. She's number 751, and as it turns out, the last number he has to memorize. Her liveliness and engagement with life and the people around them drags him from his remote world of numbers into one of emotion and feeling. When they escape a crisis at a hostel, and then Jihun realizes that Wajo is getting old and sick, he comes to understand that it's time to head home. 

In the final pages of the book, we discover why Jihun left home in the first place, and why no one wrote back. And those final pages turn the whole story on its head and deliver a shock that should affect every reader. It's so powerful, and seems unavoidable once you know the whole story; it makes you go back and reread earlier bits in the light of what you've just read. It's beautiful, and melancholic, and so worth reading. This was an unexpected story, different from what I thought I was getting, and I highly recommend it. 

'Life is bearable when you have someone to write, and someone who writes you back. Even if it's just one person.'