Quotes
“A moving portrayal of the surprising nature, sudden sacrifices, and secret reveries of motherhood.” Elle
“The most moving and accomplished, and often startling, novel in translation I’ve read in many seasons. Every sentence is saturated in detail.” Wall Street Journal
“Intimate and hauntingly spare. A raw tribute.” New York Times Book Review
“The novel’s language, so formal in its simplicity, bestows a grace and solemnity.” Boston Globe
“Shin’s work often inhabits the space between story and reality…It’s no wonder that…The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness has the tenor of a ghost story.” NPR
“Isolation and suicide among young adults worldwide have only tragically multiplied, making The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness urgently auspicious…This book is essential reading.” Library Journal (starred review)
“Not only vividly evokes the political unrest and fraught city life in 1970s Seoul but also deftly explores the struggles of a writer attempting to come to terms with her past through her work.” Booklist
“There’s a hypnotic quality to this melancholy coming-of-age story…It melds Shin’s characteristic themes of politics, literature, and painful experience into a mysteriously compelling whole.” Kirkus Reviews
“Narrator Emily Woo Zeller establishes a mournful tone for an unusual coming-of-age story…Zeller embodies the somber mood of this period in Korean history through her precise pace and low pitch.” AudioFile