Y/N
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 | |
| Author | Esther Yi |
|---|---|
| Audio read by | Greta Jung |
| Illustrator | Richard Oriolo (design) |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Absurdist fiction |
| Set in | Seoul |
| Publisher | Astra House |
Publication date | March 21, 2023 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | 9781662601538 (1st hardcover ed.) |
| OCLC | 1317841467 |
| 813.6 | |
| LC Class | PS3626 .14 Y6 2023 |
Y/N is a 2023 novel by Esther Yi about a Korean American author of self-insert fanfiction in Berlin who flies to Seoul to find the K-pop idol Moon, whom she is obsessed with, after he abruptly retires and disappears. This is Yi's debut novel, published on March 21, 2023, by Astra House.
In Berlin, the Korean American narrator works as a copywriter for a business selling canned artichoke hearts and has a boyfriend, Masterson, an academic. Her flatmate Vavra offers her a spare ticket to a concert of a K-pop boy band, and after attending, the narrator falls in love with the youngest member, Moon. She begins posting self-insert fanfiction of him online, and following his sudden retirement and disappearance, flies to Seoul to find him. In Seoul, shoe-factory worker O approaches her, surprised to find a stranger wearing soles she had created, and secretly enters the narrator into a lottery. The narrator wins a trip to Polygon Plaza, the headquarters of the boy band's company, and is driven to a gated compound outside the city, where she meets Moon.
Themes
The novel explores "the precarity of love, and how the modern self is forged less in community than in mass consumption."[1] Yi stated that practicality is a question throughout the novel. She also expressed that Y/N was not intended to be a criticism of K-pop or celebrity culture, but that she was curious about that form of worship.[2]
Kirkus Reviews said that Y/N uses pop music to make a larger argument about art and literature.[3]