Review of My Son’s Girlfriend by Jung Mi-kyung

*My Son’s Girlfriend* by Jung Mi-kyung (2008). Published by Dalkey Archive Press.

There was, for a hot minute, a time where I was telling myself I wasn’t going to buy any more books. I was entering my third semester of graduate school and had landed a position where my tuition was now dirt cheap, which meant that I was going to have so much more money than I did before.

So what did I do? Told myself I was going to be responsible, but when I headed to New York City for the New York Film Festival, as I was covering it for film critic work at MovieWeb, I headed into the city the first night I was in town.

After stopping at the MoMA I decided to check out McNally Jackson for the first time to see what their Asian literature selection had to offer, and when I spotted they had some titles from the Library of Korean Literature, I told myself I would buy just two.

So that was how I ended up with a copy of My Son’s Girlfriend. I read it in my favorite boba shop in Midtown (Modern Tea Shop) while waiting for my Broadway show to start, then I wrapped it up on the subway rides to and from the city.

Here is my review!

Seven short stories set in contemporary Korea.

As my cute little header above mentions, there are seven short stories contained within this collection. There were a few I personally wasn’t all that crazy about, but I do feel that as a whole, these short stories could be read alone or within the context of a combined collection like this. If I wasn’t someone who would prefer to read things straight through, I think this was the kind of book that I should have savored and took my time with each short story.

The first short story in the collection is “I Love You,” which takes place in the summer of 2007. This is a story about a young couple trying to make it modern South Korea, and you can tell they’re deeply in love but kind of struggling with the circumstances of being young in this time. In order to succeed in this world, you have to offer something, even if means sacrificing another or your morals—that’s what we delve into in this story.

“The Bison” is our second story, and it was just okay. It’s about an artist, specifically a sculptor, getting caught inside of a love triangle while being married. The husband then dies after she decides to get a divorce, which sparks more feelings that will then reflect in her artwork. The next short story is “In the Wind,” and it deals more with infertility. It, too, was rather forgettable for me.

The next one is the one the collection is named after: “My Son’s Girlfriend.” It’s about a mother who’s watching her son fall in love and she worries that he will make the same mistakes that she once did. Following this story is “Cicada,” a story about a man who’s suffering from tinnitus and has to live in a city like Seoul.

Our final two stories are “Signal Red,” which the speaker has to figure out a relationship after the person has already died, and the final story is “Night, Be Divided.” This was my personal favorite in the collection—a filmmaker goes overseas to meet a new friend, who is a doctor trying to make a drug that forces people to fall in love. I really liked this short story and the commentary it provided!

Overall Thoughts

I am glad I read this collection, but, if I were to go back, I don’t think I would have purchased it for my personal collection. While I enjoyed some of the stories, I want to be more picky about what physical books I am inviting in my limited space, and I don’t think this is something I would return to often.

Some of the stories, as you might have noticed, are things that I really enjoyed, but others didn’t meet the standards of what I expected from a short story. I think others would enjoy them though for sure! I’m just picky about what I’m reading when it comes to short fiction.

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