Y/N by Esther Yi

Y/N is a surreal novel about a woman who quickly descends into obsession with a K-pop idol and believes she is the only person who understands him. The narrator is a Korean-American woman who lives in Berlin and had no interest in K-pop or fandoms until she happens to go to a concert with her roommate, during which she discovers Moon, the youngest member of a globally famous boy band. She is immediately obsessed, writing fanfiction where you can insert Your/Name (Y/N), and then suddenly Moon leaves the band, and she ends up on a quest to South Korea to search for her obsession at the cost of everything else.

This book is a fascinating idea: turning the story of fandom and obsession into surreal literary fiction that questions identity, self, and what obsession and love really mean. Initially, it can be hard to pick out quite what it is going on, as the book is dreamy and disjointed, purposefully not really telling you that much about the narrator as she doesn’t feel any need to tell you much beyond her obsession, and once you start getting snippets of her self-insert fanfiction as well, which is even weirder, some people may find it too much. However, I really liked how you drifted through the prose, with a lack of control that feels like what she encounters as she feels like she must find Moon, that she is destined to know him because she’s the only person who understands.

The book also has some interesting commentary on the globalisation of K-pop and fandoms, in terms of languages, origins, and even authenticity of self and what that might mean in different places. This all links together with identity and loneliness, and the narrator’s strange connections with people as part of her quest to be closer to Moon, to find him and settle what she sees as a key part of herself. I imagine that a lot of people would expect quite a different style of book to be about fandom culture, maybe one that delved more into the specifics and commentary on fans, rather than more of a boundary-less journey into the surreal world of one woman, but it works effectively for me to question what people really use to give meaning to their lives and how hard it can be to express that, as the narrator struggles to really explain clearly what her obsession is about.

I enjoy this style of literary fiction and the subject matter brought a fresh angle to the book. It’s a short novel that’s easy to read in a couple of sittings and once you get into the style and the fact that you might not always know what is going on, there’s a lot to get out of it.