Lasting legacies in short story collection

By Chung Ah-young

A short story combines the creative personal expressions, imagination and artistic integrity of its authors into a concise narrative that quickly comes to the point. Short stories by the nation’s top authors, ranging from the late masters to young contemporaries, have been compiled into a single volume titled “A Giraffe’s Whispers in the Deep Night.”

The collection consists of 10 shorts stories by 10 authors who were selected by the seasonal magazine Literature of Literature, which has published short stories since it was first founded in 2007, and experts from major bookstores.

The stories are a rare composition embodying not only literary aesthetics but also popular factors that appeal to general readers.

Among others, “A Long Day in Menopause” by the late author Park Wan-sue, who died on Jan. 22, vividly shines amongst her lasting literary legacy. It is one of Park’s three last works, which reflect on modern-day family values and the materialistic society with highly literary aesthetics.

The story realistically portrays an aging woman who struggles with “life changes” accompanying menopause, through delicate psychological insights that reveal diverse feminine perspectives.

The middle-aged female protagonist is stuck in a conventional family conflict between her typical and traditional mother-in-law and modern, sassy daughter-in-law.

Her husband doesn’t understand her complicated situation at all and she seems to have no one to turn to. She faces the power struggle with her clever and authoritative mother-in-law and at the same coordinates the tension between her son and daughter-in-law, who are about to divorce.

There are no big, dramatic happenings between the characters but the tension between them is effectively expressed through the protagonist’s narration and anecdotes in crafted and textured words.

Park’s literary language seems to be young and dynamic, but also eloquent, which reflects realistic and sophisticated observations in human beings mixed with the wisdom of age that pierces through each and every sentence.

The writer portrays her moral vision which lies in the family structure with her trenchant critique of modern society and its mores through the protagonist’s narrative of her everyday life. The story demonstrates her sharp intelligence and clear understanding of human interconnectedness.

Also introduced in the collection is “Strange Gift,” by Lee Cheong-jun, the late novelist who is renowned for “Your Heaven” and “Seopyeonje.” The story, which was posted for the magazine, is the last piece he wrote before he passed away in 2008.

As he usually does, his story begins with a long prelude before addressing a full-scale narrative.

During the Korean War (1950-53), Hwang Gi-tae is just an ordinary public servant, but is deemed a successful figure in his hometown. He is given an ink stone, which was used in his schoolhouse, as a gift and also a token for success in the village.

But the ink stone goes missing during the war and what he received from the villagers is actually a whetstone. The story reveals Gi-tae’s naive character in mistaking the whetstone for the ink stone — that he preciously keeps up to the mythical ending.

The author meshes the simple story with his fluent and folksy words and turns it into a folktale of the Korean War.

The book’s namesake story “A Giraffe’s Whispers in the Deep Night” by Kim Yeon-su is a true storytelling of our time, told through the hopes and despairs of a family.

The tale begins with children who recall their memory of when they went to a zoo with their parents but realized that the latter brought them there to abandon them.

Tae-ho is an autistic boy who closes his mind to the outside world and only opens to a giraffe he saw in the zoo. He has a blind puppy and he names it “giraffe.” Both having trouble in connecting with the world, Tae-ho communicates with his puppy.

Meanwhile, his mother struggles to overcome the difficulty of raising the autistic child and tries to write poems as an outlet from her harsh reality and gradually finds hope in pursuing her dream of a writing career.

The story traces realistic hopes — through the perspective of children — to restore harmony and love among family members.

Also, short stories by other authors including Choi Il-nam, Yoon Hu-myung, Lee Seung-woo, Kwon Ji-ye, Lee Na-mi, Cho Kyung-ran and Lee Myung-rang are included.