K-LIT REVIEW Sapphic love blooms in post-apocalyptic wasteland of 'Everything Happened at Once'
A copy of "Everything Happened at Once" by Choi Jin-young / Courtesy of Faye Leung
Would the world come to an end if a deadly virus spread through our modern metropolises? Would panic breed lawlessness, unwinding centuries of civilization and plunging even the most advanced nations into chaos?
Having come out the other end of the COVID-19 pandemic, we know the answers to these questions. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the young protagonists of Choi Jin-young’s novel “Everything Happened at Once,” translated into English by Soje.
In the book, pandemonium descends as an unknown and deadly virus sweeps across the world. With the death toll in Korea topping 100,000 in a single day, the nation crumbles in a cloud of confusion and fear. Laws, ethics and all the threads tying modern civilization together disintegrate as the primal drive for survival takes over. Crime skyrockets, violence becomes constant and once-peaceful neighborhoods fill with death and destruction.
When first publishing this book in Korea in 2017, Choi could never have imagined that a rapidly spreading pandemic just like the one she described would shock the world only a few years later. Coincidentally, the English translation by Soje was first published in 2021, when the real-world pandemic was in full swing, under the title “To the Warm Horizon.” This current edition is a new publication using the same translation under a different title.
In the book, three Korean families rocked by fresh loss make the decision to leave home and set off abroad, leaving crime, chaos and memories behind in search of a new beginning.
Dori and Joy are two sisters who lost both parents to the virus. Tough as nails, Dori, the older of the pair, vows to look after her kid sister no matter what it takes, not least because that was their parents’ dying wish.
Ryu, a mother of two who lost her daughter to the disease, keeps it together for her young son Haemin. Her husband Dan is convinced that, if they could just make it to Europe, they would find a new life for their weary family. Ryu, however, is less sanguine.
Jina is the daughter of a hard-hearted man who, after losing his parents, wife and siblings to the virus, silently directed his surviving relatives into two vans out of Korea. To him, the world was black and white — everyone outside the family was either disposable or a threat. Jina, however, recoils at this brutal coldness. The more dire their plight, the more desperate she becomes to hold on to what little goodness and compassion she has left.
All three groups make for Russia. The logic is simple: up in the North, land is plentiful, while people are not. Inevitably, their paths cross. In the barren cold where one misstep would lead to immediate annihilation, trust is a luxury that none can afford. Yet, when Jina discovers Dori and Joy cowering in the dark corner of an abandoned building, she pleads with her father to bring them along. Through the cracks of the pressure to survive, despite cold winds and even colder hearts, love buds, unexpected and unavoidable, between the two young women.
Sapphic literature is a rare gem in a country where same-sex marriage remains illegal, and attitudes toward the queer community remain fiercely divided. When asked why she chose to write about love between women, Choi explained that a novel putting a lesbian couple front and center had long been on her bucket list. She had previously written short stories with sapphic romances and featured the theme in an earlier novel, “The Never-Ending Song,” but had never been able to give this kind of love the center stage like she did in “Everything Happened at Once.”
Romantic love, especially between young people coming of age, is a theme that Choi excels in exploring and one that she has come back to again and again. “Hunger,” a slim novel about an unshakable and borderline obsessive love between two childhood friends, brought Choi international fame when it was published last year.
Choi’s knack for saying much with very little is a likely reason behind her popularity. Her prose is sparse and her world-building narrow. Like a spotlight that illuminates only her characters and their immediate surroundings, her writing hones the reader’s focus only on what is essential, fading the rest away. Concise and descriptive prose imparts just enough to deliver emotional resonance while leaving ample blank space for readers to fill in with their imagination. Each reading of Choi’s works is a unique exercise in immersion co-created by the mind’s eye.
Although Jina and Dori are the undeniable protagonists of “Everything Happened at Once,” the novel is told from multiple first-person points of view that extend beyond the young lovers. Choi’s full cast of characters is complex, imperfect and utterly mesmerizing. Through her signature narrative style, readers are privy to their inner worlds, accessing feelings, thoughts, hopes and anxieties that not only add weight to the characters but also richness to the story overall. This broad yet sharp focus on the worlds within overlays the desolation of a dystopian plot with vibrant hues of humanity, lending a short book of only 176 pages impressive depth.
Why choose to portray budding sapphic love against a backdrop that seems the least conducive to innocent romance? By sparking a flame that would not die no matter how coldly the winds blew, Choi takes a stand on the inevitability of this form of love. In a survival-first world where all but the strongest kinds of love fade away, Choi deliberately placed the sweet romantic feelings between two young women parallel to more broadly accepted types of love — a parent’s love for a child and a sister’s for a sibling. In doing so, “Everything Happened at Once” is an unambiguous statement on sapphic love, its resilience and its natural place in the heart.
"Everything Happened at Once" is available at dbbooks.co.kr.
Faye Leung runs @the_bibliocracy, an Instagram account dedicated to singling out reads for savoring. She regularly posts book reviews and recommendations, and has a particular fondness for Korean literature.