“Six were dead, and one was wounded that day. First were Mom and Granny,” marks the beginning of Sohn Won- pyung’s Almond. Sohn’s coming-of-age novel revolves around Yunjae, an orphan boy unable to identify or express emotions. Highly reminiscent of Albert Camus’ solemn, existentialist novel The Stranger, Almond provides a more optimistic, humorous take on reality through the life of a boy ever so detached from the social preconceptions entangled with emotions.

Garnering massive attention after world-renown K-pop group BTS’ members were seen reading the book in a reality show, sales for Almond skyrocketed, becoming the most checked-out book at public libraries in Korea last year as reported by the National Library of Korea. Almond has quickly become an international bestseller and has even received the Japanese Booksellers’ Award for the category of translated fiction novel. In doing so, Sohn has become the first non-Japanese Asian writer to win this award.

Written from Yunjae’s first-person perspective, Sohn puts a massive handicap on the book’s narrator through his alexithymia, making it difficult for him to feel and perceive emotions. Although one would assume moving readers’ sentiments through an unmovable narrator to be a tedious task, Sohn executes this via the unique style and specialty resulting from Yunjae’s condition.

Yunjae’s inability to express his feelings adds a surprising amount of detail and observation throughout his narration, serving as the grounds for readers to identify his sentiments on his behalf. His objective, visceral recognition of reality, while lacking any descriptive emotive words, can portray an accurate depiction of what he is expected to feel in certain situations. This is represented through Yunjae’s affection towards a female classmate where he details the minute physical features he observes in every encounter with his crush.

Ultimately Almond is a novel about emotions without the direct indication of them within Yunjae’s narration. This is extremely helpful for the reader – someone who does not share Yunjae’s troublesome past – to interpret Yunjae’s emotions more bluntly. Yunjae’s depictions of reality, which include anything and everything that comes to his mind, serve as a bridge between his mind and the readers’. In doing so, readers become all the more immersed in the mysterious yet straightforward way Yunjae’s internal mechanism functions.

Seeing how Yunjae can eventually navigate the normal world of emotions, Almond is a testament to how facts and actions precede emotions. In other words, Almond goes to show how the emotional dialogue people engage in every day is completely subjective and are figments of people’s artificial labeling. Nothing about identifying emotions is more natural than the raw emotion itself. This raw emotion is translated through Yunjae’s thoughts, focus, attention, and actions throughout the novel. In doing so, readers can also acknowledge how the mere identification and labeling of emotions play little contribution to how people communicate their emotions to each other in actuality.

Through such a distinctive and dramatic plot, Almond makes it so that the commonalities of Yunjae and the reader stand out within the novel. Furthermore, these similarities are delivered on a highly personal note. Yunjae’s inability to understand people who are unable to express their emotions directly, his difficulty digesting the complex feelings surrounding love, and his attention for the loved ones around him are all identifiable aspects of Yunjae’s personality that encourage readers to follow his story. What captivates the readers may be the unrelatable, extreme conditions that barricade Yunjae from living a normal life, but what keeps them invested is how Yunjae will resolve the questions they are experiencing.

The world of emotions is confusing and quite incomprehensible, to say the least. Navigating the web of emotional innuendos and internal complexities through the lens of the unmovable, Yunjae is not simply an intriguing thought experiment, but also a reflection on the readers’ relationship with their own emotions. Yunjae’s distinct outlook helps readers realize just how elementary feelings can be, and how, ultimately, it is through our actions and observation that we converse with one another. Yunjae may have been handicapped, but his handicap provided him with the leverage to take the world as it is – an ability any reader can benefit from acquiring

Book Information

Title: Almond

Author: Sohn Won-pyung

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Publication Year: 2020

Pages: 272