Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah

“Objects, matter itself, were softly disintegrating. All identity became ambiguous, semi-opaque.”

As the fickle creature that I am what drew me to Untold Night and Day was its cover. The first few pages intrigued me as they focus on Kim Ayami a former actor who now works at an audio theatre for the blind. The narrative that follows is rather metaphysical in nature, most of the discussions that occur within these pages are abstract and or relating to sensory experience, with, as the title suggests, special attention paid to night and day, darkness and lightness. This slim tome repeatedly obfuscates the line between dreams and reality, so that everything we read of is tinged by an air of surreality. At one point we read of a character who seems to be stalking Ayami before returning to her and a foreign poet nicknamed Wolfi. The novel was certainly disorienting, and in that, it evokes one of the story’s earlier episodes when Ayami meets with ‘the director’ in an exclusive ‘blackout restaurant’. We can’t really discern a story nor do we become familiar with the characters, and familiar settings and conversations are made unfamiliar. Alas, the discussion they have about art, poetry, performance, life, did not strike me as particularly profound or clever, in fact, they expressed rather tired ideas.
I can safely say that I did not get this novel. While I usually like surrealist narratives but here…well, I just did not care. If you are looking for an experimental read and you have a higher tolerance for novels that are confusing for the sake of being confusing, well, you should give this one a try.

my rating: ★★☆☆☆

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