The Good Son in Around the World in 80 Books

May 17, 2018 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: f-ed-up, translation, suspense-thriller, 100-best-of-21st-c, oh-unlikeable-you, unreliable-narrator, audio, psych-psych-psych, korean

Don’t kid yourself. The person who stays alive is the winner.

Wow this was so fucked up, and I loved every minute of it, and I feel icky. Yu Jin is so incredibly unlikeable and yet his inner voice (and almost the entire novel is his inner voice) is so riveting.

As the book unfolds, I kept thinking "what more can happen? what else is left to be revealed? don't we know everything now?" But no, you do not know everything yet. Not all the reveals were shocking, some you can predict.

It was

Don’t kid yourself. The person who stays alive is the winner.

Wow this was so fucked up, and I loved every minute of it, and I feel icky. Yu Jin is so incredibly unlikeable and yet his inner voice (and almost the entire novel is his inner voice) is so riveting.

As the book unfolds, I kept thinking "what more can happen? what else is left to be revealed? don't we know everything now?" But no, you do not know everything yet. Not all the reveals were shocking, some you can predict.

It was clear what had happened, but the reason behind it all was still in hiding. The fucked-up truths I had managed to unearth so far were only the half of it.

Yu Jin joins the other literary sociopath greats such as Humbert Humbert, Charles Anthony Bruno, Thomas Ripley, and Joe Goldberg (I wonder if Kepnes's Joe inspired Jeong, or perhaps inspired the translator, Kim Chi-young, to add in some charming snarkiness). He is a sick, twisted fuck, disturbingly charismatic and brilliant. I was repulsed by him, I didn't like him, and yet I just couldn't help feeling bad for him and taking his side ... sometimes.

Yu Jin's iPod playlist is mentioned several times, and the music is described so often that I decided I wanted to listen to it while reading. I was not completely successful in finding all of it. This is all we know:
The first song on the playlist is "Mass" which involves "boom, boom, boom, boom, boom." (What song is this?? It's impossible to search for a song called "Mass" because all I get are Catholic masses and songs from Massachusetts.)
The fourth song is "Cry for the Moon" (a song by Epica)
The fifteenth song, 1 hour and 52 minutes into his playlist, is Vangelis's "Conquest of Paradise" (a mostly instrumental piece from the movie 1492)
I'd love to know what the rest of the songs on his playlist are!! I wonder if Jeong came up with a complete playlist, just for her reference.

I read that this story was inspired by a real life serial killer (with a real life playlist that included Vangelis's "Conquest"), so now I feel extra icky. ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 16, 2021 Pam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: crime-fiction, 2021-books-read, korea-south

AUTHOR Jeong, You-Jeong
TITLE The Good Son
DATE READ 01/16/21
RATING 5/A
FIRST SENTENCE The smell of blood woke me. It was intense, as though my whole body was inhaling it.
GENRE/ PUB DATE/FORMAT/LENGTH Crime Fiction/2016/library/309 pgs
SERIES/STAND-ALONE SA
CHALLENGE Good Reads 2020 Reading Goal 7/120
GROUP READ
TIME/PLACE 2015/South Korea
CHARACTERS Yu-Jin -- young man, recently accepted to law school
COMMENTS Loved it!!! What a character study … a tad slow to garner interest but the last 1/2 of t ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Nov 16, 2024 Tony rated it did not like it

Shelves: translated-fiction, crime, audio, novels, setting-asia

I'm always game for some translated genre fiction, and so picked up this Korean thriller with mild hopes for something interesting. It is not. The story opens with our 25-year-old obviously unreliable narrator covered in blood and no memory of what happened the night before. Did he kill his overbearing mother the night before? Where was his adoptive brother? Why is his Aunt calling over and over? This and other information is drip-dripped to the reader in tediously paced detail. Meanwhile, it's ...more

Like · see review

Mar 06, 2019 Rachel N. rated it really liked it

Shelves: thriller, read-in-2019, sociopath, dark, south-korea

Yu-Jin wakes up one morning smelling blood and unsure of what happened last night. He thinks he may have had another seizure. He soon finds his mothers murdered body lying in their apartment hallway. The book alternates between flashbacks to Yu-Jin's past and the events in the next three days following his discovery. The book has a slow build up. It is very dark and creepy. I don't think the comparisons to Stephen King is entirely accurate as Jeong deals with something that is all to real where ...more

Like · see review