My choice of this book has been influenced by “bookstagram”, having first seen it there and having been intrigued by the cover. In this case the judgement by the cover was successful! During this short read when I got through the 150 pages in just a couple of days, I was mesmerised by the writing. It felt otherworldly and weird, confusing and strange, yet extremely captivating, making you want to read on an on. While I just finished reading the book “Klara and the Sun” before this one, they felt like coming from two completely different worlds.

People sense that the photograph captures an uncanny moment in the interstices of reality, enhancing reality’s eeriness, the root of which is unknown, and fixing that moment in place like a death mask. […] What is photographed is a ghost moment, clothed in matter. Photography is the dream of comprehensive meaning.

p. 112-113

I really enjoyed the shifts between real-life descriptions, which were switched up with passages of atmospheric dream-like scenes. The author’s style enabled you to dive deep into vivid scenes and the words chosen instantly enveloped you into the story.

The very bus that had gone by a few moments earlier was now speeding along the overpass opposite them, and looked as if it were trying to reduce the night to ashes by swiftly circling a specific section of the city, like a carousel horse rotating on a fixed orbit.

p. 57

Parts of the book seemed like paintings that were coming to life. As if they were put together with multiple layers of oil pant, stacked one upon another on a canvas. It made you draw the parallel of how it could be something that came straight out of the artist’s Salvador Dali’s imagination.

Every time the city dwellers fell asleep their bodies became cruelly soaked in sweat, like tinder doused with lighter fluid. They burned without flames through the long hours of the night.

p. 16

One particularity about the writing became apparent from the very beginning on – how certain phrases and parallels within the story kept on coming back. This constantly made you wonder whether a dream or reality was being described. I ended up highlighting each of the recurring themes when they came up, trying to find a deeper meaning to them but in the end simply accepted them as a recurring part of the narrative. These ranged from a radio and disruptions within its static, blindness and the touch of the blind girl, the same appearance (the hairstyle and the starched outfit) and pockmarks on the face.

What I found extremely interesting about this book was an additional translator’s note on the last four pages. It described what it was like working with the same author multiple times, understanding their style, their particular choice of words and how to find the best translation for the title. I wish every translated book would come with such a commentary!

Like Bae’s others, this book is simultaneously a detective novel and a surreal, poetic fever dream. Inhabited both by abstract, mysterious characters who blur and overlap with one another, and by fleshy bodies, wrinkling, festering, leaking menstrual blood.

p. 154

The only reason why I reduced one star from the rating and settled on 4/5 ★ was because it was just too weird at times 😀 Nevertheless, I’d highly suggest “Untold Night and Day” to those who are interested in stories with an unusual style, who don’t mind feeling a bit confused while reading, as if you are supposed to solve some hidden riddle and to those who are curious about the feeling of a story being set in South Korea and the influence of that culture. I was glad to have discovered Bae Suah’s writing and will be looking forward to reading more of her novels!

★★★★☆ (4/5)

_{Edition: ISBN 978-1-787-33160-0
Jonathan Cape, 2020 (first published in 2013)}