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| Steady Sellers |
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Vol.6 Winter 2009
(Page 53) |
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A Gift from a Bird |
 By Kim Dongshik |
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Growing Up and Letting Go
A Gift from a Bird
Eun Hee-kyung, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 1995, 396p
ISBN 978-89-8571-276-7 |
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Eun Hee-kyung is one of the major forces
of contemporary Korean literature. Born in
1959, she graduated from the department
of Korean Literature at Sookmyung
Women’s University and the department
of Korean Literature at Yonsei University.
For some time after graduation, she worked
at publishing companies and magazines,
setting her literary dreams aside. She
made her literary debut in her mid-30s by
winning the literary contest held by The Dong-A Ilbo with her short story, “A Duet.”
That year, she went to stay at a Buddhist
temple called Anguk temple, and there she
finished her first full-length novel in two
months. She titled the novel A Gift from a Bird, after the poem by Jacques Prevert,
a French poet. A Gift from a Bird was
awarded the first Munhakdongne Novel
Award, and continues to be popular among
readers today, a decade since its original
publication.
A Gift from a Bird is a story that takes
place between 1969 and 1995. 1969 was
the year in which man landed on the
moon, with Apollo 11, for the first time in
the history of mankind; and in 1995, Korea
launched a satellite for the first time ever,
with Koreasat, a communications satellite.
A Gift from a Bird begins with a first person
narrator past her mid-30s, watching the
launch of Koreasat, and reminiscing about
the year 1969 when she was a 12-year old
girl. The girl is named Jinhee. Jinhee’s
mother committed suicide, and her father
is missing. As a result, she lives with her
maternal grandmother, uncle, and aunt, in
a small rural village.
The 12-year old Jinhee is stuck
somewhere in between. She isn’t yet an
adult, but she’s no longer a child. She lives
with her maternal grandmother’s family,
but without parents, she might as well be
an orphan. She states, “I stopped growing
when I was 12, because I understood that
the world wasn’t friendly towards me. I
knew everything there was to know, so
there was no longer a reason for me to
grow.” Her contradictory and cynical
personality imbues the work with a peculiar
feeling. Various characters with unique
personalities, including Jinhee’s aunt,
who is childish but innocent, Hong Giwung,
a tough guy who is also a hopeless
romantic, Jang-gun’s mother, who is quite
talkative, Mrs. Gwangjin Tera (the Japanese
pronunciation of the world “taylor”), a
sympathetic middle-aged woman, and Miss
Lee, a sensuous young woman, are depicted
through the eyes of the 12-year old Jinhee.
A Gift from a Bird vividly restores to
life the Korean society between the late
1960s and the early 1970s, the era just
prior to the sweeping modernization of
the country. What’s remarkable about this
novel, however, is that it goes beyond that.
The insights on life, scattered here and
there throughout the work, are enough
to captivate readers. The narrator notes,
“And that’s how life is, as well. Absurd,
trivial coincidences lead life along. So
don’t try to dig up meaning in everything.
Life is a joke.” This is a work remarkable
for its manifestation of the Nietzschesque
that leads life into a realm of frivolity and
pleasure, rather than one of oppression
and responsibility. As we read A Gift froma Bird, we come to reflect on life as we go
back and forth between tears and laughter.
And in that process, we are endowed with a
renewed passion for living.
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