BookBrowse Reviews Tailbone by Che Yeun

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A breathtaking coming-of-age novel set in South Korea against the backdrop of the 2008 global financial crisis.

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Che Yeun's marvelous debut novel, Tailbone, opens in the late summer of 2008 in Seoul, South Korea. One night, the book's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist packs a single bag and runs away from home. She leaves no note for her parents, has no plan and only a few won to get by on; she wants a "better life" than the one she has with her parents, even though she hasn't defined what that means and doesn't know how she'll achieve her goal. She rents a cheap room in a women's boarding house in a rundown part of town, and quickly realizes the other tenants are sex workers. One of these, Juju, takes our narrator under her wing, buying her food and other amenities and teaching her how to survive without having to turn to prostitution. A bond develops between the two, which deepens as a new financial crisis hits Seoul in October 2008 (see Beyond the Book) and as Juju's wealthy client becomes violent when his net worth plummets.

This coming-of-age tale unfolds in the first person as the narrator embarks on a journey of survival and self-discovery. From the start, the language is beautiful but bleak, bordering on violent. In one instance she thinks:

"Summer would be over soon. Just a few more weeks of starved mosquitoes and the red specks of their mushed bodies on my walls and pillows. Then autumn would come and the sky would turn as cold as the river."

Later, she adds:

"The last few days of summer. Of earthworms emerging to wriggle and mate on slick wet soil, only to get crushed under shoes and tires."

These sentences, and others like them, occur in the first twenty pages of the book, and they provide a good feel for its overall tone; this will not be a happy story. It's filled with dead ends and disappointments as the narrator seeks to shape her life into an ill-defined version of success.

And yet, it's precisely Yeun's harsh descriptions that make the book so remarkable. The author doesn't sugarcoat her characters' lives; the novel is a raw, stark portrayal of women at the bottom rung of South Korean society. The narrator's clear-eyed observations of those around her are stunning ("Despite her tidy room and her bundles of cash, despite her puffed-up words about leaving and getting her shit together, deep down she was just as weak and lonely and sloppy as me"). There's an intensity to Yeun's prose one doesn't often find, and I was rapt from start to finish.

The author's characterizations are also brilliant. The narrator comes across as incredibly believable, the perfect illustration of a teenage girl. Her thoughtlessness, her disregard for consequences, her acting without a plan—these qualities ring true. And Juju is the perfectly crafted tragic character, almost like the ill-fated heroine of an opera. She yearns for a better life, although one senses she knows it's something she'll never attain, a mere fantasy. At one point she tells the narrator:

"[E]very autumn I say, this is my last winter. This is the last cold degrading winter of my life. Every time I pick out a coat, it's the last coat I'm buying for myself. Because by next year I'll have some way to buy everything I need, a different coat every week, every day if I want, for the rest of my life. And I'll have someone who loves me and I love them…"

The plot is largely character-driven, and there's not much momentum to it; for the most part, our narrator just drifts through life, observing, not acting. She also spends a lot of time contemplating what she should do next—she knows she can't just hang out forever—but any small steps she takes toward progress are thwarted, leaving her stuck in place. One might expect such a low-action book to feel slow, but Yeun's writing is so exquisite and her characters so perfect that the pages fly by.

The author does offer a glimmer of hope at the story's conclusion. While readers sense Juju will remain trapped in her current circumstances, our narrator may have a way forward. She has learned resilience and self-reliance, and it's that small promise of a better future that keeps both the protagonist and her audience from despair.

Tailbone is certainly an emotionally challenging story, but it's nonetheless one of those rare, unforgettable novels that is not to be missed. Yeun's beautiful writing and extraordinary characterizations make this one a must-read.

This review first ran in the April 22, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.