Author: Kim Sagwa
Translated by: Jeong Sunhee
Publisher: Two Lines Press, 2020
Original title: 나b책
Link to online store *
Best friends b and Rang are all each other have. Their parents are absent, their teachers avert their eyes when they walk by. Everyone else in town acts like they live in Seoul even though it’s painfully obvious they don’t. When Rang begins to be bullied horribly by the boys in baseball hats, b fends them off. But one day Rang unintentionally tells the whole class about b’s dying sister and how her family is poor, and each of them finds herself desperately alone. The only place they can reclaim themselves, and perhaps each other, is beyond the part of town where lunatics live–the End.
In a piercing, heartbreaking, and astonishingly honest voice, Kim Sagwa’s b, Book, and Me walks the precipice between youth and adulthood, reminding us how perilous the edge can be.
LKL says:
A book of two halves: some poignant insights into the experience of young teenagers at school in a provincial town, but let down by a hard-to-grasp extended dream sequence.
LKL rating: 
. Read our review of this book here.
External links:
- Review by Paul Fulcher (PF rating:
). - Review by Tony Malone.
- Entry on Goodreads.com.
* Where the book is available from a number of sources, they are prioritised as follows: (1) Amazon UK site, or Bookshop.org for the more recent uploads (2) Amazon US site (3) Other sites in US or Europe, including second-hand outlets (4) LTI Korea, where the title is advertised as available from there (5) Onlines stores in Korea. Links to Bookshop.org and Amazon UK site contain an affiliate code which, should you make a purchase, gives a small commission to LKL at no additional cost to you.