Like a Beast / 9
Commentary on the work / 140
Author's Note / 158

An attempt to fully accept existence and approach relationships
“This is how we become a family.”

There have been some writers who have been called both poets and novelists, but most of them have been active in one direction or another at some point.
Lim Sol-ah, who debuted in the poetry section of the 2013 Joongang New Writer's Award and won the 2015 Munhakdongne University Novel Award, became a poet and novelist. She has since published the short story collections "Snow, People, and Snowmen" and "Saying It's Nothing," the full-length novel "The Best Life," and the poetry collections "Strange Weather and Good People" and "Get Packing," rising to the forefront of both poetry and novels, a rare feat in the literary world.


Lim Sol-ah's new work, "Like an Animal," which is connected by two links: the story of finding a runaway dog ​​and the conflict and reconciliation of sisters, can be seen as a prequel, spin-off, and sequel to the author's previous work, "The Best Life," which realistically depicts the life of a runaway teenager and a victim of school violence.


One day, my second cousin Chae-bin, who used to come visit us occasionally, was left at our house, and my mother told me that Chae-bin was not my cousin, but my real sister.
After my mother's unexpected confession, we became a family and couldn't open our hearts to each other.
Chae-bin, who has nowhere to go, continues to bring home animals and children she meets on the street. One day, her mother suddenly dies, and Chae-bin, who was with her mother until her last moments, leaves home without any explanation about her mother's death.
Left alone, I believe that “it is dangerous to grab someone else’s hand” (p. 74), and so I live a completely solitary life, unable to integrate into society.
Chae-bin and I, who appeared 10 years after my mother's death, live together again. It was my mother, not Chae-bin, who brought the abandoned animal into the house, and it was only then that I heard the story behind my mother's death from Chae-bin.
Chae-bin and I, who were raising a puppy named Byeolna and gradually opening up to each other, hear the news that Byeolna's mother, Yuna, has gone missing, and we go out to find Yuna, finally acknowledging and accepting each other for who we are.


What is important in 『Like a Beast』 is that it imagines the deep bond between women and animals outside of patriarchy and beyond the category of blood family.
(……) 『Like a Beast』 cuts across the recent interest in animals and makes us think about what it means to be responsible to others.
(……) is tied to the problem of understanding how the world works, who is acting, what is possible, and how worldly actors can live together in a less violent way while treating each other responsibly.
Like Beasts is a new novel that shows how animals are inscribed in fiction as kin, and a feminist exploration of the longing to live together in a responsible and less violent way.
Kim Ju-won (literary critic)

If the author's previous work, "The Best Life," depicted the process of moving forward with all one's might to avoid falling into the worst, this work goes so far as to discover "family" at the end of that lonely process.
The author does not impose excessive, forced emotions on this process, but rather expands the “Im Sol-ah Universe” which is “coolly clear and wide, dangerous yet calm,” and takes a meaningful step into the world.
It can be said to be a meaningful attempt to “approach a relationship that seems impossible” (Kim Da-sol).

The forty-seventh volume of "Pin Novels," published by the monthly magazine "Modern Literature"!

The "Modern Literature Pin Series" is a project that selects the most modern and cutting-edge writers of contemporary Korean literature, presents them in the monthly magazine "Modern Literature," and then publishes them in book form.
The single volumes presented here are individual works, but are also curated by six authors as a 'series'.
Modern literature hopes that the seriousness of this series will be ironically combined with the delicate lightness of the word 'pin'.
The "Modern Literature Pin Series Novel Selection" is published by the monthly magazine "Modern Literature" on the 25th of every other month, and is designed to allow readers to encounter new works by Korea's top writers on a set date.
This is a kind of 'salary book' concept that is being introduced for the first time in Korean publishing history.


Modern Literature × Artist Lee Yeon-mi

The "Modern Literature Pin Series" has become an original novel collection, an art anthology, reconstructed as a special work of art with a cover work imbued with the artist's soul.
The reason each novel possesses its own unique fragrance and profound artistic fascination is probably because of the spiritual harmony created by the meeting of the two worlds of novels and art.

Lee Yeon-mi
He graduated from the Department of Painting at Kookmin University's College of Fine Arts and the Department of Painting at the same university's graduate school.
Starting with a solo exhibition at the Tokyo Gallery, he has participated in solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, including at Gallery Hyundai, the Seoul Museum of Art, and the Shanghai Art Museum.
He is actively building his own garden, maximizing the gap between reality and fantasy, and creating a lyrical world of sculptures intertwined with rough-hewn trees and mysterious and unfamiliar flora and fauna.

Author's Note

I once lived with a beta fish.
I didn't give that beta a name because I thought it was too human.
It didn't matter to us whether we had a name or not.
If you want to talk to the betta, just go to the fish tank and look at it.

After Beta died, I started to feel awkward.
I often thought of you, missed you, and then strangely enough, I wanted to call your name.
Every time I realized that I had no name to call, I felt lost, like I was standing in front of a door without a handle.
But it was impossible to give a name after death.

Could it be that I did something wrong?
Sometimes I regretted not giving Beta a name, and sometimes I regretted that regret.
I wrote this novel with the thought that even this regret is a very human way.
While I was writing this novel, my dog ​​would fall asleep under the desk, licking my toes.

This novel is unfortunately full of human language, so only human animals will read it, but I will write down some words of gratitude and apology to non-human animals.