Y/N by Esther Yi
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Y/N
by Esther Yi
Astra House 2023
Esther Li’s debut novel Y/N delves into the world of fandom via an unnamed narrator’s parasocial relationship with Moon, the youngest member of a mega-popular K-pop band.
The novel begins in Berlin where our 29-year old protagonist, a Korean-American copywriter, attends a K-pop concert at the behest of her besotted roommate. After months of dismissing her roommate’s obsession for the band, the concert is a turning point for the jaded, moody narrator. Watching Moon dance, observing the sinews of his neck and the way his pink silk shirt grazes the tips of his fingers, indoctrinates the narrator into a movement she previously mocked. After feeling his gravitational pull, she cannot resist the magnitude of his star power. She has seen the light and become a member of the congregation where Moon is not just pastor and priest but also God.
The narrator’s growing love for Moon is contrasted with her failing relationship with her in real life boyfriend, Matherson. Despite the narrator’s pleas, Matherson cannot see himself falling in love with her. He also, with equal parts condescension and indifference, finds her obsession with Moon alarming. He sends her a promotional pamphlet to sort out her problematic feelings with a therapist.
Dr. Fishwife, an expert from Los Angeles, provides support for people in love with celebrities who have no idea of their existence. When Dr. Fishwife admonishes the narrator for being a lazy fan, she is stunned and realizes he is right. This conversation sets her on a quest to Seoul to find and meet the newly retired entertainer.
In Seoul, the novel takes on an even more surreal, dream-like quality where characters speak past each other and our narrator is accosted on the street more than once. The whole city is enamored with the boys and Moon’s disappearance from the limelight has shaken fans. As the narrator interacts with other fans she finds their devotion disconcerting. Their devotion stands in contrast to hers as the narrator does not feel sexual desire for Moon. Her love for him supersedes any bodily desire. Rather, through her love she believes she will transcend.
The narrator’s love for Moon contrasts with the quirky characters within Moon’s fanclub whose obsession oscillates from benign to creepy. Even amongst fans, the narrator is incapable of finding community. She is a perpetual outsider as highlighted by her American-accented Korean. Through the range of desire highlighted in the text, Yi is tapping into the different facets and elements of celebrity worship and idolatry. Without organized religion and viables outlets for connection, one-sided parasocial relationships have become meaningful relationships for the disenfranchised, even if their disenfranchisement is negligible.
Yi lays out her sentences with cold precision for a stilted narrative imbued with minimalistic prose and self-aware irony. The narrative shines when Yi leans into the outrageous and humorous. For example, the boy band’s financier is a woman referred to as the Music Professor. This title is tongue in cheek for the Professor abhors higher education: “She considered it a clinic of castration for minds as well as the sexual organs; nowhere did you find dumber, unsexier people.”
The novel is frequently interjected with our narrator’s Y/N fanfiction. The Y/N stands for YOUR NAME. Readers are encouraged to insert their name into the story and play out an intimate relationship with the object of their affection. Though this genre of fanfiction is popular, I found myself disconnected from these scenes. It was hard to imagine why the narrator felt compelled to write Y/N other than the fact that she is capable of writing stronger prose than the other creators of Y/N fanfiction.
Unfortunately, our narrator is remarkably one note. As a wraith of a human, with box-dyed white hair and multiple illusions to fine lines, she fades on the paper. She is neither likable nor unlikeable. All we sense from her, as pointed out by a young woman who was unaware of Moon’s star power, is that our narrator is seeped in “oily dissatisfaction” with her life. Beyond her fondness for walking and writing, it is hard to know who she was before Moon, who she is during her infatuation with Moon, and who she will be in the future.
The novel acts as less of a critical critique of the culture and more of a mirror of our time. I found myself wishing Yi would raise the stakes and take us deeper into this world of obsession and self-destruction. Nevertheless, Y/N is a fast paced debut full of intriguing sentences and apt-observations steeped in humor. Fans of millennial fiction looking for a palette cleanser will gravitate towards this novel which takes us on a surreal journey of modern desire.
Kiran Gill is a writer from New England living in London.