by Hannah Ryder
March 21, 2023
Hannah Ryder holds an MFA from Savannah College of Art & Design. Her writing and photography can be found in Great Lakes Review, Port City Review, Qua Literary and Fine Arts Magazine, and Tangled Locks Journal. She serves as an Associate Creative Nonfiction Editor at West Trade Review. Find more at hannahryder.com.
Y/N: A Novel by Esther Yi; Astra Publishing House; 224 pgs.; $26.00
Esther Yi’s debut novel, Y/N, introduces readers to the realm of nearly instant infatuation with a seemingly unattainable Korean pop star when an unnamed narrator who quickly gets entranced by a Korean-pop (K-pop) member, Moon. Yi propels the narrator’s intense need to find and connect with Moon with shrewd sentences that blend the simplicity of trying to find one’s purpose with the complexity of grappling with one’s identity. Love and obsession are at odds, placed against a backdrop of an intense K-pop fandom, a balance Yi strikes flawlessly.
Readers follow a nameless Korean American woman living in Germany who is feeling stagnant. After her roommate drags her to a nameless K-pop group’s concert, the narrator becomes immediately infatuated with Moon, one of the more popular members of the five-person group. It’s a complete awakening. In an attempt to connect deeper with Moon, the narrator turns to the internet and its droves of fanfiction in which fans write fictional stories starring the boy band. The narrator writes her own piece of fanfiction, which features pure obsession and unconditional love. While she enjoys this, meeting Moon in person is her ultimate goal. After dropping everything, she flies to Seoul, South Korea, the headquarters of the K-pop group, where the narrator is face-to-face with the object of her desire and the characters in her fanfiction come to a similar, devastating climax.
Yi’s inclusion of fanfiction is timely, as popular fanfiction sites are overflowing with stories of various topics and formats in which pop culture icons are reimagined in writing. Continuing with the anonymity of the narrator, Yi employs the popular format of “Your Name” fanfiction in which the reader inserts their own name when they see “Y/N.” This continues the idea of namelessness and blurry identity as the fanfiction is woven in with the narrator’s own journey. The fanfiction works as an inside look at the narrator’s dreams of being with Moon; a way for the reader to get deeper into the narrator’s obsession by placing their name in the fanfiction; and a different perspective of the narrator’s feelings about Moon and the possibility of their meeting.
The choice of the Y/N format asks the reader to remove some of their identity; the choices that Y/N makes in the fanfiction might not reflect the reader’s own. Suspending one’s own reality is key to reading Y/N fanfiction. Similarly, the narrator herself suspends reality in her search for Moon. “My aim, in fact, was to sink even deeper into the marshes of fantasy,” the narrator says. Fantasy and intense longing are reflected in the narrator’s fanfiction. The narrator writes that Y/N, “…loves what she cannot have; but she will die if she cannot have this thing that she loves not being able to have.”
Similarly, Moon’s identity is one shrouded in mystery. He only shows a part of himself to the world; Moon is not his real name and while it is kept secret from the world, the issues leading to his retirement from the group are entirely human. Secrecy and hidden identities are threads Yi tugs delicately enough to finally bring the narrator’s word to its knees: “I wish you were Moon,” the narrator tells him. Who Moon is outside of his career doesn’t seem to be of interest. Moon as a character is what the narrator cares the most about without realizing it; she is only in love with the idea of Moon. The sense of doom and emotional ruin builds and is known only to the reader; the narrator seems to know not of it. She’s focused wholly on Moon.
Yi suggests that the narrator could be anyone who feels a closeness to a famous personality, that anyone could be swept away by the idea that the person on stage or on screen is different than who they really are. Her love of Moon transcends what other fans might feel: “Together in our renunciation of reality, we would achieve what no fan and his star had ever achieved before: mutual universality, perfect love.” The line between obsession, love, and delusion is constantly blurred, and Yi’s balance of the three draws the reader in as they try to understand the narrator’s choices.
Love appears in many ways in the novel. Self, platonic, one-sided, and impossible love are woven within both stories. The narrator struggles with finding and feeling love; it isn’t until Moon that her life turns on its ear and she is introduced to what she believes is a love that transcends anything she has felt before. “I want you to know who I am,” the narrator tells Moon. “I want you to realize that I am nothing like the others.” This admission feeds into the erasure of everything but Moon; the narrator continues to believe she is different than other fans, fueling her delusion. However, the reader must question if they—and the narrator—really believe she is nothing like others.
Yi’s choice to make the narrator nameless functions to show an important part of identity. Yi does this through the main character and Moon. Moon is a stage name; the other members of the K-pop group are named after astronomical terms. We never learn Moon’s real name, suggesting he has also erased himself to become who he appears in the group. Through identity—or lack thereof—Yi suggests that celebrities’ adoring fans don’t always realize that the person they see on stage is only one part of who they are. This level of idealization of celebrities is not unheard of, but Yi emphasizes the impact of a parasocial relationship gone too far.
The narrator seems to lack the general idea that people are multifaceted. The secret Moon is hiding that caused him to step away from the band is human—this wrecks the narrator’s idea that Moon is flawless. The narrator says, “I’ve finally found him. But each time I had the thought, I felt differently about it: shrill excitement, billowing confusion, creeping discontent.” What the narrator had imagined is revealed to be not entirely truthful, a break in the fantasy.
Y/N focuses on the intricate and timely infatuation with celebrities and total self-erasure. Yi explores the culture of fanfiction and celebrity idolatry with an even hand and intense introspection. The narrator focuses on love and its power to reshape a person and invites the reader to dive into oblivion along with her. With Yi’s clean prose, it’s easy to see the slippery slope from fan to obsessive adorer at the expense of self.
©2023 West Trade Review
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A Blurred Line: A Deep Dive into Love, Identity, and K-pop in Esther Yi’s Y/N
FICTION REVIEW
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