There are books that I enjoy because of their story, books that fascinate me because of the way they are written, and books that somehow manage to do both.
The Second Chance Convenience Store by Kim Ho-yeon is one of those books for me.
I was hooked almost from the beginning. As I read, I kept visualising the scenes as if I were watching one of my beloved Korean dramas set in Seoul: the characters appearing one after another, each with their own story, their own worries, their own solitude. I could almost see the little convenience store, the people coming and going, the neighbourhood around it.
And then, in Chapter Two, I realised that the author was doing something I particularly love.
We don't simply follow Dok-go, the mysterious homeless man at the centre of the story. We meet him through the eyes of the different people who encounter him, while at the same time discovering their stories. Sometimes we see the same events from different perspectives. Little by little, the separate pieces begin to form an intriguing web.
I loved it.
It made me an active reader, constantly connecting things, reconsidering what I had understood and trying to see how all these apparently separate lives fitted together.
And, of course, I wanted to know more about Dok-go.
A man who changes people's lives
Dok-go isn't an ordinary character. From the beginning, I felt there was something more to him, although I didn't immediately understand what it was. I warmed to him gradually, as did the people around him.
What makes him so special isn't that he is a superhero. He has no magical powers and he doesn't arrive in the neighbourhood with a ready-made solution to everybody's problems.
He listens.
He notices.
He understands.
He is empathetic and sensitive and somehow his presence makes people look at their own lives differently.
I found myself wondering whether, in our competitive, cynical and often selfish world, empathy might actually be a kind of superpower.
But Dok-go's story becomes much more interesting when we finally discover who he was before he became the man we have come to know.
The long final chapter, in which his past is revealed, was one of the things I appreciated most about the novel. By then I had come to care about him, so understanding his mistakes, his suffering and everything he had learnt from them made his transformation much more meaningful.
And the final pages brought all the different threads together in a way I found deeply moving and satisfying.
Seoul and the need for one another
There is another reason why this novel felt familiar to me.
While reading it, I kept thinking about Korean dramas I have watched, because The Second Chance Convenience Store explores something I have often found fascinating in stories set in Seoul: the coexistence of extreme individualism and a deep need for community.
Seoul is a huge, competitive city where people have little time for one another. The characters who gravitate towards the convenience store are often lonely in one way or another. Some are struggling financially, some with family problems, some with work, some simply with life.
And yet the little shop gradually becomes a place where people meet.
They talk.
They listen.
They help one another.
The person who makes this possible is not only Dok-go. Mrs Yeom, the owner of the store, is crucial. She is the first person to look beyond Dok-go's appearance and circumstances and simply treat him as a human being who deserves kindness.
That first act of trust sets something in motion.
Perhaps this is what the novel means by a second chance. It isn't necessarily about forgetting the past or becoming a completely different person.
Sometimes a second chance begins when someone else gives us the opportunity to become better than the person we have been.
Why I keep coming back to these stories
I finished the novel a few days ago, but I found myself talking about it with a friend today.
I was trying to explain why I am so fond of these kinds of stories, whether I find them in Korean novels, Korean dramas or Chinese dramas.
Perhaps it is because they make me think.
They offer a different recipe for life.
Not a complicated philosophical system, and not grand answers. The language can be remarkably simple, the situations apparently ordinary, the conversations very natural. And yet, somehow, the words reach exactly the right spot in my heart.
They make me care.
They make me think about the way people relate to one another.
And they often make me cry.
The Second Chance Convenience Store reminded me once again that a story doesn't need extraordinary heroes or spectacular events to be powerful. Sometimes all it needs is a group of ordinary people, a place where their lives happen to meet, and someone willing to look at another human being and see a person rather than a problem.
Perhaps that is what I loved most about this novel.
And perhaps that is why, once again, I found myself wishing that the book could become a Korean drama.
Because I would quite happily spend sixteen episodes—or forty—inside that little convenience store, watching those lives unfold.
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