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.
