Accustomed to an heir-and-spare dynamic with her elder sister, June, who got a full scholarship to Columbia and a hedge fund job, Jayne’s existential insecurity crystallizes upon learning the shocking news that June has cancer.

Jayne’s perfectionist streak combines with her hunger for acceptance and affirmation, feeding into obsessive, compulsive-and ultimately self-destructive-behaviors, including hookups and rituals of bulimia, all providing only the illusion of control.

382īe forewarned, as Choi herself warns, “ this story might be emotionally expensive for you.” While hints of Jayne’s personal struggles with bulimia and body dysmorphia are peppered throughout the novel, this part of her story’s crest is heavy and may be tough to read.A young woman struggles with body image, sexuality, identity issues, and her place in the world.Ĭollege student Jayne Baek majors in marketing at an unnamed New York City fashion school and strives to belong to in-crowds even as her first-person narrative voice delivers searing appraisals of artifice and curated personae contrived to attract attention and adoration. That there’s nothing June wouldn’t do for me. I highly recommend Yolk to readers who enjoy Literary Fiction with pithy dialogue or YA with a laser focus on personal character development. Choi’s latest release is poignant and personal, absurdly honest, raw, and individual in all its pent-up fury. Many books rely on highlighting the grotesque, the absurd, the sweeping– to make a point and reach the reader to elicit empathy. It’s particularly striking if you can in any way relate to Jayne’s love/hate relationship with the dilettante lifestyle she abhors (but seems to secretly envy). All while grappling with her illness, her sister’s illness, and their shared (but divergent) pasts.Ĭhoi expertly weaves surprisingly believable dialogue with the truths and eccentricities that comprise the real (and real uncomfortable) minutiae of her characters’ everyday lives. The narrative is the backdrop, but what we’re drawn to- what we’re watching- is Jayne’s character as she undergoes subtle yet immensely transformational change. Yolk is more about the people than the plot, and in that, Choi absolutely shines.

Yolk mary choi