When you visit this novel's page on Ridibooks, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of glowing — and sometimes quite unusual — reviews.  
I finally read the novel.

It's a long and rather unconventional story, and I don't think it will appeal to everyone. Personally, I feel like it's the kind of novel that's better read slowly and in moderation.  
What can I say? The author clearly loves writing, and it shows in the long descriptions of the people, places, and objects surrounding the characters. Not every description directly contributes to the plot, which I can imagine some readers finding tedious — and honestly, I can understand why.

The novel is filled with references to writers, musicians, music, books, artworks, and various other cultural and literary topics. For me personally, one of the most enjoyable parts was looking up some of the authors and paintings mentioned throughout the story.

Overall, there were several scenes that I genuinely loved, and I also found the ending — especially the proposal — very sweet.

I don't regret spending my time on this novel. Honestly, I learned quite a few things while reading it.

That said, I don't think I'll reread it.

Below, I'll share an incomplete list of some of the references that caught my attention — a kind of "Reading Trail" for anyone who might be interested.

**Writers & Authors**  
D.H. Lawrence — *Lady Chatterley's Lover*, *Sons and Lovers*, *The Rainbow*, *Women in Love*

Lord Byron — *Childe Harold's Pilgrimage*, *Don Juan*

Honoré de Balzac — *La Comédie humaine*, *Père Goriot*, *Eugénie Grandet*, *Lost Illusions*

Paul Celan — *Death Fugue* (Todesfuge); concept of "Flaschenpost" (message in a bottle)

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) — *Middlemarch*, *The Mill on the Floss*, *Silas Marner*, *Adam Bede*

William Shakespeare — Sonnet 58

Erich Maria Remarque — *A Time to Live and a Time to Die*, *All Quiet on the Western Front*

Kim Chun-su — *Flower* (꽃)

Manuel Puig — *Kiss of the Spider Woman*

Miguel de Unamuno — *Mist* (Niebla)

Stefan Zweig — *Beware of Pity* (Ungeduld des Herzens)

Jan Parandowski — *The Alchemy of the Word*

Milan Kundera — *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*

Samuel Johnson — *A Dictionary of the English Language*; biography by James Boswell, *The Life of Samuel Johnson*

Rudyard Kipling — *The Jungle Book*, *Kim*, *Just So Stories*, "If—", "The White Man's Burden"

E.M. Forster — *A Passage to India*, *Howards End*, *A Room with a View*, *Maurice*

Charles Baudelaire — *Flowers of Evil* (Les Fleurs du mal), *Paris Spleen*

Marcel Proust — *In Search of Lost Time* / *Swann's Way*

Oscar Wilde — *The Ballad of Reading Gaol*

F. Scott Fitzgerald & Zelda Fitzgerald — *The Great Gatsby*, *Save Me the Waltz*, *Tender Is the Night*

Fernando Pessoa — *The Book of Disquiet*; concept of heteronyms

Arthur Quiller-Couch — *On the Art of Writing* (origin of "kill your darlings")

**Artists**  
Henri Matisse — *The Dance*, *The Joy of Life*, *The Red Room*, *Woman with a Hat*, *The Snail*

Marc Chagall — *The Burning House*

Paul Gauguin — *Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?*, *The Yellow Christ*

**Philosophers & Thinkers**  
Theodor Adorno — *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, *Negative Dialectics*; concept of "culture industry"

Jean Calvin — *Institutes of the Christian Religion*; doctrine of predestination

Danica Seleskovic & Marianne Lederer — Interpretative Theory of Translation (ESIT), concept of "deverbalization"

**Terms & Concepts**  
Asceticism

Mise-en-scène

Phoneme

Syllable

Morpheme

Alexia

Saudade

Hedonism

Don Juan (as a literary archetype)

📌 Credits:  
Novel: Translation, Sentence, Love  
Author: Neuljae 

All artwork belongs to its respective copyright holders and is used under the principles of fair use for commentary and review. This post is intended for commentary, review, and recommendation purposes.

Translation, Sentence, Love | 번역, 문장, 사랑 — My Thoughts