Yunjae is born with alexithymia — a neurological condition that makes it difficult to recognise or express emotion — and grows up learning how to navigate a world that assumes empathy as default.

Rather than turning its premise into uplift or moral instruction, the novel stays deliberately plain. It observes how violence, friendship, care, and responsibility look when filtered through someone who experiences them without the usual emotional cues. It shows us that yes, being a person is difficult because the things that help us to survive together are actually learned and maintained. Most importantly in this novel, connection is learned, rehearsed, and sometimes improvised.

A beautiful read. Almond is one of the few books that looks at empathy realistically, and shows the fallout of failing a arbitrary standard, and it shows who gets punished when they can’t perform it on demand.