Counterattacks at Thirty by Won-Pyung Sohn (Almond) tells the story of a young South Korean intern unleashing her anger about social injustices. The novel lays bare the mundane but soul-crushing realities faced by millennials while providing a glimmer of hope for survival and change.
Kim Jihye is already 30 but has yet to land a permanent job in South Korea's capitalist landscape of huge conglomerate companies. She took an internship with the goal of eventually moving up the ladder, but she now understands how unlikely that will be and how corrupt the company leadership is. When Jihye's workload grows, her company hires another intern instead of promoting her to a permanent position. The new intern, Lee Gyuok, is hardworking and pleasant, and he threatens to slip past Jihye's defenses, which have kept her other co-workers at bay. Gyuok convinces Jihye and two others to join him in counterattacks: relatively harmless pranks on people like dishonest politicians and those who have wronged others. Jihye finds solidarity with the group and their small acts of rebellion, but she must eventually face her demons and decide if she wants to take control of her future and make real change for herself and society.
Jihye's evolving perspective and emotions come through vibrantly in Sohn's prose, which is depressed and matter-of-fact at the beginning and gorgeous and filled with metaphors by the end, so that when Jihye feels "a strange warmth spread through [her] chest," readers feel it, too. Bits of Jihye's psyche are revealed to readers as she explores them herself, and Sohn brilliantly portrays the despair sweeping across the globe as well as the beauty of believing that change is possible. --Dainy Bernstein, freelance reviewer