My Brilliant Life

About

Areum lives life to the fullest — vicariously, through the stories his parents tell him. Born with progeria, a condition that rapidly ages his body, he is sixteen years old and looks eighty. His time is running out, and he knows it. But rather than turn inward, Areum uses his remaining days to piece together his parents' love story — the history of how he came to exist and what his existence has meant to the two people who created him. Kim Ae-ran's novel finds joy in the most unlikely place: a story about a child dying young. Areum's voice is warm, curious, and startlingly free of self-pity. His investigation of his parents' past becomes a love letter to the family that shaped him — and a meditation on what it means to have a brilliant life even when it's a short one. A novel that refuses to treat brevity as tragedy — and proves that the measure of a life is not its length but the quality of its attention.