Narrow Rooms by Choi Sungmin. Translated by Janet Hong. Drawn & Quarterly, 2026. 9781770468528. 516pp.
This massive, beautifully colored manhwa centers around Daye, a young woman studying for art school college entrance exams in Seoul. She lives in a “one room,” a small efficiency apartment in a building full of them. Daye is quiet, talented, and obsessive. But the object of her obsession isn’t art; it’s the boy who lives next door. As she starts creating chances to meet him and then goes through his trash for clues about his life, the director at the school where she’s studying gets creepier and more determined in his pursuit of Daye. She continually turns him down and finds obvious ways to escape his presence, but this doesn’t stop some of the other young women at the school from spreading rumors about her and the director. (Those young ladies also have problems of their own.)
The story kept me riveted. It’s an example of what my South Korean students used to call “one-sided love,” when one person loves another so much but the object of their affection doesn’t seem to notice or care. (Daye’s neighbor has no clue.)
My favorite thing in the book: What Daye finds when she goes through her neighbor’s garbage. There’s nothing super strange, but I love the details like the text on trash bags and the images on Korean cigarette packs. It reminded me of when I lived in Busan, and it made me remember some small details of life there that I haven’t thought about in decades.
