Description "Don't worry. We're going all the way over there together." The voice that cheers on every weary commute — Jang Ryu-jin "Let's Go to the Moon" portrays the daily lives and friendship of three coworkers at Maron Confectionery: Jeong Da-hae, Kang Eun-sang, and Kim Ji-song. Da-hae works in the snack team of the brand department, Eun-sang (whom the others call "unnie") works in the purchasing team of management support, and Ji-song works in accounting. Though they differ in career path and age, they joined the company around the same time and went through orientation together, which led them to consider one another "batchmates." Spending most of their waking hours at the office, the three develop a bond that goes beyond mere coworkers, becoming women who share "joy, sorrow, laughter, anger, satisfaction, and utter bewilderment" (p. 30) together. As the novel notes, "they were able to grow close so quickly because they silently recognized each other as the same kind of people" (p. 103). Their performance reviews never rise above "average," they live in run-down monthly-rent apartments, and the only relief from workplace stress comes in the form of sweet desserts — and it is this shared sense that they alone are responsible for their own lives that draws them together. One day, Da-hae and Ji-song sense that the usually unflappable Eun-sang is bursting with excitement over something, and after pressing her, they discover she has been making a fortune investing in Ethereum, a form of cryptocurrency. Eun-sang tries to convince Da-hae and Ji-song to invest with her. Ji-song refuses outright, but Da-hae is shaken by Eun-sang's remark that "for people like us, this is the only way left." While apartment-hunting, Da-hae falls for a room she can't afford, and the desire to live there eventually leads her to break her savings account and start investing in crypto herself. Riding the same rollercoaster as Eun-sang, Da-hae experiences the wild ups and downs of the market together with her — all while Ji-song continues to look down on them. Then, during vacation season, the three take a trip together to Jeju Island, and while they're there, Ethereum's price skyrockets, pushing the number in Da-hae's digital wallet past 100 million won. Having tasted the thrill of a windfall, Da-hae and Eun-sang once again try to persuade Ji-song, and after much back and forth, Ji-song finally throws her entire savings into Ethereum as well. But after they return to Seoul, the price plummets without end, leaving Eun-sang wracked with guilt. "Cryptocurrency can't be held in your hand. It exists only as code. If I can never sell it again, I will have thrown my entire fortune into thin air. I'll have to start over again from zero" (p. 89). Will these three ever reach the "moon" of overnight fortune? "No one will ever be able to imitate Jang Ryu-jin." Laughter and tears dissected through the anatomy of everyday customs Jang Ryu-jin, whose 2018 Changbi New Writer's Award-winning debut story "The Joy and Sorrow of Work" caused such a stir upon its online release that the Changbi website's servers crashed from the flood of readers, has built a distinctive style through her signature realism and unique voice, and is one of the sharpest observers of contemporary Korean society writing today. Because she renders raw social reality with humor and narrative momentum, readers respond to her fiction with enthusiasm. Literary critic Han Yeong-in writes that Jang "achieves outstanding realism by embodying the physical and emotional rhythms of Korean people as literary custom," and that in this "anatomy of everyday customs," Jang "is currently forging an inimitable territory all her own" (Afterword, p. 349). Even after landing "decent" jobs, the three protagonists remain unable to escape their cramped studio apartments of "five, six, nine pyeong" (p. 105) — and their high-stakes gamble on cryptocurrency, undertaken in the face of this immobility, is both comic and devastating. Readers find themselves rooting for characters who have been "exhausted to the point of utter depletion" (p. 351), seeing their own reflections in the story. The characters' obsession with one big shot at reversing their fortunes mirrors our own reality, in which the paths to a better life feel vanishingly few. That's why the laughter Jang Ryu-jin offers always comes trailed by "a chilling undertone" (Jeong Se-rang, blurb). Novelist Jeong Se-rang recommended the book, writing: "Many will want to imitate Jang Ryu-jin, but no one will be able to. The novels Jang Ryu-jin writes can only be written by Jang Ryu-jin." Readers will come to understand the full weight of that endorsement as they read "Let's Go to the Moon." Meanwhile, "Let's Go to the Moon" was first serialized earlier this year on Changbi's new reading platform, Switch (Story With Changbi / switch.changbi.com). Switch is a web-based platform that serializes not only novels but poetry, essays, and other literary works, while also providing spaces for reading groups — blending the roles of literary journals, mook publications, book clubs, and webzines into one service. Advance sales of the special "Switch Edition" of "Let's Go to the Moon" for platform members began on the 5th and met with an explosive response, with the bundle including a subscription to the quarterly journal Changbi proving especially popular — satisfying readers hungry for new literature while proving the formidable talent of rising author Jang Ryu-jin.