YOLK

“I find that the more I hide, the more presentable I am to the world.”

I loved listening to the audio version of this poignant, clever and sharply affecting novel that focuses on Jayne, a young Korean-American student living in NYC, who is estranged from her more successful sister June - until June is diagnosed with cancer, and needs Jayne’s help to survive. As the sisters devise a scheme to get June the care she needs, it becomes evident that Jayne’s fragile emotional survival is also in jeopardy. Can they let go of the past and lean on each other in a desperate time? Or will the barriers Jayne has carefully constructed prevent her from getting close to anyone - even her ailing sister?

Yolk is one of those rare novels where the main character feels so real, it seems impossible she’s not an actual person. Jayne is not immediately lovable. She engages in selfish, vindictive and destructive behavior, mainly caused by the insecurity that writhes inside her like an internal organ, eating away at itself. But at the heart of the story is Jayne’s unflagging realness, as she learns that adulting requires her to truly care about someone else - and if she can do that, maybe she can learn to love herself, too. Yolk is also a fantastically detailed, de-glamorized immersion into real life in NYC, which Jayne wears like a badge of honor even when sleeping on someone else’s couch. By the end of the story, I wanted to hug Jayne - and to remind her that she matters, she is not invisible, and she is worthy of happiness.

Yolk has endless food, though the two dishes that stayed with me were June’s mapo tofu, and Jayne’s Shin Ramyun Black. The tofu and ramen in the story inspired this (milder) feast of stir fry tofu and miso garlicky butter ramen, all with an egg because: book title! Also, it’s a fact that almost all meals are best with a runny egg on top.

CW: Cancer, disordered eating