• Written by Son Won-pyeong
• Genre: Fiction
• Published in March 2017
• 300 pages

Often in modern society it appears as though people are indifferent to other’s feelings. Emotional expression and sympathetic ability are becoming increasingly necessary. The book, 'Almond' is a reminder of our emotion-deficient society by telling the story of a boy who does not feel emotions. Yoon-jae, a 16-year old boy who is suffering from an inability to express his emotions, has a small amygdala, called in the book an 'Almond' which makes him feel neither anger nor fear. The people that he encounters in the book think it is strange that he does not have any emotions. One day, a tragic accident on his 16th birthday on Christmas Eve causes him to lose his grandmother and mother. Even in this situation, he does not feel any sad emotions. This book encourages us to think about how difficult it can be to understand other people’s feelings. After I read this book, I wondered why expressing emotions is important these days and arrived at two conclusions.
One conclusion is that if you have a problem, unless you tell it to people, they can not understand you. As a consequence, you might think you are alone, which can cause depression that is a serious psychological problem today.
The other reason is expressing your emotion means you know yourself well. So if you know what you feel, you can handle your situation in the best way.
But remember that we must not take it for granted that everyone can know and express one’s feelings. If there is someone who has a trouble with emotion like Yoon-jae, we must not criticize but encourage him or her.