In a small, tidy
apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim
Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old “millennial everywoman”, she has
recently left her white-collar desk job — in order to care for her newborn
daughter full-time — as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she
quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband,
parents and in-laws : Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other
women — alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges
deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male
psychiatrist.
A punch in the gut, that's what this short, quickly read novel was.
The style surprised me at first, it read almost like a non-fiction. The story was a matter of fact, acute depiction of Kim Jiyoung's life. It started showing us alarming signs of her sanity in contemporary life first then used flash-backs to tell us more about her past and how the situation evolved in the first place. This was absolutely ghastly. I was already aware of the situation of women in South Korea, but it's only recently that I fully realized the weight of society and family on women and its impact on their life, the choices they make. It's violent, there is no other word.
However, there was a part, when Kim Jiyoung was pregnant and heard about delivering babies, where and how, that reminded very much about my own personal past as a pregnant woman in contemporary France. How you heard, in books, on TV, about all the existing opportunities and how, in real life, it was for a small amount of individuals in a small amount of hospitals ; or how great it was to give birth at home, without medication and help, when in real life, maternity wards were closing one after the other due to lack of public fundings - which was the real reason why "natural birth" was so much "the buzz" at the time. Nowadays, you have to program your birth if you want it to happen in a hospital, just saying.
This reads easily, yet it's powerful and hard-hitting. I hope the situation of women there evolves soon - which is a sentence that feels hollow after reading this book...
Yeah I hope to read this one. It received quite a bit of recognition when it came out .... and perhaps all the women in S.Korea can start making changes within the country ... so it's not so horrible to women. That's my hope too ... from writers like this.
ReplyDeleteI heard so much about it I couldn't not read it and I hope novels like this help with the changes :)
DeleteSo few Korean novels become well-known, that a new one like this is very intriguing. However, you make it sound quite depressing!
ReplyDeletebe safe... mae at maefood.blogspot.com
I'm hearing more and more about Korean literature, even thrillers. I'm buying them for my library, anyway ! It is depressing, but the fact that it's been written and that we heard so much about is good ^^
DeleteI’ve got this on my kindle to read, it sounds like it’s going to leave an impression on me.
ReplyDeleteIt reads very quickly, but it delivers a hard punch, indeed.
DeleteOh my, I can tell this one would hit me hard to read, but is definitely a good one to raise awareness toward change.
ReplyDeleteThe style helps keep the harshness at a distance, but it affects the readers nonetheless - Korea needs change !
DeleteI need to read this. 👍🏻
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you will :)
DeleteI'm always interested in books about the real lives of women, whether they are nonfiction or fiction. This sounds like a good one.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good one, and all the more appalling that it's fairly recent history...
DeleteI haven't heard of this book, but it sounds like it's good and disturbing.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find most disturbing is that it's relatively recent history (for me !).
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