Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

Oh, do I have some thoughts on this book. First off, I found this book after reading The Vegetarian, it was recommended to me by the website, and they indeed have common themes. One of the main ones is simply being a woman in South Korea. What a dreadful thing. How do Korean women survive? I am so enraged on their behalf, and mine too.

It has been so tough on Kim Jiyoung to simply exist. She never got any real support, only empty words of encouragement, ultimately being left to fend for herself, to just deal with it. And then she was criticised too for things out of her control. And isn't that something that keeps happening over and over again and we are all so painfully aware of it, but other than fake encouragement words nothing gets done? Ugh, I'm pissed off.

Every time I had the impression that not every woman's situation is the same and that not every man in the book is the same, I was absolutely crushed. They absolutely are the same, with no question. Even when there was a glimmer of hope and no matter how hard I tried to hang on to that hope, it just wasn't happening. I disliked that so much.

And I disliked the narrator, what a self-righteous prick.

Needless to say the book is amazing, it is so powerful, even more when you can actually relate to it, and I would say there is no excuse to not reading it, but also there is a really high chance that some of the readers will not fully get it and I don't know what's worse, not knowing or knowing but not taking any action. There's no win on this one.