Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 - Cho Nam-Joo

This book made a splash in my reading circle, and once in a while I do make the effort of reading their recommendations, (while at others silently observing and times just ignoring - i.e. spin offs and fan let). An added reason was that I had previously read 'The Vegetarian' ( a couple of years back), and Flashlight a couple of months back. This book, when it can relate, relates with The Vegetarian, and hardly with Flashlight (Flashlight is its own majestic animal).

Kim Jiyoung, has had an accumulation of  small injustices and injuries, some of which are negligible, others not, which had made an impact on her, making her unpredictable, troubled, with Dissociative identity disorder like symptoms, and awkward in front her in laws  for the husband. The behaviour is not explained, but only detailed. I read the behaviour as a symbolic representation of all pressures of many a South Korean woman of her generation, and hence Kim is representative of many women known to her. Where the book excels is the manner in which the fore-mentioned small "injuries" are told, and how even when challenges are  successfully won over by Kim and her class mates they still leave bad after taste in them. But the pressures never end. It continues her into her higher studies, her chances in the job market, when she is employed, and peaks after her motherhood. The book overall suggests it is an ongoing problem and has no closure as a cure for Kim, as the book has an open ending.

For me, while making a little more than average impression as art, carried a strong message of the South Korean society,  its treating of their women, and that of the wider society as a whole. The book carries almost an unhealthy amount of statistics to weave a work of fiction. I guess the trick was the book would have a positive impact through the awareness it imparts on society  (through a larger number reading it than a work of non-fiction). The book ends with a chapter dated 2016, in which the psychiatric specialist who attends Jiyoung reveals that even his doctor wife has had challenges simply because of her being a woman, throughout her life. It leaves us with the message that the problem is very real, but culturally the society is not sensitive to it as recent as 2016.

Rating: ***1/2
(Translated by Jamie Chang)