Dull. A research paper masquerading as a novel (with references et. al.), "82년생 김지영" ("Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982") is a very interesting, fascinating, and probably, needed look on women's life in Korea, let down by poor prose and a pointless, non-existent story, that leaves you feeling you are reading a table of contents of all the horrible situations a woman can go through in the country.
Because it is difficult to say this book has a story.
It all goes around Kim Ji-young, a young, married, with a child, woman, who starts to behave in a strange way. But the story doesn't stop to analyze or see the development of her behavior, but jumps in time to the moment she was born to lecture us on Korean women's life in the country from the 80s (every chapter more or less a decade).
Now, this is a book of passion, with a relentless anger and the need to say a message (a message it is difficult to disagree with, the life of a woman in Korea, if you believe even like, 10%, of what Nam-joo is saying, being kind of like living under constant surveillance in a dystopian state). But is a book that loses itself in the anger, and ups being a lecture were the author just constantly hits you on the head with data and terrible after terrible situation for Kim Ji-young, all of those situations being to blame on selfish, self-centered, violent, sexist, dangerous men. Now, there are a couple of moments were you see that Nam-Joo knows (or feels) that the system, the structural and cultural violence, are as much or more to blame than the individuals, but she does little to develop that, just centering on specific casesin a, look, my example is the only example! kind of exposition.
If there were also some moments of positive analysis to some of the men's behavior, or, better, more analysis on the way many women also play into theses structures and cultures of sexism, the book would have been better. As it comes, it feels like the author is gloating in those situations.
But see, I am doing a review of a research paper. This is not a novel, is just a series of serious and terrible situations to make Kim Ji-young, and the reader, miserable. A book that ends up as a shout out for being individualist and selfish, and not thinking but for oneself and one's own needs (free time, things, money, me, me, me!).
The best: how it criticizes some behaviors, micro-attacks, comments and situations in a sexist society; the 'anger' that is needed to change things; the way it depicts the paranoia state in which our heroine lives
The worst: it is just a relentless attack in list mode, with zero balance and not very well developed; it reinforces some ideas of selfishness and individualism
Further reading: heck, just go and read research papers; for Korea my recommendation would be "Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations" by Katharine H.S. Moon; East Asia in general (or more global, even): "Postcolonial International Relations" (Lily H. M. Ling), "Nightwork" (Anne Allison), "The Modern Madame Butterfly" (Karen Ma) or "East Asian Sexualities: Modernity, Gender & New Sexual Cultures" (several), and the chapter about Korea in Enloe's "The Curious Feminist"
5.5/10
(Spanish translation by Joo Hasun)
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