Grace Lea

An interesting novel on the hardships a family faces in 20th century Japan. However, I didn’t feel like I could really connect with the characters or the story because of the constant time skips. Most major events were followed by a time skip, which often made it difficult to care about the consequences of anyone’s actions. The flow of time felt inconsistent: years could be skipped over in mere sentences, but sometimes three days could take ten pages. Even the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was barely mentioned. I normally don’t mind heavy and depressing books, but nothing good seemed to ever happen. I feel like you need to see a character smile to really cry when they do. The characters felt more like ideas or outlines than real people. I never felt like I really knew, or wanted to know, most of them, even the protagonist. Also, I noticed that the use of words in Korean and Japanese was often more distracting than it should’ve been. I understand that most of the characters are multilingual, but in dialogue especially, these words felt out of place. For example (non-specific spoilers): ‘‘I’m four months pregnant?’ ‘Nani?’’ felt more comedic than anything else. At some points, I felt that Korean words were inserted for the sake of it rather than to ground the reader in the setting. For example: ‘‘Yes, go-saeng.’ Kyunghee nodded, repeating the word for suffering’. The clarification/definition seemed clumsy. I did enjoy how the story explored the roles of men and women in society, familial loyalty and love, and the themes of change and discrimination, and even some interesting ideas on what it means to be alive. But I could’ve gotten that from somewhere else. Overall, I have mixed feelings on the book. It’s not a waste of time, but it does take a bit of patience. Read it if you’re interested in history or if you enjoy long, slow-paced novels.