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macknificent's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, War, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Misogyny, and Racial slurs
Moderate: Addiction, Classism, Drug abuse, Infertility, Infidelity, Police brutality, Suicide, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Animal death, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, and Violence
goldencages's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.5
Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. A well-researched novel documenting the time between 1917-1945, covering the Japanese colonisation and occupation of South & North Korea, but in the end felt a bit lacking in narrative clarity.
tw: rape, sexual assault, general colonialism and wartime atrocities, racism, toxic masculinity
Beasts of a Little Land opens up with an intriguing introduction to Northern Korea in 1917, when "wild beasts" such as tiger, leopards and moon bears were still roaming the forests & mountains of the country. Present in the country already were also the Japanese colonisers. As we follow a starved Korean hunter in the dead of a wintry, stormy night, he comes across a group of Japanese soldiers, burning to get their hands on the prized furs of these native animals. However, at a crucial moment, it is rather the Korean hunter who saves them from a near-fatal tiger attack, miraculously convincing the animal to walk away. It is an that encounter doesn't set in motion the whole story, but will shape the fate of several characters later on.
At the heart of Beasts of a Little Land are two people: Jung Ho, the impoverished son of the former huntsman, and Jade, a girl from the Northern Korean countryside sold by her family to be a courtesan's apprentice. Over the years we follow the two and a set of other recurring characters - wealthy landowners and artists, Japanese military officials, their mentors and their friends from street gangs and the entertainment scene alike, all in front of a surging independence movement, foreign political presence in the country, and later on wartime, hunger and political persecution.
However, the intriguing start that references Korean folklore with tigers and leopards and bears woefully only stays that - a start. I was hoping for the story to be enfused with more folk tales but in fact, just as quickly as these wild animals were hunted by the Japanese and went extinct, they disappeared from the story. It may just serve as a symbol that we humans behave more like the wild beasts we describe these big animals as, and they instead display more of our self-ascribed humanity (such as when the tiger at the beginning walked away instead of attacking). This is underlined by several references to the zoo in Seoul where humans have kept and displayed "ferocious" beasts as museum exhibits.
The characters we meet are certainly not heroes: they come from all sorts of classes, and can be kind and generous but also insecure, angry, entitled and arrogant. What stayed with me the most from this book is a passage in which a character reflects that life is not a gentleman's straight road that you can conquer step by step but rather a wheel, that you try your damnest to keep spinning while also hoping not to be crushed under it.
Following that cynical perspective, it's easy to see that back in those times, idealism or morals only serves one so much. Being a courtesan - while morally society-wide looked down upon - brings one more financial stability than being a hard-working farmer, unarmed resistance leads only to too many lives lost over nothing, and why be politically active and exhaust yourself, when you may as well suck up to those in power?
To survive, to take their fate into their own hands, and to protect those they love, the characters in Beasts of a Little Land often walk a moral grey line, and act selfishly, betraying, rejecting or disappointing each other. Kindness is a luxury, and it's difficult to always walk "the right path". However, this certainly doesn't excuse any questionable deeds, and so the consequences of their actions often do catch up in one way or another to the books' protagonists in the end. The repeated apperacnes of such fateful moments are a tool that Juhea Kim expertly uses to give her characters more depth and layers.
On that note, I want to compliment Kim's writing that is rich, vivid and easy to read. She describes with incredible detail the life of 1910s rural Korea and the interwar, war and post-war-time in the country, the training of Korean courtesans, the entertainment circle in Seoul, life under Japanese imperialism and the sluggish progress of the Independence movement. Reading the book, it is clear that Kim put lots of effort into the research which was reflected in the props and settings described, in the opinions and routines of the characters, and in the dialogues between them that reminded me of the fact that colonistion is truly gaslighting at its worst.
However, in trying to expertly sustain such a big time span and driving the narrative continuously forward to match the events of a specific time period, Beasts of a Little Land also reveals its weaknesses. Many of the "smaller plotlines" - e.g. the unrequited romances that took up a big part of the book - felt aimless. I kept reading and wondering "where does she want to go with this?" or "what's the purpose of this?". In the end, I asked myself wheter the ties between the characters were really only there to tie the POVs together, instead of being of some narrative merit. In my opinion, this book could have done well without the romances.
I particularly think so too because the time period was one where women were simply seen lesser as men and the latter often felt entitled and posessive over the former. While characterising the male protagonists this way is true to the time, it also did not really endear me to any of the main male romantic interests with their toxic masculinity issues (or any of the men, for that reason). By comparison, the women were in spades more interesting than them (especially the two "courtesan mentors" Dani & Silver, as well as Silver's daughter Luna) and I wished we had gotten to see so much more of them, but also of Jade herself, without the bits of her trying to held one man at bay while yearning for another.
All in all, Beasts of a Little Land had a clear overall narrative in documenting the political and social landscape of Korea from the 1910s to the 1940s but suffered from meandering, and somewhat aimlessly connected sub-narratives. It was however an enjoyable enough read as Juhea Kim offers a very accessible writing style and a rich and detailed insight into a tumultous yet important time period of Korea's history.
tw: rape, sexual assault, general colonialism and wartime atrocities, racism, toxic masculinity
Beasts of a Little Land opens up with an intriguing introduction to Northern Korea in 1917, when "wild beasts" such as tiger, leopards and moon bears were still roaming the forests & mountains of the country. Present in the country already were also the Japanese colonisers. As we follow a starved Korean hunter in the dead of a wintry, stormy night, he comes across a group of Japanese soldiers, burning to get their hands on the prized furs of these native animals. However, at a crucial moment, it is rather the Korean hunter who saves them from a near-fatal tiger attack, miraculously convincing the animal to walk away. It is an that encounter doesn't set in motion the whole story, but will shape the fate of several characters later on.
At the heart of Beasts of a Little Land are two people: Jung Ho, the impoverished son of the former huntsman, and Jade, a girl from the Northern Korean countryside sold by her family to be a courtesan's apprentice. Over the years we follow the two and a set of other recurring characters - wealthy landowners and artists, Japanese military officials, their mentors and their friends from street gangs and the entertainment scene alike, all in front of a surging independence movement, foreign political presence in the country, and later on wartime, hunger and political persecution.
However, the intriguing start that references Korean folklore with tigers and leopards and bears woefully only stays that - a start. I was hoping for the story to be enfused with more folk tales but in fact, just as quickly as these wild animals were hunted by the Japanese and went extinct, they disappeared from the story. It may just serve as a symbol that we humans behave more like the wild beasts we describe these big animals as, and they instead display more of our self-ascribed humanity (such as when the tiger at the beginning walked away instead of attacking). This is underlined by several references to the zoo in Seoul where humans have kept and displayed "ferocious" beasts as museum exhibits.
The characters we meet are certainly not heroes: they come from all sorts of classes, and can be kind and generous but also insecure, angry, entitled and arrogant. What stayed with me the most from this book is a passage in which a character reflects that life is not a gentleman's straight road that you can conquer step by step but rather a wheel, that you try your damnest to keep spinning while also hoping not to be crushed under it.
Following that cynical perspective, it's easy to see that back in those times, idealism or morals only serves one so much. Being a courtesan - while morally society-wide looked down upon - brings one more financial stability than being a hard-working farmer, unarmed resistance leads only to too many lives lost over nothing, and why be politically active and exhaust yourself, when you may as well suck up to those in power?
To survive, to take their fate into their own hands, and to protect those they love, the characters in Beasts of a Little Land often walk a moral grey line, and act selfishly, betraying, rejecting or disappointing each other. Kindness is a luxury, and it's difficult to always walk "the right path". However, this certainly doesn't excuse any questionable deeds, and so the consequences of their actions often do catch up in one way or another to the books' protagonists in the end. The repeated apperacnes of such fateful moments are a tool that Juhea Kim expertly uses to give her characters more depth and layers.
On that note, I want to compliment Kim's writing that is rich, vivid and easy to read. She describes with incredible detail the life of 1910s rural Korea and the interwar, war and post-war-time in the country, the training of Korean courtesans, the entertainment circle in Seoul, life under Japanese imperialism and the sluggish progress of the Independence movement. Reading the book, it is clear that Kim put lots of effort into the research which was reflected in the props and settings described, in the opinions and routines of the characters, and in the dialogues between them that reminded me of the fact that colonistion is truly gaslighting at its worst.
However, in trying to expertly sustain such a big time span and driving the narrative continuously forward to match the events of a specific time period, Beasts of a Little Land also reveals its weaknesses. Many of the "smaller plotlines" - e.g. the unrequited romances that took up a big part of the book - felt aimless. I kept reading and wondering "where does she want to go with this?" or "what's the purpose of this?". In the end, I asked myself wheter the ties between the characters were really only there to tie the POVs together, instead of being of some narrative merit. In my opinion, this book could have done well without the romances.
I particularly think so too because the time period was one where women were simply seen lesser as men and the latter often felt entitled and posessive over the former. While characterising the male protagonists this way is true to the time, it also did not really endear me to any of the main male romantic interests with their toxic masculinity issues (or any of the men, for that reason). By comparison, the women were in spades more interesting than them (especially the two "courtesan mentors" Dani & Silver, as well as Silver's daughter Luna) and I wished we had gotten to see so much more of them, but also of Jade herself, without the bits of her trying to held one man at bay while yearning for another.
All in all, Beasts of a Little Land had a clear overall narrative in documenting the political and social landscape of Korea from the 1910s to the 1940s but suffered from meandering, and somewhat aimlessly connected sub-narratives. It was however an enjoyable enough read as Juhea Kim offers a very accessible writing style and a rich and detailed insight into a tumultous yet important time period of Korea's history.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs and Racism
Moderate: Colonisation, Drug use, Addiction, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, and War
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