Reviews with content warning for Eating disorder - Winter in Sokcho

Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'

Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin

156 reviews

vikkisgrotto's review against another edition

Go to review page

slow-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

kygpub's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

a surprising amount of this book is about food. home-cooked food, restaurant food, food that doesn't get eaten, food that gets eaten too much. winter makes everything unappetising. nothing moves. nothing is digestible. perhaps that's why this book is so short, its writing so spare, almost stilted.

i don't know if i can say that i like this book. i admire it, i understand it. maybe i can't say that i like it because i understand it too much. sometimes you don't want to be stuck, endlessly consuming the same life. sometimes you want to be consumed. in the end, 'i wanted someone to desire me.'

Content Warnings

rebecca_reads_books_'s review against another edition

Go to review page

reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

ana_bk2's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective relaxing sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

allykonkol19's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

jessicastephenson's review

Go to review page

emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Very atmospheric. I feel like the two main characters were quite complex, but being created with such simple writing which was an interesting contrast. I feel pretty neutral about this book. If it had been longer I think I would've loved it.

Content Warnings

trivialcve's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

revolverreads's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

To do, or not to do, that wasn’t even the question, because quite literally, nothing was done in this short story.

To envision the ethos of this book, picture yourself standing at a winter shoreline, letting the frigid air whip around you, while waves gently lap against your shoes. It’s a feeling of isolation, to be minuscule against the vast ocean that borders you.

Winter in Sokcho divided the three of us as readers: one of us disliking the writing style, while the other two found themselves loving it. It wasn't a terrible novel; in fact, it's probably one of the higher-rated books we read in 2023. Technically, it's a great novel, but it requires analysis beyond the words on the page. It's about the message between the lines, the deliberate lack of change in the unnamed narrator's life, the love that exists in actions rather than words. You'll either love it or DNF.

Our narrator is touring the worst era of a woman's life, her mid twenties. Her mother pushes her to settle for her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, and while her job offers stability with food and shelter, the monotony is becoming stifling, almost claustrophobic. That's until a mysterious outsider arrives in town: Yan Kerrand, a Frenchman seeking to explore the authentic Sokcho for his comic without truly experiencing its reality.

Not much actually happens. They have outings to various Korean landmarks, but when she extends an invitation for him to join the dinners at the hotel, he consistently ghosts her. In fact, it’s the most consistent thing about his behaviour towards her, culminating in him ghosting her entirely at the end of the book as she sits in the kitchen, preparing a potentially lethal meal for him. Although it's unlikely he would even eat it. He’s an artiste, he’ll survive on chewing paper drawings of women and convenience store noodles.

This book speaks volumes beyond its written words, delving into the aftermath of the Korean War's devastation, the intricate dynamics between the narrator and her mother, and the protagonist's complex relationship with body image in a society steeped in accessible plastic surgery. It requires time and energy to unravel these layered themes woven throughout the narrative.

You’ll either love it, or hate it, or maybe just DNF it, but we’d love for you to join us as we get into much more detail on our podcast. Check us out at Revolver Reads: A Bookclub Russian Roulette on your podcast platform of choice, or simply @revolverreads on Instagram and let us know what you think. If you’d like to email us any future book suggestions for our roulette wheel, feel free to send them to [email protected].

Content Warnings

mikarala's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I didn't know much about this book going into it, and at the beginning I felt a bit apprenhensive about it. The prose is so short and choppy, and there's not much seemingly happening. Our MC is a somewhat apathetic, somewhat bitter woman in her earlier-mid twenties, working at a run-down guest house in a summer resort town. It's winter, and the town is nearly devoid of visitors. Along comes a mysterious Frenchman, Kerrand, who our MC fixates upon, being half-French herself. It turns our Kerrand is a comic book writer, and as we slowly learn more about his artistic creations, new sides of our narrator are revealed as well.

This book does take some time to simply establish the mood and setting, with a forlorn atmosphere made up of wind-whipped waves and run-down, family-run businesses. While it did so, I really wasn't sure where the story was going and I felt a bit ambiguous towards this novel. However, about a third of the way through the novel, the author starts to reveal more about the narrator's struggles and proceeds to use the surrounding setting and events as a physical manifestation of what is going on with her. The author only reveals snapshots of the narrator's inner feelings, leaving the reader to make connections between her mental state and everything else that is described within the novel. As a sucker for very atmospheric and mysterious stories, this made me fall in love. The final 20-30 pages of this novel had me in a chokehold, and afterwards I couldn't help but give this story anything other than 5 stars.

Content Warnings

taleswithteatime's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

More...