Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Wyspa kobiet morza

• “Every woman who enters the sea carries a coffin on her back. In this world, in the undersea world, we tow the burdens of a hard life. We are crossing between life and death every day.”

• “With arranged marriages, many wives fall in love with their husbands quickly. For some it can take years. And for others, decades of marriage will always be filled with loneliness and sadness . . . How different it is with friendship. No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand our heart in a way no one else ever will.”

• “We thought we were free, but so far the only difference in our lives here on Jeju was that the Japanese flag was lowered, and the American flag was raised. One colonizer had been replaced by another.”

The Island of Sea Women is a profoundly sad, but moving, and very well-researched, work of historical fiction. The sea women of Jeju Island will stay with me for a very long time.

Content Warnings

elchiang78's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

krisawesome's review against another edition

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2.5

Pacing is odd, Young-sook isn’t an especially engaging protagonist, and some of the personal conflicts were super predictable and felt a little trope-y to me (and not in a good way).

Although I had been warned about some of the descriptions in this book, I was still not fully prepared for how brutal some of the instances were. I’m usually fine to read those if I’m aware of them ahead of time but the end of the “Life-Giving Air” chapter (and a bit of the following one) were too much even for me. Note that I don’t blame See for including them, and I wouldn’t have even been all that surprised if I’d read them without warning - it’s not like she’d pulled punches earlier in the book either. But they’re hard to get past, is what I’m saying.

The 2008 chapters feel like they’re a little phoned in, compared to the research and effort that See obviously put into the main timeline.

Stars were earned mostly by the anthropological and historical elements, as difficult as the latter were to read about at times. It was especially fascinating to read about the haenyeo and their matrifocal society.

Content Warnings

spinesinaline's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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