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jurkba's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-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
atelierofbooks's review
5.0
"I felt...I felt something that made me want to run and run until I couldn't run anymore, something that made me think I couldn't stop running even if I crashed and shattered."
Contradiction. At first you think this book paints stark contradictions between people. Everything begins black and white but slowly...Yang Gui-ja pours water over the painting and everything blurs into an indeterminate grey. It's not a love story, despite how it's framed. It's also not a sad story, though sad things do happen. It's mostly a story about choices and the extent to which we can and cannot control life. It's about how our choices buffet against the choices of other people, and how contradiction and duality can exist within the same person.
I honestly struggled writing this review because how do I explain how deeply this made me feel? Or how it felt so familiar and alien all at the same time? I can only quote Yang to infinity and let her do the explaining.
This was the best selling novel in South Korea in 1998. And that's an important date to keep in mind because the Korea of 20 years ago is a vastly different country. Our narrator, An Jin-Jin, is a child of an in-between generation, bridging post-war poverty and dictatorship with democracy and rapid wealth.
She wakes up one day, in shock and tears, and decides that instead of continuing to placidly live with no deep thoughts or dreams, she will radically change her life by...getting married.
"Please, do me a favor, and don't criticize me for making marriage my first choice. And don't try to use pretty words to convince me otherwise. Of course I realize that women my age have other options and don't have to get married. Who doesn't? But there are women do who choose marriage. Obviously there are others who study or throw themselves into their work or who scoff at marriage and travel the world. It's not as though I'm the only one who hasn't examined the possiblities fully."
There are two men interested in her, complete opposites. But to make the right choice she must know herself first. And she decides that her story actually begins with her family.
See, Jin-Jin understands Fate (운명). Accidents of fate ripple through generations. The only difference between An Jin-Jin's mother and aunt are ten minutes. Twins born ten minutes apart, Jin-Jin's mother is given first choice in a husband by a matchmaker. She chooses Jin-Jin's father; they love each other deeply and destructively. To distraction, to poverty.
"Am I a prison to you?"
Jin-Jin's poetic, violent, mentally-ill father. The man who taught her so much yet is increasingly absent. She doesn't accept his actions so much as she understands the 'why' of him. His mind is in a different place. He came to the end of himself one day and chose a road that nobody could follow him on.
"Never wander a strange road at sunset. When darkness settles in indigo tones from the far side of the sky, your heart aches with a sadness you can't explain...And its not just your heart that aches. Out pour the tears. I dont know why."
Conversely, Jin-Jin's aunt chooses a tepid and frustratingly dutiful husband. He is wealthy and responsible, sometimes petty but capable of generosity too in his own perfunctory way.
"As she spoke of a husband whose memories consisted only of photographs, she looked like a young girl who buys a storybook only to find it has a title but no text. Its empty. How strange."
One sister raises her two children in comfort and privilege. The other raises her two children in poverty and brokeness.
Jin-Jin's mother is a relentless woman. She thrives in spite of (or because of?) life's tragedies and attacks her problems with single-minded determination. She doesn't have time for sentiment, she's just too damn busy. This is completely unlike Jin-Jin's aunt whose gentle, privileged life affords her the luxury of romanticism and dreamy ennui. Jin-Jin relates to her aunt more than her own mother and her aunt in turn emotionally relies on Jin-Jin more than her own children. They have the closest familial relationship out of anyone in the book. And yet...there is a painful hierarchy in the relationship between an aunt and niece.
"Jin-Jin I'm sorry. They're my own flesh and blood - I love them more than I love you...I'm really sorry."
Jin-Jin's cousins may be blandly polite and quietly passionless...they may have inherited all of their father's pragmatism and none of their mother's romanticism...but in the end they're still their mother's children and hold her heart like no other. In that way, Jin-Jin's aunt is almost like Jin-Jin's father. Perhaps that's the reason she could never hate him, even after all he did to her sister; she saw too much of herself in him.
"His boundless love for us trapped him behind an iron door, three layers thick. It was only to be expected that he struggled so long, dreaming of escape."
Jin-Jin can see herself in all of her family members. She is cold in many respects (like her mother and uncle) but but also capable of intense, devastating emotion (like her aunt and father).
"Did he feel the way I did- that somebody was grabbing him, tugging at his ankles? That a hole had formed in his heart? Did he feel a loneliness so deep that it made him want to cry?"
The two men who want to marry her are Kim Jangu and Na Yeong-gyu. The former makes her feel like she's living in a dream. The latter helps her face up to reality.
"Love makes us more beautiful and distorts us."
Kim Jangu is a poor photographer, a deeply affectionate man who cries over wildflowers and makes Jin-Jin forget reality. He is ethereal, someone who becomes hazy and passive when confronted with the inevitability of the real world. He knows suffering like Jin-Jin but she still feels the need to protect him and his sentimental world from her own struggles.
Na Yeong Gyu is a cheerful and considerate businessman from a well off family. He's like clockwork, a man who plans relentlessly leaving no room for ambiguity or whimsy. She never feels the need to protect him from herself and her circumstances. He reflects total reality to Jin-Jin, drawing honesty out of her, even in all its ugliness.
"...if gratitude like this is also love"
I won't spoil who she chooses, but I will say that I understand her. I rarely agreed with Jin-Jin's life view or her actions but I could always understand them. I could see that her truth was just as real as my own. I guess that's a contradiction too.
angeljendur's review
challenging
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
I'm giving this book a 2.5 star rating not because I believe it to be bad or lacking in any significant way but because after reading the first chapter I expected it to take a completely different route. That is entirely on me. I believe this book has an audience in mind and while some aspects of it spoke to me, I wasn't who the book was aiming for.
It's a retrospective book and it was interesting to see such a different perspective on life compared to the one I have. Like a lot of korean literature/movies that I've seen/read it explores familial relationships in this really interesting way, where almost everyone is morally grey or even if they've done something that may seem unforgivable at first, their actions are described in such a way that soothes the initial sharp feeling that stabs you. That isn't to say their actions are excused they're just kind of there. It's very different compared to western literature.
I do not regret reading this book and will probably pick up the author's other works because I am curious to see if the themes explored in Contradictions are a staple in her writing or a one off thing.
It's a retrospective book and it was interesting to see such a different perspective on life compared to the one I have. Like a lot of korean literature/movies that I've seen/read it explores familial relationships in this really interesting way, where almost everyone is morally grey or even if they've done something that may seem unforgivable at first, their actions are described in such a way that soothes the initial sharp feeling that stabs you. That isn't to say their actions are excused they're just kind of there. It's very different compared to western literature.
I do not regret reading this book and will probably pick up the author's other works because I am curious to see if the themes explored in Contradictions are a staple in her writing or a one off thing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, Suicide, Alcoholism, and Domestic abuse
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