Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - Violets

Women are second-class citizens. No matter what you say or do, they will continue to be treated so. They'll be abused, they'll be made to feel small, they'll be found on the side of the roads, violated, they'll be made to shrink themselves in spaces that are as much theirs, and they'll continue to be silenced.

Silence. Shin Kyung-Sook's Violets (translated by @antonhur) is about silent women—both who choose to do so and those who are forced into it.

Violet. Violence. Violator.
This 200-odd-page book brims with melancholy. It's small in size but as mighty as they come.

It is about the friendship b/w an overbearing woman and a timid one. It is about obsession where 22-year-old San becomes infatuated with a womanizing photographer, so much so that she puts her life in danger. Violets is about abandonment, sexual identity, loneliness. But it is also about the ways in which men violate women.

I was momentarily blinded by the prose, just like how the flash of a camera leaves you with little sight, forcing you to find your bearings. I found myself breathing heavily as I turned the last few pages, my heart racing, and eyes wide in utter shock. There was a disconnect b/w San and her surroundings; at certain places it felt like she was undergoing an out-of-body experience, watching herself from afar. It was palpable. It felt I was there with her the entire time, watching her from a distance but unable to help. San wasn't alone in her hallucinations.

The prose, detached and devoid of any emotion, as if the author was simply stating facts, certainly stirred quite a few emotions within. And Anton Hur has done a marvellous job translating the book.

This story is not just San's. San depicts all the women out here and everything that comes from being one--the good, the bad, the ugly. But mostly the ugly.

I am certain, the last few pages are going to stay with me for a long, long time.

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