A review by bentewill
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo

2.0

Not a book I would usually pick up, but it interested me and it wasn’t too bad! Don’t think I’ll often go for a book like this, but it is nice once in a while.
While it wasn’t difficult to read, it did miss the depth that you would get from a bigger book. She suddenly has a mental issue where she acts like woman she knows, which I guess is a metaphor for the fact that she experiences the problems that every woman goes through, but it wasn’t worked out that well in my opinion. With that comes the fact that her life was mainly just a list of things that happened, without too much depth. While the sources where interesting, they weren’t always incorporated well into the actual story.
As a woman, it is interesting to see the expectations and problems that women face. It is almost scary to recognise yourself in some of them. However, some were just mere expectations and Jiyoung could have easily gone against them.
The ending of this book I did find extremely powerful.
The male psychologist basically describing Kim Jiyoung’s life as a woman and explaining that he understands because he has a wife who has gone through the same thing, but then while he is doing that, I realised he actually really doesn’t understand. Ending the book with him saying that he needs to pick an unmarried woman to work for him next time, because otherwise it just results in problems, shows that while men think they understand, they rarely actually do or at least don’t act like it.

[January 6, 2024 → January 14, 2024]