A review by jayisreading
Violets by Kyung-sook Shin

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

I don’t think I was in the right headspace to read and appreciate Violets to its fullest, because I really struggled to get through this novel. I found the pacing a bit too slow, and the ending threw me off a little. I also couldn’t wrap my mind around a particularly sad story at the time of reading. There’s a lot of quiet grief in these pages, and I will say that while I did have some trouble reading this novel, I did appreciate the reflective nature of the novel in thinking about suppressing queer desire, feeling isolated in South Korean society, and existing on the margins, all of which is further complicated by being a woman.

On an unrelated note, hats off to Anton Hur, as always, for a phenomenal translation.
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