A review by starrysea98
The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness by Kyung-sook Shin

3.0

okay, I wasn’t expecting this to read like random trains of thoughts......

First of all, I like that this gives insight to a particular bit of history that I’ve never heard of before. The factory girls and the special program for their education is interesting and I wish the story could have focused more on that. Perhaps I was wrong in expecting a story when really this is a somewhat autobiographical memoir. It’s more of a recollection of things that the author has went through imo.

Secondly, the writing is lovely. Kudos to both the original writer and the translator for that. It is slightly confusing though since the tenses are the same but the author will jump from present (where the narrator is 32) to the past (where the narrator is 16) without much fanfare.

I’m no expert at analysing literature and much of my reviews rely on me enjoying the story or not. In this case, it’s a bit too meandering for me. I just prefer my reading material to be simple 🙈 however, I did and probably always will enjoy the way Kyung Sook describes Korea.