Book Review: Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, Cho Nam-Joo

 

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, Cho Nam-Joo (2016)

Translated by Jamie Chang

 

Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy.

Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own.

Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blamed her when she is harassed late at night.

Kim Jiyoung is a model employee who gets overlooked for promotion.

Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity.

Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely.

Kim Jiyoung is depressed.

Kim Jiyoung is mad.

Kim Jiyoung is her own woman.

Kim Jiyoung is every woman.

 

I won’t lie to you, I only picked this book up because I was getting the train to and from Epsom and I’d just finished the book I had intended for the journey. I was at Natalia’s sexy Airbnb in Camden and she told me to pick one to take with me. This one was the thinnest, paperback, could fit in my coat pocket, and would hopefully leave my ability to read other books waiting for me at home, unbothered. This was not to be the case.

 

I began this excitingly covered book on the train from London Victoria to Epsom, with time to kill and the comfort that sitting on a train gives me. I turn to begin,

 

‘Autumn, 2015’

 

Fond memories of being a newly suited year 12 student float to memory. Instead, we begin. I found the writing in the novel very matter-of-fact. The narrator is omniscient, and stays this way, without really shoving any intrusive thoughts and or facts down your throat. Instead, this omniscience is elegant. It portrays the facts of the people it discusses and observes, but dances between focalisation so you know what’s going on inside the character’s heads.

 

In its portrayal of the lives of a plethora of women in South Korea in the twentieth century, the facts of life are given to us clearly. This is the case. Here is the actual research to back it up. And here is a story to coincide. It never feels like a research paper, or a parable, or a story used to illustrate a point. The characters are complex, interesting, and with backbone. You feel how deeply unfair the treatment they receive is, without the book explicitly telling you that’s what you should feel. I know as someone who has grown up female, and hearing some of these things said, and is aware of these types of attitudes and status quo, I may be biased. But I challenge you to find someone to read this book, a woman or not, who is unable to feel the deep inequality this book highlights. The way each character reacts to the patriarchal ways of the world is so intrinsic to its survival. To push the boundaries is to cause a problem and face misogyny head on, but to fit in and keep your head down is to further the issue. It is so interesting, and so true.

 

If Kim Jiyoung makes use of the maternity leave offered, and comes in to work 30 minutes later as she is allowed to, she is seen as weak. If she doesn’t, those that follow in her footsteps cannot be seen to take these supposed liberties. They have to live by her example. So the cycles repeats.

 

The cleverness of this book is the way in which the story is told. The way this endemic of misogyny is highlighted to us. The fact that it isn’t highlighted. For me, at least, the matter of fact style of language, simply recounting the story of these women, is more powerful for its lack of flair. The deep-rooted unfairness of the upbringing of daughters vs sons, of wives vs husbands, of mothers vs fathers isn’t shouted at us. The inequality is shown to us, not told. An intrusive voice doesn’t land on your shoulder and scream in your ear ‘how fucked up is that?!’. It just exists in plain sight. Then you move on, to the next woman who’s experiencing the same treatment at work, at home, on the bus. It’s constant, like it is in real life.

 

I felt the pit of my stomach stirring, the blood in my veins bubbling away. The is exactly how it is. Although this book is based on the experiences of women in South Korea, and that should definitely not be overlooked, it also retells the tale that happens the world over. My apologies: ‘tale’ implies falsehood, I mean the facts of the world.

 

The writing is spell-binding, the characters are real, the perspective is brilliant. The novel opens on a focalisation of Kim Jiyoung’s husband having witnessed his wife acting strange. The novel ends on a psychologist or psychiatrist thinking the same thing. An exceptionally fitting, and simultaneously angering, way to book-end this brilliant piece of writing. I would like to read more of Cho Nam-Joo’s words.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982: 4 stars

Ellen Victoria

@artawaytheworld