Books I've read: The Isalnd fo Sea Women

 

This one was recommended to me by several members of my book group.  As they are all very discerning readers, I jumped on board.

And it was fascinating.  I'd never heard about the deep-sea-diving women in Korea known as haenyeo.  I didn't know that on the island of Jeju, the society is matriarchal, with the women doing the work and men taking care the house and kids.  So I found the subject matter incredibly interesting.

The book follows two friends, from quite different backgrounds, through their lives across some of Korea's most tumultuous times.  Young-sook is the daughter of the head of the village diving collective and is expected to follow in her mother's footsteps.  Mi-ja is the daughter of a know collaborator with the Japanese who is sent to live with her aunt and uncle on the island .  Badly mistreated by these relatives who don't really want her, Mi-ja is taken in by the collective and becomes best friends with Young-sook.

Over the years, these two friends come together and split apart time and time again, their lives constantly entangled even as they weather marriage, children, war and political change.

The premise of this book was amazing and I learned a lot from reading it.  Unfortunately, I was not quite so in love with the way it was written.  The book is told in first person, and therefore I expected to be very close to the narrator (Young-sook) and to experience the events of her life through her eyes.  Yet the book was strangely unemotional.  A lot of extremely harrowing things happen to Young-sook, but I never felt like I was living through them.  As a narrator she told the story of what happened and then told the reader how it made her feel, rather than showing how she reacted to what happened and allowing the reader to understand the feeling.

Which was a shame, because I think the book would have been way more powerful if it had really punched the reader in the feelings.  

But I didn't dislike the book - it's more that I was a little disappointed that it didn't sweep me away I believe it could have.  It was still fascinating and I'm very glad to have learned as much about this culture and this unique society as I did.

So I do recommend it.  But maybe not so much as an absorbing read, as a fascinating document of an unknown society.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. Over many decades—through the Japanese colonialism of the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, and the era of cellphones and wet suits for the women divers—Mi-ja and Young-sook develop the closest of bonds. Nevertheless, their differences are impossible to ignore: Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, forever marking her, and Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers. After hundreds of dives and years of friendship, forces outside their control will push their relationship to the breaking point.

This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a unique and unforgettable culture, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.