Category: Book Reviews

Who Gets to Be Smart by Bri Lee

Posted December 9, 2021 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Non-Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Who Gets to Be Smart (Goodreads)
Author: Bri Lee
Published: Allen & Unwin, 2021
Pages: 296
Genres: Non-Fiction
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I love the idea that Bri Lee decided to write this book even though she had an agreement with her publisher to write some fiction. There’s something about this that really sticks with me, just the idea that Bri Lee was so passionate about this topic that she neglected her other projects and focused on this topic. Who Get to be Smart is such a work of passion, anger and needing to understand the world and I really enjoyed that experience. I have seen reviews that talk about this book as being unfocused or “all over the place”, for me I think that was what made this such enjoyable read. I felt like this book reads in a way that makes it feel like Bri Lee was having a conversation with me.

The book starts talking about her friend Damian, who was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Looking at the Rhodes Scholarship she came to the realisation that she was no longer eligible to apply for this scholarship due to her age . The requirements for this scholarship is tough, not only do you require some scholastic merit, you also have to have sporting achievements and “qualities of manhood, truth, courage and devotion to duty”. It wasn’t until a 2018 revision of the selection criteria that the wording was more gender neutral. Also, you must be 25 years and under if you were considering this international scholarship. The Rhodes Scholarship accepts about 0.7% of the global applicants.

Australia has recently attempted to do something similar to the Rhodes Scholarship, which has been a disaster. The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation was launched by the former prime minister John Howard and has received plenty of backlash. Originally planned for the Australian National University, I believe it is now at the Wollongong University. Trying to set up a scholarship fund like this in 1902 would have been easier than trying to create it now. Many of the criticism revolves around the idea of awarding a very small group of people verses using the funding to lower education costs for everyone.

Who Get to be Smart focuses on the privileges provided to the wealthy, not just with these scholarship programs, but also private schooling and science grants. The majority of this book looks at the way location, wealth and race all play a part in the education of people. Bri Lee also looking into the effects of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests might have on the future of education.

There is so much in this book and I really enjoyed the way Bri Lee approached the topic. The writing style was the highlight for me, she takes this conversationalist approach that made this so easy to read. I really like the way this is written and would probably make for a great audiobook or podcast. Not only is she providing her thoughts and giving us the information, but she is doing it in a accessible way, with a touch of anger, humour and self-deprecation. This is my first Bri Lee book and the topic really appealed to me, because I do like her writing style, I do wonder if I should try Beauty or Eggshell Skull. I want to read more non-fiction like this, not just about education but also the same ‘laid-back’ conversationalist style, so if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Dead Man Switch by Tara Moss

Posted July 21, 2021 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Crime / 0 Comments

Title: Dead Man Switch (Goodreads)
Author: Tara Moss
Series: Billie Walker Mystery #1
Published: HarperCollins, 2019
Pages: 368
Genres: Crime
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

After 19 books, mainly from her Mak Vanderwall crime series and a YA paranormal series, Tara Moss is trying her hand at hard-boiled fiction. Dead Man Switch is the first book in the new Billie Walker series set in Sydney in the late 1940s. I knew I had to try this book out for two main reasons, one I love hard-boiled literature and was interested in checking out a novel set in Australia and secondly, I wanted to see how Moss would handle the female detective approach.

Without going into details about the plot, it’s a missing persons case that leads to Billie Walker uncovering a much bigger secret; I think reviewing this novel needs to focus away from the storyline. Moss really shines in the research and exploring the sexism Billie faces in her work. Dead Man Switch never refers to Billie Walker as a detective, it does make references to her as a private investigator and this stood out to me because Australian laws does not permit the use of the term detective outside the police department. Little facts like this really reminded me of the importance of research and they helped keep the novel hard-boiled without Americanising the plot.

Obviously, gender would play a big role in this book, and Tara Moss seemed to play with this in a fun way; Billie’s assistant Sam was happy to help a woman with any task necessary for the case but then others criticised her for taking a man’s job. Billie took over the business when her father had died, which is the reasoning behind her profession but now that the war was over, people thought she should leave this kind of work to men that needed work. This was a great way to explore the sexism and gender divide of the era and helped enhance Billie as a strong, take no nonsense character.

I had fun reading this book, and I am interested to see where Tara Moss takes the Billie Walker series. I am very particular in my crime novel picks and I wish this was a little darker and grittier, but I have to respect that Moss has plans for this character. There are not enough strong women detectives in crime novels, particularly in hard-boiled novels, so in a genre normally dominated by boring white men, this is a great change. I have no idea when book two will be released but I will be sure to read it. It is hard to review a crime novel, because the plot and characters play such a significant part of the reading experience, but I hope I have convinced someone to give Dead Man Switch a chance. For all the American readers of this review, this book is called The War Widow on your continent, which gives you a little insight on Billie Walker’s social situation.

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

Posted January 13, 2021 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 2 Comments

Title: Earthlings (Goodreads)
Author: Sayaka Murata
Translator: Ginny Tapley Takemori
Published: Granta, 2020
Pages: 247
Genres: Contemporary
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

What I really loved about Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman is the way she writes about social norms. She looks at social situations and asks the question, “What do we consider normal, and why it is so important?” Keiko was happy with her situation as a convenience store attendant, but the world and even her family wanted to push her to want more from her career and life. Murata seems to take this idea one step further in Earthlings.

The novel follows Natsuki, who even from a very young age felt like she did not belong here on earth. Both Natsuki and her cousin Yuu considered themselves to be aliens from another planet left on earth. Even when she got older, Natsuki had this viewpoint, and considered earth to be just a baby making factory. To keep her family off her back she married and hoped to just have a quiet life with her husband. However, her family kept demanding she have children and the pressure continuously grew to unhealthy levels.

Earthlings is a weird book; it explores the social pressures of reproducing but it does take a disturbing turn. I like the way Sayaka Murata looks at social issues and pushes the boundaries to show just how damaging they can be but I am also not a fan of the way this book ended. I do not think it is worth discussing the ending and if you have read the book, you know what I mean. I feel that the focus should be on how alienating social norms can be, and the way it made Natsuki feel. I have been married for eleven years and I know how frustrating it is when people ask me and my wife why we do not have children. This question is none of their business and tend to lead to awkward moments if you do decide to share the reasons. This novel plays with the social expectations of reproduction by constantly referring to the world as a baby making factory, like life has no value except creating children.

Sayaka Murata loves to push the boundaries with her characters and I am not going to try and diagnose these people in her books. I have seen far too many people claim Keiko was autistic in Convenience Store Woman, but does that really matter? You could probably label both Natsuki and her husband as asexuals in Earthlings, but it feels weird to label a fictional character. I am not a psychologist, so I do not want to diagnose Keiko with autistic and while I understand it is useful to show representation or to use psychoanalysis to analyse a book, I often find myself questioning the motives. If the author has not mentioned it, are we just projecting ideas onto a character? Granted this can be useful for understanding but it can also mean we are pushing these characters into a label and not letting them show us the problems with the world around us.

The writing of Sayaka Murata might not be for everyone, but I am looking forward to seeing what Ginny Tapley Takemori translates next. I want to read more books like this, where the author challenges social ideas and does it in interesting ways. This is a dark but very entertaining novel, and I am glad that Murata has done so well for herself in the English speaking world.

Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand

Posted December 7, 2020 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Crime / 0 Comments

Title: Generation Loss (Goodreads)
Author: Elizabeth Hand
Published: Small Beer Press, 2007
Pages: 265
Genres: Crime
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Most people know that I am very particular when it comes to crime novels. I tend to be drawn to the gritty, pulp novels of the 1930s. I honestly could not tell you what works for me and what would not. Taste is a weird measuring tool; it is constantly changing and there are aspects that even the reader is unaware of, for example, I recently read Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand and there is so much I liked about this novel, yet there is something that did not work for me. I am reviewing the book in the hopes to fully understand my feelings here.

Cass Neary is the protagonist of what appears to be a series of currently five books. She had moderate success as a photographer in the 1970s, in which she was involved in the burgeoning punk movement and has a weird fascination with death photography. Thirty years, later she is a struggling freelance photographer that is running out of luck and work. An acquaintance of hers gives her a job to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. Cass Neary has the style and attitude I tend to like in a protagonist of a crime novel but still there is a part of me that wants more. It could be the fact that we rarely get a female protagonist in literature and I really want to see the struggles that she faces along the way.

This is not to say that Cass Neary has an easy journey, she faces many obstacles with Generation Loss, but I feel I wanted more. The whole struggling artist and living in the world as a woman, there is so much angst and anger that could really come alive in this novel. I do not think Elizabeth Hand did a bad job, I think she delivered a great book, I am just thirsty for more. I will read the second book Available Dark, and I am curious to see where Cass Neary’s journey will take her. I am just realising that I want very different things from a female protagonist to a male. I know this is wrong, but I want a bitter cynical male, but I want female detectives to struggle with the everyday sexism as well. The world is unjust, and I think there is a lot of interesting layers that can be added.

I have really enjoyed the Michael Connelly books that feature Renee Ballard because there is an exploration into the sexism of the police force. It is not that I want sexism to exist, I just feel like this is an aspect that should not be ignored in these books. I think these female investigators have a legitimate reason to be bitter and cynical with the world, and it want to explore that journey. I want to read more crime novels that feature an angry, feisty woman, and let us be honest, I would rather it be written by a woman, men do not have to ability to really understand just how sexist the world really is.

I really wanted to talk about Generation Loss, but I did not know how to write a review for a crime novel without going into the plot. This turned into an exercise to unpack my own feelings towards the genre and my own reading tastes. I am very aware of my own biases here, I just think in an unjust world, it is important to explore those injustices. Also, I just like a bitter and cynical character, and I do not want them always to be men, because women have more to be angry about. If you have any recommendations, please let me know.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (trans. by Oliver Ready)

Posted November 10, 2020 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Classic / 5 Comments

Title: Crime and Punishment (Goodreads)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Translator: Oliver Ready
Published: Penguin Classics, 1866
Pages: 702
Genres: Classic
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

What I love about rereading a translated classic is that most of the time there are so many translations to try out. The translator makes a big difference and it is amazing how different it can make in interpreting the text. I love Russian literature and have openly discussed my issues with most of the commonly used translators, being their translation method, the anglicising of names or their censorship of the text. I will leave you to work out my meaning here, I just reread Crime and Punishment, but being an outsider to a BookTube readathon. My issue was the fact they picked a translation that I was not interested in reading, so I buddy-read the Oliver Ready translation with Derek from Read the World! I thought it was a way of being ‘sort of’ apart of the community reading event but still have a more one-on-one conversation with a better translation.

It has been eight years since I last read Crime and Punishment, and looking back at my previous review, it does not look like I said anything interesting about this great novel. I mention the class struggle and internal conflict of Raskolnikov, but I did not really go into any detail. The internal conflict is obvious, you can see a psychological break down of Raskolnikov after the murder, but I struggle to comprehend everything Dostoevsky is trying to say here. From the reread, it feels like there is a philosophical question being thrown at the reader, but Dostoevsky never seems to offer any insights. I wonder if Dostoevsky had any true answers here, because on this reread, I feel like the struggle with understanding the psychological and philosophical ramifications of the crime is the purpose of the novel and no true answers are given, or if they are I might find out on a later reread.

Class struggle was an interesting topic to explore with Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov is struggling with the idea of class internally. He has it in his mind that he is a wealthy intellectual, but in reality, he is just a struggling young man living off the money his mother gives him. Upon rereading, I was fascinated to just how disillusioned he is about his own class status. He is just a young man, that really has no idea of his own value or how to budget his money. I found it interesting to look back at my reading of this novel, I was closer to the same age as Raskolnikov and probably had similar naivety. However, I will not go into great detail about this, as you will be able to find my discussion of the book with Derek here.

I was very impressed with Oliver Ready’s translation of Crime and Punishment; I think his translating method really appealed to me. There was some modernisation of the writing but done in a way that still felt dated. Like he used phrases that felt old but still more contemporary, and I think he managed to nail that balance of making the book accessible, while still feeling like an older piece of literature. I really hope Ready continues to translate some of the Russian classics, not just Dostoevsky.

I am probably going to regret not putting extra time into this review, I have a lot to say but I know that I want to save that for the podcast. This time reading it, I think I cared more about the secondary characters rather than Raskolnikov, particularly his sister Dunya, but I also liked Sofya. She was a fascination for me, and I wish Dostoevsky spent more time with her. I will have to read this novel again and again, not sure which translation I will go with next, possible the Michael R. Katz translation. This is the type of book that needs to be reread every few years, just to see what you get out of it later.

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Posted October 15, 2020 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 6 Comments

Title: The Lying Life of Adults (Goodreads)
Author: Elena Ferrante
Translator: Ann Goldstein
Published: Europa Editions, 2020
Pages: 322
Genres: Contemporary
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

What I love about reading Elena Ferrante is the way she is always writing about the experiences of women from a social-political standpoint. She always gives the reader a wide range of emotions and can make them feel uncomfortable with the situation but in a way that does not cause many to abandon her books. I have read all Ferrante’s works of adult fiction and was happy to see that my in-real-life book club was doing her latest release The Lying Life of Adults. Honestly, sometimes I think I go to my book club just to complain about the books we read, but I also attend to try and improve my ability to talk about literature with real life humans.

The Lying Life of Adults is the story of Giovanna, who is a young woman that is quickly discovering all the drama happening within her family. She learns why her father and her aunt Vittoria do not talk, and basically uncovers all the hostility and fighting that has been happening in the family all her life. This is not the easiest information to uncover, the adults all have their own side of the stories and they are all lying to make themselves look better in every situation. Ferrante’s books always deal with domestic drama and The Lying Life of Adults is no different, but what I really enjoyed about this novel, is the way it focuses on the lies.

It is hard to talk about The Lying Life of Adults without mentioning the Neapolitan series, those books got plenty of attention and will be the basis of all Ferrante critiques. Which is justifiable, the approach Elena Ferrante takes when writing really focuses heavily on the life of women living in Naples, particularly looking at sexism and domestic abuse. I find that The Lying Life of Adults seems to have similarities with The Story of a New Name, book two in the Neapolitan series. Both books have characters in the late teens, exploring the balance between family, love and academia. This journey fascinates me; I want to learn about young women discovering just how messed out their family is, while also realising how horrible men are, all while trying to decide their plans for the future.

Personally, I would have preferred if Elena Ferrante really dove into the psychological state of Giovanna. Not to mention the exploration into the feelings of attraction, sexuality, and emotion. There is so much that could have been unpacked if she wanted to really explore the damaging nature of these lies, and the effects they would have had on Giovanna’s outlook and future. I am fascinated for a deeper dive into the emotional damage, but I understand why Ferrante grazed over these topics. Not everyone wants to explore domestic abuse in so much detail and it would greatly change the tone of the novel.

If you have never read Elena Ferrante before, this might be a good place to start, I personally recommend The Days of Abandonment as a starting point, but this would work too. Fans of the Neapolitan series may not need any encouragement to check out The Lying Life of Adults but I hope you do. Obviously, I really enjoyed this novel, I think Ferrante is doing an excellent job at helping bring translated literature into the spotlight, thanks to the amazing work of Ann Goldstein.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Posted October 13, 2020 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Dystopia / 2 Comments

Title: Tender is the Flesh (Goodreads)
Author: Agustina Bazterrica
Translator: Sarah Moses
Published: Pushkin Press, 2017
Pages: 224
Genres: Dystopia
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Tender is the Flesh was released at the perfect time, with the current global pandemic, a novel about a virus that changes the way we look at the world. Agustina Bazterrica’s novel primarily follows Marcos, who works in a slaughterhouse producing ‘special meat’. When the virus hit, all animals were infected andtheir meat became poisonous. The government had to make some changes to the law, now it was legal to buy ‘special meat’ – human meat.

This is a weird dystopian novel that has one very basic message that really sticks in your brain. The concept of giving up meat is so ridiculous that the country starts producing humans that will be used as meat. These are not people; they are cattle and are treated in that way. The concept of giving up meat and turning vegan is too preposterous for the country. Cannibalism becomes the norm.

The idea behind the novel seems to be focusing on just how cruel humans are, going to great detail to explain the process used to prepare meat at a slaughterhouse and the treatment of animals (in this case humans). Tender is the Flesh takes it a step further, with the retirement homes advertising the security they offer for your elderly relatives to protect them from being slaughtered and eaten. The world population drastically declines, and people have lost the ability to be caring or loving to others around them.

That is the entire premise, Tender is the Flesh takes a simple idea and plays out the situation. The way people turn on each other, the way people change their views on society and the ridiculous notion of becoming vegan. This is a dark comedy set in a dystopian world and executed with perfection. I cannot say that this converted me to becoming a vegan, but I think I honestly need to make more of an effort. An ugly look at our consumeristic culture and here I am, still wrestling with the idea of protecting the animals…I hate myself, but I think this novel achieved its goals.

The Yield by Tara June Winch

Posted October 9, 2020 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 6 Comments

Title: The Yield (Goodreads)
Author: Tara June Winch
Published: Penguin Random House, 2019
Pages: 343
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

While my interest in reading sides more with translated literature, I still read books from local authors. This is mainly as a result of my in-real-life book club that I attend, although I this year has seen more American crime novels sneak into my reading life than the norm. This is the reason I recently read Tara June Winch’s latest novel The Yield. The novel tells a story from three different perspectives and how choices made multiple generations ago still effect people now.

I am unsure if I am out of practice, or just not sure what to say, but I having a hard time trying to put all my thoughts on this book down on paper. Basically, The Yield tells the story of August Gondiwindi who has returned home for her grandfather’s funeral. Knowing he was about to die, he had written down the experiences he had living near the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains and a dictionary he was constructing of Wiradjuri words. The third narrative is letters from a German Lutheran missionary, Reverend Greenleaf talking about the early years of the settlers.

These three narratives tell the story of the lasting effects of colonialism, the intergenerational trauma and how it effects the people and the land. I find it had to talk about this novel, but I think this is an important novel to read, especially for white Australia. The narrative from Reverend Greenleaf stood out, due to the way he tried to help the true owners of the land and protect them from greedy white settlers but not every choice he made felt right. He came across as a white saviour, because he was imposing his own values on these people. When World War I hit, he was met with his own hostility from white settlers as a German.

August’s story is the primary plot, and it is interesting that she plays the role of an outsider, someone that has moved away. Tara June Winch is based in France, so the narrative of August feels like it might be autobiographical in the way she might feel, I do not know her story, but I get the sense based on this novel, she might be treated as an outsider for being an Aboriginal to the white people, but treated as an outsider to her country for leaving. This is how I feel August’s narrative works, she still sees herself as part of her community and tries to help but there are people that do not trust her and treat her like an outsider.

Within the August narrative, the area of Massacre Plains is under threat from a mining company that wants to dig up their land for tin. A very relevant topic for Australia, since Rio Tinto has recently demolished a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site, and they are not the sole culprits. It is said mining giants BHP Billiton have destroyed at least 40 significant Aboriginal sites in the past year. The mining industry in Australia is big business but the cultural damage they are doing to the different Aboriginal lands is beyond reproach.

Essentially The Yield is a novel about the psychological and cultural damage facing the different Aboriginal communities around Australia. You get to see the effects of colonialism, and the damage that is done to these people, plus the current degradation being done by the Australian government and the mining companies that pay those politicians. However, in the midst of all that, Tara June Winch has crafted a stunning novel that is funnier than I expected based on the subject matter. The Yield has been a big success in the Australian literary scene, it even won the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award, which is Australia’s highest literary award. The novel is showing up around the world and I hope it has just as much a success there; this really is a great book.

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

Posted October 7, 2020 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 0 Comments

Title: Breasts and Eggs (Goodreads)
Author: Mieko Kawakami
Translator: Sam Bett, David Boyd
Published: Picador, 2020
Pages: 430
Genres: Contemporary
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

After reading Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo (translated by Jamie Chang), I moved on to Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami (which is translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett & David Boyd). These two books seem to pair nicely with each other; one explores the everyday sexism that woman face, while the other is a look at fertility and body image issues. However, I am not the right person to talk about Breasts and Eggs, and I only choose to write down my thoughts as a way for my own personal recollection. This is a sensitive topic and having a male reviewer explore the topic feels wrong, like a male author writing about female sexuality.

Mieko Kawakami originally wrote Breast and Eggs as a novella, which was later rewritten into the novel that has recently been released. This is the story of three women, the unnamed narrator in her mid-thirties, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s twelve-year-old daughter, Midoriko. Three women at different stages in their lives, exploring the issues of motherhood, fertility and their bodies. These three narratives allow the author to explore a range of body issues, Makiko is unhappy with her breasts and is having breast enhancement surgery. Not just enlargements but she wants to change her nipples, make them pink. Midoriko is going through puberty and is unable to express her insecurities about her changing body. While the unnamed narrator wants to become a mother, but Japanese reproductive laws only apply to married heterosexual women that are unable to conceive.

As you can see, this novel explores so many important issues and as a man, I do not feel like it is my place to weigh in on these topics. Women have enough problems with men trying to dictate their lives. However, I did find it fascinating to explore the struggles these women are facing and the way they try to navigate through their lives. This is a book about the repression woman face in Japan, but like Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, I think this is a much more universal problem.

Breast and Eggs has so much to offer and so many issues to explore. I really liked that the narrator explored the idea of asexuality but was still interested in motherhood. She was aromantic but still wanted to be a parent and was looking at options on how to achieve that. I do not think I have ever read a novel about an ace’s journey into becoming a mum and it really highlights just how important it is to explore the different struggles people face from around the world. I read translated literature for this reason, I want to see the different social experiences, as well as the similarities. This is why we need representation from people all over the world, and the LGBTQI+ community.

I really hope that I was able to verbalise my thoughts on Breast and Eggs without overstepping my mark. While this is a book that women should be talking about and reviewing, I still think it is important for men to read as well. I simply want to write my thoughts on this book, so I have a record of my feelings; I post reviews on my blog to document my reading journal. I hope I am not offending anyone by talking about Breast and Eggs.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Posted September 30, 2020 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 6 Comments

Title: Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (Goodreads)
Author: Cho Nam-Joo
Translator: Jamie Chang
Published: Scribner, 2016
Pages: 163
Genres: Contemporary
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

When you find a book that you want to share with everyone, and talk about constantly, you know you have found a new favourite. This is my experience with Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, which has recently been translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang. I loved this novel so much, I re-read it, with only Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd) separating the two. While it makes for a great book pairing. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows an ordinary woman expressing her life to a psychiatrist. It is a very simple plot but allows Cho Nam-Joo to explore the everyday sexism woman face throughout their lives.

This is a novel exploring the gender inequalities facing women in South Korea today, but really this feels like issues facing women all around the world. While preparing to write this review, I saw the synopsis on GoodReads that started with “Kim Jiyoung is the most common name for Korean women born in the 1980s. Kim Jiyoung is representative of her generation.” This idea that it is a generational issue made me wonder, is the world getting better? Because the evidence of improvement is sadly lacking.

Kim Jiyoung is depressed.
Kim Jiyoung has started acting out.
Kim Jiyoung is her own woman.
Kim Jiyoung is insane.

I wanted to reference the above quote from the same synopsis because I think it is a reflection of the problems being faced in this novel. I am not a psychiatrist so I will not be diagnosing Kim Jiyoung in the review, but I will say that I disagree. She was sent to the psychiatrist by her husband and the book reads as a clinical assessment of the everywoman. Although I tend to think that both the husband and the psychiatrist are the problems, and not Kim Jiyoung. She might be suffering depression but then you have to diagnose all women with depression. She is not acting out; she is fighting to be heard and she is definitely not insane. Finally, why is Kim Jiyoung being her own woman a bad thing?

What I love is just how worked up I get while reading (or writing about) Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. However, this is a reason while I have been told by a few women that they hated this book. I was told a few times “I don’t need to read this book, I’ve lived it” which is understandable, not everyone wants to read about the sexism they experience every day. This is the type of book all men need to read but I do worry that like the husband and the psychiatrist, they might miss the point.

We can talk about all the incidents that happen in this novel, but that would be the entire book. The ones that stick with me the most is start with an incident in school where a boy is picking on Kim Jiyoung and causes her to get in trouble with the teacher. Later the teacher apologised to her and told her that he picked on her because he liked her, which made no sense to Kim Jiyoung. Next there she was denied a promotion at work because they thought she will get pregnant and leave the company and finally the way her own husband pressured her into having a child. While these incidents in the novel might make you angry, these three moments stuck with me the most. There is no reason these three should stand out more than all the other issues, they just encapsulates the sexism women face in childhood, their work life and by loved ones.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is a quick read that really focuses on the everyday sexism that really needs to be stamped out. The novel references to some horrifying statistics facing women in South Korea, like the fact they are ranked 108^th in the world in the Global Pay Gap Index, with women getting paid 67.2% of what men get paid. Australia is ranked 44^th with women getting paid 73.1%, and Iceland has the best score but still women get paid 87.7% of what men get paid (I pulled these stats from the 2020 Global Gender Gap report put out by the World Economic Forum). This is a book that will stick with me for a long time, and I hope it helps myself and other men improve in the way we treat others around them, not just women but all genders.