review 1: i heard this book going back and forth between home and my place of employment and i almost gave up listening to it if it weren't thanks to my son's recommendation and then my daughter having said that she had read it. I must say that listening to it i think had a detrimental effect rather than enhancing it. I didn't like the voices portraying the female roles by males and the chinese/korean voices that i couldn't quite understand. I should've read the book instead. Maybe that would have been more better....Anyways it is a very long and twisted book, ccomplicated. I'm assuming its meant to replicate and parody the north korean society itself twisted and complicated thanks to the master minded politics leaving absolutely no freedom to its people. I really had a difficult... more time with the book and had to "read in diagonal" as my father taught me when too lengthy but you want to get to the end. review 2: This was a very good book but not an easy book to read. It is a book about loyalty and suffering. It is about the stories that make up a life, the stories that ultimately define us whether they're true or not. Set in North Korea, it is hard to come to terms with what at first seems like hyperbole, the sinking feeling that comes with the suspicion that maybe things really are that bad. It's about the human need for connection and love, and the ultimate sacrifice one can make for another. less
