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Primavera Helada (2013)

by Kyung-sook Shin(Favorite Author)

3.98 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

8425349729 (ISBN13: 9788425349720)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Grijalbo Mondadori S.A

review 1: High four star review. Great coming of age tale set in late 1980s South Korea. Yoon, our main character, moves away when her mother becomes terminally ill and leaves her close friend Dahn behind. She meets two new friends at college, who are facing their own deep losses. This book is about the struggle to keep living when things seem overwhelming. I suggest reading the author's note at the end of the book first to get an understanding of what the political climate in South Korea was like at that time. The translation must have been well done, as the book reads so poetically.
review 2: Somewhere between 2.5 and 3 stars. Really beautiful prose at times in this book, but I found the plot depressing, and not in the "we still learn a lesson from it that makes ... moreit worth reading" way, just in a "things are basically hopeless" way. I also wanted more information on the protests and political situation than we ended up getting. I'm sure the history is common knowledge for the South Korean audience this was written for, but as someone unfamiliar with the situation I would have liked more on this. In the author's note she says that this was a deliberate choice in order to make the story more universal, but it was so heavily imbued with other elements of Korean culture (definitely not a bad thing) that I'm not sure it would have made a difference. I wasn't sure what to expect going into this, and I wasn't overwhelmed or underwhelmed but came away just "whelmed", I guess. less

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