5/5 LOVED THIS BOOK!!! By far my favorite book so far this year. I’d also definitely recommend this as a beach read, but you can read and enjoy it any time, and place.
The haenyeo are fascinating, and I loved reading and learning about their culture. Young-sook’s story captivated me from page one not only because of the great plot and complex characters, but also because Lisa See’s writing style is just…*chef’s kiss
Full review below ⬇️
It’s so hard to pick a single favorite aspect of The Island of Sea Women, but if I had to, it’s the friendship between Young-sook and Mi-ja. There’s a quote from the book in reference to their relationship that I love:
“The moment your baby is wrenched from your insides, love may not be what you feel. Love must be nurtured and tended to in the same way we haenyeo care for our fields under the sea. With arranged marriages, many wives fall in love with their husbands quickly. For some, it can take years. And for others, decades of marriage will always be filled with loneliness and sadness, because we never grow the connection to that person with whom we share our sleeping mat. As for children, every woman knows the fears and sorrows. Joy is a delicious luxury that we experience most cautiously, for tragedy conceals itself around every corner. How different it is with friendship. No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else ever will.”
As you can tell from the quote above, marriage, motherhood, and the duty of being a woman are MAJOR themes in the book, and I thoroughly enjoyed how these topics were explored, especially through the lifelike conversations between the haenyeo and the different experiences the characters have.
Touching, heartbreaking, uplifting, and inspiring, this is a story about friendship and womanhood, but the setting of South Korea from the 1930s all the way to 2008 also made The Island of Sea Women (for me) a very educational and interesting read. The main character, and many other characters, being haenyeo made this a one-of-a-kind story I couldn’t put down.
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