FICTION
KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982
By Cho Nam-joo, translated by Jamie Chang
Scribner/Paperback/ 176 pages/$22.95/ Pre-order here/3.5 stars
Kim Ji-young has one of the most common female names in South Korea. Kim Ji-young is a daughter for whose birth her mother apologised; a wife expected to be grateful that her husband "helps out" around the house; a mother who gave up her career for her child. Kim Ji-young is depressed.
Kim Ji-young is every woman. Literally. One day, she starts channelling the personae of other women - her elderly mother, a schoolmate who died in childbirth - to her husband's alarm.
The third novel by former television scriptwriter Cho Nam-joo (above) ignited a war of the sexes when it was first published in 2016, as Korean women flocked to its clarion call against systemic sexism and were in turn attacked by those who felt it discriminated against men.
It sold more than one million copies, was made into a 2018 film that people petitioned the South Korean president to ban and reportedly caused break-ups in the country.
Now it is being brought out in English in a lean translation by Jamie Chang, in which understatement belies long-simmering rage.
This slender book is a litany of micro-aggressions ever on the verge of detonating into atrocity.
From their childhood, Ji-young and her older sister are expected to put their little brother first - a brother who exists because their mother, under pressure from her in-laws, aborted a third daughter.
At a job interview, Ji-young and two other female candidates are asked how they would respond to workplace sexual harassment.
A stalking incident nearly tips over into assault before Ji-young is rescued by an alert bystander. Her father scolds her for wearing a short skirt and talking to strangers.
This can, at times, seem less like a novel and more like a polemical tract. It makes no bones about its didactic nature and is peppered with statistics, such as "The percentage of female employees who use childcare leave has increased from 20 per cent in 2003 to more than half in 2009".
Unfortunately, little is made of the premise of Ji-young's multiple personalities, though the narrative is saved from one-sidedness by an unsettling shift in perspective in the final chapter.
It is easy to see why many female readers are drawn to it. It is insistently relatable. A woman can see herself in this book, especially the harm she never knew she internalised.
Still, there is little in the pages that will convince male readers to hold that mirror up and scorn their own image. This is a clear-eyed look at damage done, but also bleakly shows how much farther society has to go.
If you like this, read: The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Granta, 2015, $18.95, from here). A Korean housewife shocks her family when she suddenly turns vegetarian, then increasingly vegetative, in this spare, unnerving parable that won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.
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