Title:
The Island of Sea Women
Author:
Lisa See
Read
by: Jennifer Lim
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster
Length:
Approximately 13 hours and 22 minutes
Source:
Review Copy from Simon & Schuster.
Thank-you!
The
Island of Sea Women is a riveting 20th century family saga about
forgiveness. This novel / audiobook is
destined to be on my top ten reads of 2019 list.
Young-Sook
is a young Korean woman growing up on the island of Jeju which lies between
Korea and Japan. Her mother is the chief
of their tribe of all-female divers.
Jeju is a matriarchal society where the women work all day diving for
rare specimens from the sea to sell, while the men look after the
children. Young-Sook is a “baby diver”
and is learning how to become a skilled diver like her mother when double
tragedy strikes. Helping her through all
of life’s turmoil is her best friend Mi-ja.
Mi-ja is known as the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, but having
Young-Sook and her mother’s acceptance helps her to navigate through her
difficult life on the island as an orphan living with an unloving aunt and
uncle.
As
Mi-ja and Young-Sook grow older, they have remained close, but ultimately, they
are driven apart. What could make two
such close friends become enemies?
The
story also would flashforward to the future where an elderly Young-Sook is
grappling with changes that have come to the island as one of the only haenyeo
left. While haenyeo used to retire at
50, there are no longer any young haenyeo and just elderly women that hold onto
the tradition. When an American family
visits the island to ask questions about the past, Young-Sook has to face her
demons and her choices. Will Young-Sook
be able to come to terms with the heartache of the past?
I
loved the Island of Sea Women. The women
and their culture were vividly drawn in this novel. The loved the characters. The two parallel stories were beautifully
woven together for a wonderful conclusion to this story. I didn’t know anything
about this island, and my knowledge of the Korean War is very limited. This helped to fill in the gaps for me. I’ll
admit that one part of this novel had me loud sobbing on my drive to work. I wonder what cars passing me thought? It was horrifying, but the crux of the novel
and beautifully written.
Narrator
Jennifer Lim did an excellent job of bringing the characters to life. I really enjoyed listening to this audiobook.
Overall,
The Island of Sea Women is historical fiction at it’s best – heartfelt, riveting,
and a great way to learn history that you may not know about otherwise.
I
enjoy stories with alternating narratives and liked how this one switched from
the past to the present and tied the story together at the end. Both narratives
are told from a first-person perspective.
I also really enjoyed the author’s note at the end which went over what
was the real history of the novel and how it was put together. The cover is beautiful. Even my eight -year old daughter upon seeing
it told me it looked “romantic” and she wanted to read it.
“There
is only love. Only truth. And this is mine.”
