It's hard to rate and review a memoir, so I'm mostly doing this by comparing what I was most interested in as a reader vs what the book gave, and the overall writing.

Firstly, Park is coming from a perspective that is new to me: someone who was born in Japanese-occupied Korea and was a teen at the beginning of the Korean War. This puts her in a sort of in-between generation: she exclusively learns Japanese in school and is taught loyalty to the emperor, and her peers struggle with the abrupt change back to Korean-ness later on. I adore reading things like this from perspectives I've never seen, so that right there was super compelling for me.

The descriptions of her childhood were real, funny, touching, and alien all at the same time, and I had a good time reading those sections even though they weren't always that interesting, to be perfectly honest. We spend a long time talking about her childhood habits and impressions of those around her, and a lot of time traveling between her home village and Seoul. The character of her grandfather was really interesting, as a representation of an older generation who clung to pre-occupation Korea and certain traditions from the previous century. Park is able to showcase his learned flaws (open misogyny, classism) without condemning him too much, and also while showing his human side.

It takes a very long time for anything to start happening in terms of the politics around Park. The school sections were kind of tedious, and it would have been nice to have some indication of the tension and buildup from the end of WWII to the beginning of the Korean War, because it kind of seems to come out of nowhere. This is likely because, as a tween/early teen, it probably did almost come out of nowhere for her. I was surprised at how quickly and easily WWII was passed over, although the bits we got were really interesting to see from a Korean perspective. When the civil war comes, it does so kind of slowly - people are in denial and want to go on with life as usual.

So the pacing was a bit off for me, and I would have liked more wider context about the leadup to the civil war from her perspective, but I get why we don't have that. Once the war does come, though, I was really enthralled: Park's exploration of ideology - especially from the point of view of young people like her and her brother - was both nuanced and realistic, and showcases how easily led people are and how these kinds of divides can sneak up on a community. Chance plays a huge role in the last third of the book, and we see how tiny choices and random events can have huge impacts in such a heightened context.

I found her views on leftism particularly interesting, because even though Park had been taught that anything "left" is horrible for her whole adult life (and this comes through a bit), she's still able to respect her former leftist self and her brother/his peers for what they were trying to do. It feels like she's warring with her inner impulse that says she should condemn anything that's even leaning towards the bogeyman of Communism, because she might still have some tendencies in that direction herself. More than anything, though, she comes off as a realist: she's not naive enough to think that most people in Seoul in the 50's made any kind of deeply ideologically-driven choices, but rather they made the choices they thought would serve them best to survive the situation. She herself consciously chooses to turn her back on some ideals because they're not practical for her time and place. I respect that a lot, and I think she did a wonderful job of conveying these nuances.

In terms of the writing: this is a translation, and in some ways it definitely reads as one. There are a lot of English idioms that sound strange to me coming from someone like Park. But as a translator myself, this tells me that her writing style is heavily colloquial and makes free use of idioms and in-group references, and I think the translators did a good job of getting that across. It almost comes off as listening to a granny chatting about her youth. Park is funny and descriptive; her writing is engaging and easy to read. At the same time, she's able to weave in themes really well, and when she's reflecting on the big issues of her youth it doesn't read as heavy handed. We get a lot of profound discussion of those issues even though her writing is always fairly light.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this memoir, but I'm not sure everyone will. I have a strong interest in history, so I mostly enjoyed the sections about her life as a child, but anyone who's more interested in the politics and war of it all would struggle to get through the first two thirds, I think. IMO it's worth a read just for the last third that explores the outbreak of war in Seoul, but anyone who would be interested in a slice of life in occupied Korea would enjoy this book.

(Also note: I wanted to put a flag emoji here to help people looking for Korean lit, but this book doesn't sit easily as being labeled North or South Korea. Park spends the whole book traveling between her country village in what's now North Korea and Seoul for school, and she's not firmly one or the other. She spent the rest of her life in South Korea after the partition, but this books deals with her youth and I don't think it's fair to put an anachronistic label on it.)

This is more about the horrors of society than a classic horror story. I didn't find it very suspenseful nor frightening and I honestly appreciate that! But if you're looking for something more than body horror, this probably won't satisfy you.

Enjoyment I enjoyed the retold fairytales very much! The book was also surprisingly addictive to me and I found it hard to put down.

Quality The women's stories were interesting comments on the horrors of society and what it means to tell your own story against victim blaming, the discrediting of women, true crime / reality tv voyeurism, and generally sexism and patriarchy. The only thing that didn't really work for me is the overarching story on how and why they're coming together in this therapy group.

Characters If you're looking for likeable characters, you might want to look somewhere else... Some characters and their stories left me rather uncomfortable but even then they generated lots of sympathy in me for what they had and have to endure.

Plot Even though I'm not made for horror or suspense books, I think at some points there was great potential to dwell a bit more into the dread and mystery. Like, sometimes things were resolved too quickly in my opinion. Also, the ending that comes with the overarching story didn't do it for me, I was expecting something more out of it - still, I enjoyed the women's stories very much and was quite hooked by the book.