The Caligrapher's Daughter

This book was the first book in a while to keep me reading for a few weeks because I couldn't finish it all at once like I normally do with books. I don't know why it surprises me that there are books which exist which will not be super easy reads for me. It wasn't a hard book to read, but the things that are in the book are very heavy subject matter, and the way that it is written gives a most interesting look at some of the less appealing aspects of the history of the people of Korea. I did have a few issues with the fact that the book itself was written from a bunch of different people's points of view and the names of the characters and the proper names by which they were addressed in Korean society were commonly switched and interchanged. It was a bit hard sometimes to follow the changes in the speaker and the common names throughout. It was to a point where the same sentence in a few places would refer to one character by different names. It made for a bunch of re-reading being necessary to really get the things which the author was trying to say. I didn't really appreciate it sometimes, because it made reading go so much slower.
I enjoyed the story, felt genuinely attached to the main character -- though I really found the relationship between her and her father quite annoying. He blamed her for a lot of things, and in the traditional Korean society, did not even name his daughter, so our character did not really have a name for the whole book. That was weird. The main reason it was so weird was that it wasn't really ever explained fully as to what the heck was going on between this man and his daughter.
I loved the descriptions and the writing style throughout this novel. I rather loved the way that the author took the time to see all the beauty which surrounded our character, even when she was in her unhappiest days. The love story which ended up entertained throughout this piece was beautiful and the thing born of ages where one could marry and never again see one's husband.
Overall I'd say read this book, absolutely. I would advise that you take some time to really sit down and read this. It is heavy and covers many topics from the many years this character lived. It ends with the fall of the Japanese after the atomic bombs were dropped. The ending is a bit sudden, but the book is certainly worth the read. I rather enjoyed it as a break from the normal books I read.

Next on the list, and I hate to admit that though I started it last night, I'm almost completely done with it already....

I read Alice Hoffman's The Ice Queen and have been enraptured by her writing style ever since. I had no idea if this would live up to the first book I read or not... but I knew I had to find out, as Angela highly recommended it and I felt that I really should take it in and read it as she LOVES this book!