Good evening!
Hope you’re all staying warm in the snow! This is my favourite kind of weather, sorry to be that annoying person -- I really don’t like the heat.
Anyway, this week I’ve read two books, one on the Korean War and one on the Vietnamese War (my next read will not have war in it, I’m at capacity).
What I’ve been reading this week and what I think about it
I read Ji-min Lee’s Marilyn and Me (2019), translated by Chi-Young Kim, which imagines the life of the interpreter assigned to Marilyn Monroe when she visited the American troops in Korea during her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio. I liked this a lot -- I think it effectively used a pretty recognisable cultural event to highlight the context that it happened in, which is often removed from it.
The translator is Alice, a woman who keeps to herself while working in administration for the Americans stationed in Korea. Before the war she was an illustrator, living carefree in Seoul and producing propaganda flyers and posters for the Soviets. In the present day, she is thought of as strange -- she is not old, yet her hair is completely grey, and she does not look after herself well. Alice wears her strangeness and isolation quite proudly, because (it is evident from the beginning) she believes she deserves to be thought of in this way, and is beyond defiance.
Even though this is a slim novel of not even 200 pages, Lee packs in a huge amount of events, all told in sparse prose. Everything is revealed slowly and without haste,and it is impressive that she got all of it in without making it feel crammed. I can’t really say too much about the plot without giving key bits away, but this is a really impactful representation of war, and how the ‘it can’t happen here’ mindset doesn’t protect anyone, and how it is weaponised against communities for imperial purposes.
The version of Marilyn in this text is a controlled one, leaning into well-known aspects of her character (always being late, conscious of how she looks). It is also a sympathetic one, which doesn’t dismiss her as stupid or a tool of American propaganda (which it could easily have done). It highlighted how people acted strangely about and towards her, almost resorting to violence to get near here, reflecting the violence of the war that was ending during this period. It was also really good for showing how Hollywood films were distributed and received around the world, and how the stars of the day were famous in a really striking capacity.
I watched the Hitchcock film Notorious (1946) this week, which was comparable to Marilyn and Me on a thematic level. Considering the appearance of Marilyn and how it features Hollywood, I don’t think it is vapid to draw comparisons between the book and the film, but it might seem odd on the surface. Ingrid Bergman’s character plays a woman who is thought of as a bit fast, a drunk , and whose father has recently been imprisoned for conspiring with Nazis in America. She is removed from her father’s actions and opposes them ideologically, but she is still thought of as a bad character. Other people’s perceptions are used to the advantages of an undercover operation in South America, and the film focuses on how she is manipulated and put in danger because of it. Alice and Marilyn, in Lee’s novel, are also inextricable from the interests of their individual countries, and the perceptions that other people have on them dictate how they live their day-to-day lives, but emotionally they are beyond caring. An interesting angle to present women’s lives through.
I also read Cecile Pin’s Wandering Souls (2023), which was kindly gifted to me by 4th Estate books. I really, really liked this, and was glad to see it longlisted for the Women’s Prize. It is set just after the war in Vietnam, as thousands of Vietnamese people leave as refugees, having had their lives turned upside down from the conflict. It is told from multiple perspectives (again, I can’t detail exactly what those perspectives are in case of spoilers), but it is a form that works really well for this story. It builds up a varied representation of post-war Vietnamese life, while leaving enough for you to fill in your own perceptions. It is a very controlled text, and is therefore very effective.
The novel’s main premise is following the life of Anh, a teeanger from the Central South, who leaves with her two brothers, with the rest of her family following them. They go to Hong Kong first, where they are processed as asylum seekers. The plan is that, once the whole family unit is back together in Hong Kong, they will apply for asylum in America, where Anh’s uncle has settled. Events, however, do not go in their favour, and instead Anh and her brothers have to face the reality of being war refugees, which is an often demoralising and uncomfortable experience. One of the most effective aspects of Wandering Souls is its presentation of refugee camps, and how people’s individuality is often denied to them.
The novel is a really good account of how diasporas function globally, and how isolation and disappointment is often a big part of it. Anh’s sense of hopelessness at different points in the novel is visceral, and her smaller moments of inward reflection show how massive, earth-shattering events can impact a person’s sense of self and sense of community. It is, however, ultimately a book about hope, and how this is delivered to people in unexpected ways.
Books on my radar
I think my next read will be Adrian Duncan’s A Sabbatical in Leipzig (2020) -- after a lot of reading about war, I’m ready to read about an Irishman who thinks a lot about bridges.
Definitely intrigued by Wandering Souls so I’m glad to hear you liked it!