Apartment Women
Gu-Byeung Mo
224 pages
December 3, 2024
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The book was kind of slow to read but the cultural band socio-economic aspect of a communal apartment was interesting to read about. It was almost overwhelming to read about all the paperwork that went in just to get accepted to live there. The social media posts and text messages kind of melted in with everything else written which was a bit confusing. The ending was a bit jumbled up and it wasn’t clear where the epilogue started. It was interesting to read about all these different families that dealt with different situations within their marriage.
I don’t think the translated title of “Apartment Women” really works for this book. It was more about how this community raised the multiple kids from the various couples. There were a lot of cultural struggles that the government had placed on whomever was qualified to live at the complex. Had to have three kids or at least work on a third…paperwork about your careers, family history, everything you can think of and then a contract they had to sign! A better fitting title would have been “It Takes a Village”, because in the end it was how everyone had to work together to watch each other’s kids, forming a day care and struggling financially to remain qualified to live there.
