By Adam Johnson
What a great book 52, and a powerful way to reach my goal.
When I was about 100 pages in, I thought this book would be quite a dud. Little did I know, the action was non-stop and intriguing. I'm not into mysteries, but this was a different type of mystery (and definitely does not fit the mystery category). There was all kinds of evidence, but it was hard to piece things together until the end. This is the kind of literature I love--every little detail has a meaning, and is somehow relevant later on.
The storyline took me about 300 pages to fully piece together. The first second of the book was very straightforward and fast-paced. The narrative of Jun Do's life included enough detail to get the main idea, but was not weighed down with unnecessary descriptions. The second half, at the beginning, completely confused me. There are three different perspectives that recount the second part of the story, and it took a while to put them all together. Once I did, it became much more than a single-stranded tale, but a complicated web of corruption, totalitarianism, fear, and consequences.
I'm so thankful I read Nothing to Envy: Tales of Ordinary Lives in North Korea a few months ago. This gave me necessary background about the struggles of the people of North Korea, and the harsh propaganda that keeps this regime going. Otherwise, I don't know much about North Korea.
This book received a Pulitzer Prize in 2012, and I believe it was well deserved. This book I highly recommend!
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