Roxanne Reviews Apartment Women

Roxanne reviews Apartment Women by Gu Byeong-mo

One of the greatest gifts literature provides us is a global connection.  In Apartment Women by Gu Byeong-Mo, though the setting is South Korea, it might as well be Anywhere USA as the characters strapped for cash due to low paying jobs have the same issues as many Americans these days and agree to sign a contract to live in a special government subsidized apartment building.  

Keeping up with the Joneses (yes I’m dating myself with that reference), jockeying for alpha couple, fertility highs and lows are just some of the issues the couples navigate through.  Sure, there’s an element Americans don’t have to deal with (yet?) and that’s the pressure to increase the population, as the South Korean contract in the novel requires each couple to have at least three children or show proof that they’ve attempted (IVF procedures for instance).

The inner monologue of one of the three couples, Yojin, was compelling philosophically.  The push pull of mothering in assuring your child is exposed to the best activities and addressing their ever changing needs, all the while preserving  one’s own evolutionary growth.  Equally authentic was the male female dynamic between both married and co-dwellers trying to share parenting duties. 

One of the many other interesting conflicts is the “it takes a village to raise a child” theory.  Most of the couples are on board with sharing child rearing duties of their neighbors’ children, yet more introverted and creative Yojin feels pinched immediately by the communal requirements, unable to work on her drawings when her one child is at rest. 

I’m decades past my fertile years, but Gu Byeong-Mo’s novel was both relatable and intelligent and certainly falls into the ‘page turner’ many of our customers request.