Book review: In Order To Live by Yeonmi Park (with MaryAnne Vollers)

I don’t throw around adjectives like ‘extraordinary’ very often, but this book has earned it. In Order to Live is the extraordinary (there ya go) autobiography of Yeonmi Park.

Park was born in North Korea when foreign aid to the country was beginning to dry up and it began its inevitable slide towards famine. She tells, in stark and brutal detail, of life under a totalitarian regime whose leaders live like kings while everyone else starves. It’s one thing reading about it in the newspapers, but when you’re living it through the eyes of an excellent writer, then the whole idea of North Korea takes on a completely different perspective. What surprised me most about the book were the little pockets of dark humour. Here’s a question from a North Korean school lesson:

If you kill one American bastard and your comrade kills two, how many American bastards have you killed?

Eventually, Park’s family is faced with a choice: flee North Korea or starve to death. Park and her mother make their way to China, where they fall into the hands of  people traffickers. Pretty harrowing reading.

in_order_to_liveIt struck me how they were both willing to believe almost anything they were told by these people, but then I remembered they’d been conditioned to believe whatever they were told since birth. This makes North Koreans, in their desperation, especially vulnerable to traffickers and prostitution rings.
The two women are bought and sold until they eventually make their way to South Korea. The story doesn’t end there; freedom is especially hard on those who’ve only known some form of captivity their whole lives. Even the most basic things, like telling someone your favourite food when asked, can be something of a trauma.

It’s one hell of a read and compares well to Escape From Camp 14, which I also thoroughly enjoyed – though perhaps ‘enjoyed’ isn’t the right word.

In Order To Live is beautifully written, which I wasn’t expecting from a biography of this nature. It flows well, the language is simple and wonderfully descriptive, and as I’ve said, it is occasionally very funny. The best biography I’ve read so far? Quite possibly.

Ten out of ten.

Book review: The Girl in the Spider’s Web

I was a bit surprised when this one turned up in my ‘recommended’ list. I blasted through The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo series and thought that would be the end of it since the original author, Stieg Larsson, has passed away.  This fourth outing sees Mikail Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander thrown together again for another intricately woven conspiracy which seemed to be  aimed squarely at computer geeks. The new writers, David Lagercrantz & George Goulding, have made a commendable effort, though I think they’ve possibly missed out on much the shock value of the original. I wonder if it was toned down slightly to appeal to a wider audience. The characterisations are good, and for those familiar with the originals, might seem a little bit wordy. I was left thinking, “I know all this about her”, but then I guess a lot of people this might be their first Lisbeth Salander novel, so I didn’t get too hung up on it.

the_girl_in_the_spider_webLikewise with the technical detail; no prior knowledge is assumed so the first part of the book is a crash course in computer hacking and security (with a little bit of cryptography thrown in for good measure). I did find this a little bit dull, but again that could be because I know little bit about this stuff already. Still, I’m not sure it was entirely needed, certainly not all of it.

This isn’t one of the those book that goes in for the whole ‘show don’t tell’ style of writing. It’s unashamedly a tech thriller, so you were handed all the facts about someone’s life history and personality in one easily digestible paragraph. Got all that? Good, then let’s crack on … Still, I do prefer to discover people, rather than just be handed a dossier on them.

Despite the huge cast list and the complexities of the plot, the whole piece held together extremely well. I did find myself getting lost in one or two places, but the occasional literary signpost soon had me back on track. The writing style itself was fairly stark but not at all taxing to read.

So, information dumps aside, a really enjoyable book – though I’m not sure it’s quite reached the level of the originals.

A respectable six out of ten.