One Thousand Chestnut Trees: A Novel of Korea

Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: 1000 Chestnut Trees is a wonderful and highly enlightening book. Stout paints a very accurate and insightful portrait of Korea and its people. As a second-generation Korean-American, I was very well able to relate with Anna, in particular her experiences in modern-day Korea. Stout's impressions of Korea and Koreans are highly perceptive, and I was especially impressed with her ability to capture their essence in such a simple, easy manner. She also possesses a knack for humanizing each character in her novel, be it Uncle Hong-do or Anna herself. I found them highly believable and began to sympathize with them right away.

The diction is very eloquent throughout the novel-it strikes a perfect balance between the abstract and the concrete. I read other reviews that criticize Stout for being too "flowery" and "eloquent", but I disagree. Her style is very clear and precise. (Besides, isn't eloquence supposed to be a good thing? One can never bee "too eloquent".)

I have read quite a few books on Korean culture and history, but I have yet to find an author who can duplicate Stout's elegance and grace in presenting the topic.

Rating:
Summary: A must-read for Korean-Americans.
Review: As a Korean-American who grew up in the U.S., I have pitifully little knowledge of Korean history. Reading Mira Stout's book, all the bits and pieces I had heard of my parents' and grandparents' lives in Korea came together, and I realized the magnitude of the difficulties they all had to overcome. Anna, the main character in the book, comes to better understand her mother by exploring the history of Korea--Japan's overbearing influence, the "yangban" class, World War II, and the division of North and South Korea. This book drew me closer to my own mother and heritage. I couldn't wait to tell my mother about the book and to ask her more about her own story.

My mother's Japanese-given name was Michiko--there's so much I never would have known if I hadn't read this book. Many thanks to the author.

Rating:
Summary: somewhat disappointing
Review: The premise for this book was promising - but the substance was a disappointment to me. I almost felt the book should have been twice as long - and would have preferred to have the personality of the characters developed further. It just seemed to go too fast. I thoroughly enjoyed the historical aspects - in fact I learned alot I didn't know about the Korean War, etc. I don't doubt the fictional story is based in interesting historical fact - but great periods of time seemed to have been left out. For instance - it referred at one point to the younger son having been put in a sanitarium but the details of this interesting occurance was left out of the story. It was just an OK story.