Our two book club books for online and in-person groups were A Time for Mercy by John Grisham
and The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See,
both good books, but neither of them were happy, happy reads.
A Time for Mercy, is a sequel to A Time to Kill, and in some respects the story line is similar, instead of a black man accused of killing a white man, this time it is a low-income young man who admits to killing a police officer who was abusing his family, but especially his mother, whom the young man thought was now dead. Jake Brigance is called in to once again work his magic.
At times, I felt like I was getting a law degree in reading the book. Several people thought there were too many extraneous stories going on in the book, and while that didn’t occur to me at the time, once it was pointed out, I would have to agree.
Grisham does a wonderful job writing and catching the tone of small-town Mississippi in the 1990’s. We were all stunned that if a lawyer gets asked by a judge to take on the defense of an indigent client accused of capital murder, the state of Mississippi only gives them $1000 to do it.
The story line might have been a bit different if occurred in 2022 with DNA testing and more advanced forensics, but it was an interesting read. Clay and I both read it, and he hated the ending even more than I did—and I really did not like it. They left you dangling on many fronts, so many unanswered questions. I liked the book a lot except for the ending. I got the feeling that Grisham was tired of the story telling and just stopped. I wanted more. Overall, our group gave it a rating of 3.75.
Today we discussed the Island of Sea Women and it was historical fiction at it’s finest.
The author obviously did a ton of research on these fierce women on a small island off of mainland Korea called Jeju. The main characters are two young women from very different backgrounds who become best friends. The life they all live is incredibly hard, but it is all they know. The community in which they live has a matrifocal culture where the women work as divers to harvest sea life to sell. The men stay home and take care of the small children. These women divers, Haenyeo, are super women who can hold their breath for an incredibly long time, and work in extremely harsh and cold conditions. When the story begins, they dive in thin cotton garb—todays Haenyeo do wear wet suits and flippers.
There life at work is hard, but their home life is just as bleak. They live on an island built off of volcanic rock and have no running water, plumbing or electricity. The story begins with Young-sook as an old woman on the beach harvesting seaweed. A young family arrives who try to visit with her, and the story flashes back to her life as a teenager.
It is a part of the world I know very little about, and it covers their hardships through WWII, and the Korean War. Their island has many countries vying for it over the years, and all they want is to be left alone. Tragedy is everywhere in this book, and at times I had to stop reading because things were so sad. This novel covers, guilt, forgiveness (or the lack of it), and blame. It was not a fast read, but a fascinating one. It also led to a lot of great discussion. Overall we gave it a 3.9 rating.
I liked both books, but they both had some difficult parts to get through. I think The Island of Sea Women was a fascinating read about a totally different culture, so I enjoyed it probably the most.
I have also gotten immersed in Vera books by Ann Cleeves, and am on book 4 now. I also like Deborah Crombie and am on book 4 or 5 of those. What are you reading?