Book Review- Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

With the passing of Kim Jong-Il, I figure this is a great time to post my first book review.  I actually got this book on the last day our Borders was open, and they were selling two books for 50 cents, so I loaded up.  This book turned out to be excellent.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick.

This is a love story, really, at least part of it.  But it's the simplest kind, where the boy from the right side of tracks and the girl from the wrong side of the tracks don't hold hands for three years and don't kiss for six, despite spending almost all of their time together in complete darkness.  You don't believe it, and yet after reading the book, you do.  You end up rooting for both the kids and their parents, even though they have completely different viewpoints and motivations.  Somehow you still root for the ultra-patriotic mother, despite the knowledge that her patriotism is based on a ruthless dictator. You feel bad for the school teacher, who tries to motivate her kindergarteners, even as she slowly starts to see them die, one by one, from starvation.  You wonder why, even after all this, there are still just a trickle of people trying to defect from a country that is so obviously broken.  They're now moving into the third round, from Kim Il-sung, to Kim Jong-il, now to Kim Jong-un.


READ THIS BOOK IF...
- You like to see into a hidden world, a place that really doesn't know anything about the world outside it.

There's a scene in 'Hunt For Red October' where 'Soviet' Sam Neill is talking to 'Soviet' Sean Connery, and the exchange goes like this:

Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck... maybe even a "recreational vehicle." And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Captain Ramius: I suppose.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?
Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state.
(thanks, IMDB) 

At the time, I kind of laughed at this as some exaggeration we in the West use to pigeon-hole Communists, but after reading 'Nothing To Envy', you see how it's still like this, and so much worse.  Every aspect of life is controlled.

Here is the link to the book.

Here is the author, Barbara Demick's page.