saycheeze37's review against another edition
2.0
Started out great, but by the middle it got really wordy. I thought focus was going to be on the adopted daughters struggles, but because more about the father. I did however enjoy how though provoking it was.
scorpstar77's review against another edition
3.0
For an unmarried poor young woman in Korea, the orphanage represents an opportunity to give her much-beloved new baby a chance at a better life, one unmarred by poverty and lifelong manual labor and suffering at the hand of the patriarchy. For Elizabeth Carter, the orphanage represents the chance to adopt the daughter she and her husband want and the chance to fulfill a long-time dream of breaking boundaries and contributing to the socioemotional welfare of the world at large. For Coleman Carter and his parents, the orphanage represents a terrifying and unnecessary break with their traditional, moneyed, racist, Charleston society roots. But Soo Yun, the infant, and Elizabeth prevail, and the Carters end up bringing home a beautiful Korean baby girl who they name Allie. And everyone's world is better for it, though there are still many battles to fight, starting with Elizabeth's cancer and ending with the largest part of the book, Coleman's battle against an old-money Charleston secret society (to which his family has belonged for a couple hundred years) for his adopted daughter's right to attend her first ball there and become a member of the society.
There were parts of this book I really liked. I enjoyed the first chapters that took place in Korea with the young mother and Soo Yun/Allie as a baby and Hana the orphanage nurse very much. The overall plot was good, and the writing was decent. However, large swaths of the book felt overindulgent, the author's precious passages that he just had to include that were not essential to the story. This book was published by a university press, so I'm not entirely sure how heavily edited it was, but I feel it could have been edited much more. I would have cut out at least a quarter of this book - there are many, many examples of anecdotes and even characters that are just not necessary to the story, that bog the reader down in details that go nowhere. There were also a few instances of malapropisms or typos or something that just got under my skin, like using "caddy" where the author meant "catty". It is definitely an interesting book, a different kind of Southern novel than I've ever read before, and had the story been tighter, I think I would have liked it more. Instead, I started off really liking it and then meandered into average feelings as the book wandered all over the place.
There were parts of this book I really liked. I enjoyed the first chapters that took place in Korea with the young mother and Soo Yun/Allie as a baby and Hana the orphanage nurse very much. The overall plot was good, and the writing was decent. However, large swaths of the book felt overindulgent, the author's precious passages that he just had to include that were not essential to the story. This book was published by a university press, so I'm not entirely sure how heavily edited it was, but I feel it could have been edited much more. I would have cut out at least a quarter of this book - there are many, many examples of anecdotes and even characters that are just not necessary to the story, that bog the reader down in details that go nowhere. There were also a few instances of malapropisms or typos or something that just got under my skin, like using "caddy" where the author meant "catty". It is definitely an interesting book, a different kind of Southern novel than I've ever read before, and had the story been tighter, I think I would have liked it more. Instead, I started off really liking it and then meandered into average feelings as the book wandered all over the place.
alisiakae's review against another edition
4.0
This is a fantastic story from a not so very well-known author. It also shows Charleston, a city I love, at both its best and worst.
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