A review by lfinkenkeller
The Starlet and the Spy by Ji-Min Lee

4.0

I read this book for a book discussion group. I liked the book, and I loved its premise of a Korean woman who knows English escorting Marilyn Monroe on her trip to Korea to visit the troops during the Korean War. Beauty and ugliness are contrasted in this book in so many ways. There is is obvious beauty of Marilyn Monroe contrasted with Alice, the book's main character, who has premature gray hair and burnt hands from her war experiences. Then there is the ugliness of war and how that has caused Alice to see no beauty in anyone, any place, or anything. However, she still longs for that beauty as evidenced when she says at the beginning of Chapter 1 that “Those who endure have a chance at beauty…I have been testing that theory for the last few years." This is a story of Alice's search for the beuaty that is within her.