REVIEW: Apartment Women by Gu Byeong-mo
Book #54 of 2025, done!
📖BOOK: Apartment Women by Gu Byeong-mo
🎧FORMAT: Audiobook via Spotify
📚GENRE: Contemporary Fiction
📅RELEASED: 2024 (English Translation)
⏱️AUDIOBOOK LENGTH: 4 hours and 30 minutes (listened at 1.5x)
⭐RATING: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
👉 PURCHASE: Via this link
Note: This is an Amazon affiliate link. If you make a purchase through this link, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
🧳SYNOPSIS:
”When Yojin moves with her husband and daughter into the Dream Future Pilot Communal Apartments, she’s ready for a fresh start. Located on the outskirts of Seoul, the experimental community is a government initiative designed to boost the national birth rate. Like her neighbors, Yojin has agreed to have at least two more children over the next ten years.
Yet, from the day she arrives, Yojin feels uneasy about the community spirit thrust upon her. Her concerns grow as communal child care begins and the other parents show their true colors. Apartment Women traces the lives of four women in the apartments, all with different aspirations and beliefs. Will they find a way to live peacefully? Or are the cultural expectations around parenthood stacked against them from the start?”
💬THE VIBE:
Slow burn. Subtle tension. A not-quite-utopia with way too many passive-aggressive parenting moments. Think literary fiction with a sharp undercurrent with no big explosions, just emotional cracks forming in a very polished wall.
💡STANDOUT ELEMENTS:
The light tension of living under a deadline to have children tied to a lease agreement (no pressure)
The communal nature of parenting and domestic life
The unavoidable proximity to each resident. Shared walls, routines, and expectations that turn privacy into a luxury
🧠WHAT STUCK:
I went in fully expecting a dystopian setup based on the blurb...but it wasn’t. And once I let that go, I really appreciated the quiet storytelling. Korean fiction often leans into this kind of layered emotional realism, and it did that beautifully here.
👎WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:
The pacing dragged at times, and some character threads felt like they faded out. And while I like ambiguity, I did want just a little more resolution in a few places.
🤔IF YOU LIKE:
Literary fiction with a sociological lens
Character-driven narratives about motherhood and identity
Korean novels that explore domestic life with nuance
🙅♀️IF YOU DON’T LIKE:
Slow-moving stories without a central plot
Books that leave things open-ended
📝FINAL VERDICT:
3 stars.
It didn’t deliver the dystopia I expected (and oddly love), but what I got instead was a slow, thoughtful look at motherhood, shared space, and societal pressure. If you're into quiet novels that say a lot without shouting, give it a listen.
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