Review of Sea Change by Gina Chung

*Sea Change* by Gina Chung (2023). Published by Vintage.

Between April and the end of May in 2024, I would say that I was in a state of flux. I was wrapping up my master’s thesis, which was on colonial Korean women’s literature, and I was almost done my master’s degree. By the end of May, I had walked across that stage and was preparing to move to South Korea and India.

So I did what I did best to cope within the time frame when I was at home waiting to head out to South Korea. I’d lost my car in an accident, so every weekend my mother drove me to the library, and I would get a stack of books to plough through in the month. Each day, I got a little bit closer to my goal of 175 books in a single year.

Sea Change was one of those books I found in the depths of the new fiction section of my library. I had heard of Chung through the writing Twitter circles and of the book, but I never got around to reading it because of the five million other things I needed to do while I was in graduate school.

I picked it up the first time I saw it in the library, and I finished the book in one night. All in all, it was a pretty quick and accessible read.

Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much!

A grieving aquarium employee learns her beloved octopus is about to be sold off to a rich person.

The main character in this novel is Ro, and a lot of parts of her life suck right now. Her boyfriend ditched her, and probably is never coming back to this relationship, to be trained as a part of a crew who will be sent to Mars.

As we learn through her random calls to him when she’s about to breakdown, he’s mentally checked out of this too. If only Ro were capable of doing the same.

Ro doesn’t really talk to her mother due to a plethora of reasons, and her father went missing a while ago while on the job. It’s been years since anyone heard anything from the crew he was with, but she still clings to this hope that one day he will come home.

Now in her thirties, Ro decided to honor him in a different way. While still knee deep in her denial about the fact he’s probably long dead, she works at the aquarium he worked at, which is located inside of a mall. Her best friend also works there in a higher up position, but Ro feels like she’s drifting from her too.

She spends her days contemplating her life and everything that’s gone wrong, especially as her friend plots out her marriage and becomes someone she doesn’t even recognize. So Ro finds her sole companion in Dolores, a huge octopus her father found while on one of his trips.

Dolores is her only friend and the one creature that will understand her, but when her best friend, in charge of the finances, approaches one day saying they’re going to sell Dolores in order to keep the place open, it sparks something new within Ro.

A lot of this novel is about grief, and Dolores is the only connection she has left to her father and the life she had before he vanished.

As she slumps deeper into depression and cans of Mountain Dew, her apartment slowly falling apart just like her life as, there’s a sliver of redemption to be had in all of this.

Overall Thoughts

I’d say I enjoyed this novel overall. It feels like a strong effort from Chung, and although the main character is someone a lot of people probably cannot relate to personally, there are some compelling metaphors scattered throughout.

I don’t know if I would return to it soon, though. I didn’t love it enough to want to include it in my personal collection. It’s also pretty short and snappy of a read, and I think I wanted a little bit more from it.

I could see how someone could like this, and another wouldn’t. That’s a rule that goes for everything we consume though, but if you find yourself interested in this premise and/or book, go ahead and pick a copy up!

You might find it worth it at the end of the day.

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