The Vegetarian
By Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith
Publication Year: 2016 (originally published in Korean in 2007)
Type: Fiction
Genre: contemporary
Read on 2019-01-31
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★☆
~insert crude comparison to Haruhi Murakami~
So I think it helps to go into this book knowing that it’s got 3 acts, each in the perspective of a different character describing the “main character” from their own lens and at the varying stages of her descent into like...poetic madness.
Also that this book is more like a short story than a plot-centric novel. Lotta metaphors and imagery, not a lot of explaining, stuff happens.
I didn’t really get into it or understand what was happening until the third act which was from the perspective of In-hye, Yeoung-hye’s sister. It was really only then that the themes of women suffering from the patriarchal violence and trauma, bearing the weight of societal expectation, and coping in self-harming ways struck me. It’s a rough read for sure but ultimately a very striking one.
Massive kudos to the translator, Deborah Smith. I will never know the original Korean but the language of this English translation - the cadence of it and the gentle and then rapidly spiraling prose was wonderful. Subtle and elegaic, in the end.
See me review this book in this video!
