The Vegetarian

This book is a perfect example of rating a book a five star even though you found the reading experience disturbing and painful. This book is beautifully written and Deborah Smith's translation is stunning. However the subject matter is deeply disturbing, dark and haunting. This book deals with mental illness, dark dreams, physical and mental abuse and anorexia and a plethora of many other difficult subject matters and the book remains terribly heartbreaking until the very end. This book will upset and haunt me for a long time after finishing it. Nevertheless, I think this book is so powerful and the plot and the characters are so strong. In under 200 pages this book has made me feel a rollacoaster of emotions for all the characters and at many instances this book made me conflicted over who I sympathised with more and to me that makes this book a five star read. I was engrossed in a rather morbid way throughout the plot. I think the structure of the novel was handled so well so that the plot never got too tedious and you never lost the integrity of the tone of the novel. A world class piece of literature to me that certainly deserved the man booker prize award. I certainly will be reading more of Han Kang's works!