The Vegetarian

Seré muy sincero, no entendí muy bien la obra. Tal vez no tengo la capacidad para entenderla, pero como me mantuvo interesado todo el libro. La forma de escribir es bastante visual y las imágenes que evocaba son a la par maravillosas como terribles. A veces solo queremos ser arboles en medio del bosque, sin matrimonios horribles.

So having read two Korean translations I'm entirely capable of passing judgement on a nation's literary output. Apparently Korea is obsessed with guilt in a country where men are assholes.

Yeong-hye is described by her husband in the opening lines as “completely unremarkable in every way” then goes on to eschew meat of all kind. Naturally this leads to her cutting her wrists when her father tries to force meat into her mouth. She later sleeps with her sister's husband after he paints flowers over them both. He tries to leap off the balcony to his death when they are discovered while she decides that she is a tree.

Koreans are crazy.

UPDATE
OK so here's a less glib review of The Vegetarian as it continues to enjoy continued critical acclaim. Perhaps it's more evidence of the quality of the read that it leaves it open to such diverse interpretation - that it's afforded the level of seriousness of many of the review I've seen.

I felt her refusal to eat meat was actually a feminist reaction to the patriarchal Korean culture that still seems mired in the sexist idea that a women's place is in the kitchen. Korea food is centered around “banchan” or multiple side plates that accompany the main course. It's heavy on effort and value judgements are made on the quality and quantity of these dishes. She is railing against the constraints food has placed on her and the expectations that come with it.

Then on to the sexualization of women in section two. Believe it or not, Korea outstrips both Japan and the US for porn consumption. As a culture it still uses sex to sell (think pre Mad Men era advertising in the US for cars, cigarettes etc) There is an obsession with appearance: Korean men wear more makeup then men in any other country. Epicanthic fold surgery is the most common surgery performed by university girls in Korea and nearly 50% of highschool aged girls have had cosmetic surgery done and many will go on to sculpt noses and narrow chins to create a uniform “ideal” face. So maybe I'm just Psych 101'ing the whole thing but the painting is about the objectification of women that has been internalized culturally.

I'm a little lost on the third part. I'm not as clear on the mental health state of the nation. It could be the intense pressure to succeed. The stress of university exams, getting into a chaebol which control 50% of the Korean economy, the martyr worker complex and a fixation on keeping up with appearances. But maybe I'm reaching.

When I finally turned the final page of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, I was torn: there was a part of me that found the book unsettling, and another that found it mesmerizing. A few hours later, having ruminated slightly upon the effect it had on me, I came to describe it with another, more apt word: visceral.

Ms. Kang's novel is ostensibly about a woman who decides to become a vegan and the repercussions of that decision on the circle of people around her; it is also a story about the body, about what touches it, what enters it, and what destroys it.

The prose, even in translation, is jarringly visceral. The descriptions are terse, but palpable, as if every touch, every cut, every bite is happening to the reader and not to a fictional character. I left several pages with goosebumps, with nausea, and even with pain—Ms. Kang's writing is evocative enough to create this kind of physical reaction.

More visceral, however, is the narrative. The driving force of the novel is watching the characters eat, touch, fight, cut themselves, have sex; every action in The Vegetarian has some kind of physical effect on the character, and every physical effect has a corresponding mental and emotional impact. Lives unravel because of what people choose to eat, what people choose to do, who people choose to fuck—in many cases, any choice or agency is gone, and the physicality is forced upon the character—and this unraveling culminates in an ambiguous understanding that who we are is ultimately defined by who and what we touch.

I did not likeThe Vegetarian, but my appreciation for the novel extends much beyond the dichotomy of like and unlike. I felt the novel, palpably, and this viscerality is what I will remember about the book, long after I have returned it to the library.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

There is clearly some level of meaning – allegory, metaphor, something – that I am missing because I know little to nothing about Korean culture. What I took as the core idea, the insanity or not of the wish to give up humanity and become a tree or plant, was intriguing, especially within the family contexts given (abuse, abuse, and more abuse), but I was looking for something beyond that which I did not find.

Just finished. Short, potent, distressing. Because of disturbing dreams, Yeong-hye becomes a vegetarian–a vegan, really–to battle the darkness inside herself. The first part of the novel is told from the point of view of her husband, who is really quite a wretched person. He's cold and sexist and can't handle that she won't let him eat meat at home anymore. One could write a feminist thesis on this part alone. She never details her dreams, and he's not that interested. After he tells her family what's been going on, all hell breaks loose.

Part two, we discover that he's divorced her, and that she has spent time in a mental institution, after which she lived with her sister and brother-in-law. The brother-in-law is our main character for this section, and he becomes fixated on Yeong-hye because of her lingering dermal melanocytosis (I totally had to look that up, because it occurs in only roughly 5-10% of white babies, and I'm white). He is a middle-aged artist, a mite dysfunctional, and he dreams of painting her over with flowers and having sex with her. He does this, and it basically ruins him.

In part three, we get the p.o.v. of Yeong-hye's older sister In-hye. This part is particularly heartbreaking, because she is essentially an ideal woman, but her life is falling apart. She is a good cook, a good wife, a good person, looks after her sister, is a devoted mother, and runs her own business. Basically, from what I can tell, with very little appreciation. Her husband leaves her after his fiasco with Yeong-hye and goes into hiding. Yeong-hye is put in a mental institution again and slowly begins to starve herself as she disconnects from everyone and everything around her.

This is not a cheerful novel. But it is awesome in a way that it seems writers like Banana Yoshimoto and Natsuo Kirino are awesome, full of subtle but intense emotion and devastation.

The Vegetarian has been on my shelf for a while now. I only pulled this off for the Orilium Magical Readathon as one of the books on my TBR the longest.

This has absolutely nothing to do with being a Vegetarian. That is more of a backdrop to this dark, extremely disturbing and weird story. I am honestly not sure what the overall point of this was supposed to be...

The writing is good and the pacing fine so I didn't hate this one but I didn't love it either. Overall, just a strange read.

Why, is it so bad to die?

This was so eloquently disturbing. It's that kind of book. Slow, creeping, plotless exploration into the minds of 3 people whose lives are interconnected. 3 very different kinds of madness. Very psychologically disquieting.

This is probably not for everyone, but if you like weird, trippy, open-ended horror you might also like this one. This book will not give you answers but will make you think about them.