Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

La vegetariana by Han Kang

145 reviews

sofiascomeundone's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, and Eating disorder

canonically_k's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

I didn't get this book. I didn't want to finish this book. It was written fairly nicely (given it was a translation) but there were clearly themes and aspects that I just wasn't understanding.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Mental illness, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Body shaming, Gore, Rape, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Child abuse and Vomit

carirasreads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexism, and Sexual assault

mcluster1's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

This is such a strange book. The three POV tell three different stories about one woman’s decision to become a vegetarian and the fallout from that choice. It’s almost like reading 3 short stories based on the same thing. 

I think that I will revisit this book in a few months to see how I feel after a reread. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Eating disorder, Gore, and Rape

noxygens's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexual assault, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

martinza's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

About mental illness and abuse. Partially out of the perspective of the abusers.The description on the cover of my edition is grossly misleading. Be aware of the content warnings 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Suicide attempt, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Moderate: Rape

Rape described from the perspective of the rapist

monserrot's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

emily_journals's review against another edition

dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book is broken up into three segments, which are each told from a different character's POV and at different points in the story, which surprised me based on the description as I was expecting this story to all be from Yeong-hye's POV. Only the first segment has any of Yeong-hye's perspective, but her perspective is in the background of even that segment, as the first segment is from Yeong-hye's husband's perspective. 

I think the first segment of this book was my favorite, I enjoyed the commentary that the author was making about gender and family roles in Korea through the husband's perspective. I also enjoyed the snippets about Yeong-hye's dreams that were included in this segment, and I really wish this was continued throughout the rest of the book.

The second segment of the book is told from Yeong-hye's brother-in-law's perspective and this segment deals a lot with struggling with the failure to live up to expectations, and also with the exploiting and taking advantage of mental illness. This one was a bit weird to me, as the themes seemed to be working against the brother-in-law while the tone tried to make the audience empathize with him. I'm not sure if this tonal vs. theme discord was due to translation or if this was the way it was meant to be, but the discord was very off-putting and made me confused and unsure of what the author was trying to convey in this segment, so I didn't like this segment as much as the first.

The final segment of this book is told from Yeong-hye's sister's perspective and the main themes of this segment deal with the duties of  those in proximity to mental illness and the grief of losing someone while they're still alive. The themes of this segment are probably the most interesting in the book, but the sister's voice and inner monologue are quite strange, which might be due to translation but I'm unsure. The way that she switches between different feelings and trains of thought quite suddenly detracted from the story for me and made it really difficult to immerse myself in this portion of the book. 

Overall, I think the themes of this book were quite interesting, but I think either the author or the translation didn't have a clear vision of what voice they wanted to portray to the audience in the later two sections of the book. I also really missed Yeong-hye's short interjections in the later two sections that were present in the first section, I thought they added a lot to not only Yeong-hye's character but also to all the characters reacting to Yeong-hye in the first section. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Suicide attempt, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, and Domestic abuse

wichbich's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Mental illness, Rape, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, and Forced institutionalization

emily_lloyd's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

I went into this book pretty blind and did not realize it’s more of a horror-psychological book. The book contains three narrators describing their sister/wife/SIL downfall into anorexia and schizophrenia. I get the author was trying to write about how humans cannot be innocent being but the book was uncomfortable. Booktok did me dirty with this recommendation 😅 Highly considered DNF, but the book is very short 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Eating disorder, Rape, Self harm, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Vomit, Suicide attempt, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Moderate: Body horror, Chronic illness, Blood, and Classism