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onthehummingbirds's review against another edition
dark
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Vomit
spacestationtrustfund's review
3.0
당신의 마음을최대한 차갑게, 더 단단하게 얼리기 위해 애썼다.This series of modern Korean short stories in English translation with the original text included is just amazing. I'm a big fan of Han Kang (한강), and it was so cool to see themes and concepts in 『회복하는 인간』 (회복하다 recover + 인간 human) that would be more fully developed in 『채식주의자』. Messed-up codependent sibling relationships for the win!
misuk's review
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
arirang's review
3.0
"You tried to freeze your heart to be as cold and hard as you could."
"당신의 마음을최대한 차갑게, 더 단단하게 얼리기 위해 애썼다."
"회복하는 인간" / "Convalescence" by 한강 (Han Kang) is Volume 24 in the Asia Publishers bilingual series of Modern Korean short stories.
For my general comments on the series see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1709389820?.
This story has been translated by Eugene Jeon Seung-hee, and the literary critic's afterword comes from Cho Yeon-jeong.
Han Kang recently shot to prominence in the Anglosphere as the first winner of the new form of the Man Booker International Prize with The Vegetarian (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1182938971), and indeed has sold 500,000 copies of the Korean original on the back of this award. Her Human Acts, was, for me (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1552367731) an even stronger book, so I was particularly looking forward to this.
Convalescence is a very short work, but has strong echoes of The Vegetarian, with its scarred, literally physically as well as emotionally, second person subject.
The story starts with her visiting hospital for treatment on wounds on her two ankles, both badly burned and now severely infected after an acupuncture cauterisation treatment went wrong.
"The doctor is calm and cold. It seems that he can't understand a patient who got burned five days ago and did nothing about it until the injury was infected."
It is soon clear that she was oblivious for so long to the physical symptoms of infection, due to her mental distress:
"You've already forgotten how much you liked witty jokes and how much you cared about your appearance [...] that you liked to wear bright-coloured, free-spirited clothes [...] that you always wore a faint playfulness in your downward slanting eyes."
The distress is caused by the death, only a week earlier, but after a lengthy and painful illness which she kept secret until near the end, of her elder sister. Indeed the acupuncture was necessitated by an ankle sprain caused by supporting her mother at the funeral.
Her sister was much more conventionally successful in looks, finance and marital life, yet "you couldn't understand why your sister was jealous of all your shortcomings [..] she seemed to keep her life at a distance as if shunning foul smelling food."
Their already uneasy relationship changed fundamentally when, in college, she accompanied her sister to have an abortion. Part of her sister's hurt later in life lies in not subsequently managing to have children with her husband, and her simultaneous embracing of material happiness and yet shunning it, her sister explains as "hid[ing] behind generally accepted ideas [...] a quiet shell house like a turtle or snail."
"She knew that you were the only person who would forever keep the secret from anybody, including your parents. Because she knew that you loved her with all your heart. Despite that knowledge, your sister no longer loved you after that day. She didn't want to talk to you, or even look you in the eyes. Although you tried very hard to regain her heart for a few years after, you realised one day that no effort of yours could bring back her love and you turned away from her.
[...]
You asked who was colder, you or your sister?
[...]
You tried to freeze your heart to be as cold and hard as you could."
After visiting hospital for an initial, not totally reassuring diagnosis, on her ankle she returns home despite knowing "that you have to visit your parents this weekend to comfort them. Even if you don't make any effort to comfort them, you, their remaining child, will comfort them just by being there.
But you are trying not to do that.
You want to be alone."
And as she returns home the story switches very effectively from the present to a future tense, as the narrator describes the physical healing process that will eventually occur but of which she is currently ignorant, with a series of:
"You don't know yet that..."
But it isn't at all clear she wants to be healed. At the end of the story, she rides her previously beloved bike despite being "afraid of remembering that joy, You're afraid of remembering that dizzying speed", but finds that in practice, the riding merely exacerbates the pain in her ankles.: "You think you'll keep riding anyway. You don't need to fear joy. You don't feel joy."
But the bike ride ends in a crash and as she lies on the ground assessing her new injuries:
"You mutter a prayer over and over again to no specific god that you may not recover from whatever you're suffering now, that the cold soil may become even colder so that your face and body are frozen hard, and that you never get up again."
Overall a powerful but too brief work, with the themes more fully developed in The Vegetarian.
"당신의 마음을최대한 차갑게, 더 단단하게 얼리기 위해 애썼다."
"회복하는 인간" / "Convalescence" by 한강 (Han Kang) is Volume 24 in the Asia Publishers bilingual series of Modern Korean short stories.
For my general comments on the series see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1709389820?.
This story has been translated by Eugene Jeon Seung-hee, and the literary critic's afterword comes from Cho Yeon-jeong.
Han Kang recently shot to prominence in the Anglosphere as the first winner of the new form of the Man Booker International Prize with The Vegetarian (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1182938971), and indeed has sold 500,000 copies of the Korean original on the back of this award. Her Human Acts, was, for me (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1552367731) an even stronger book, so I was particularly looking forward to this.
Convalescence is a very short work, but has strong echoes of The Vegetarian, with its scarred, literally physically as well as emotionally, second person subject.
The story starts with her visiting hospital for treatment on wounds on her two ankles, both badly burned and now severely infected after an acupuncture cauterisation treatment went wrong.
"The doctor is calm and cold. It seems that he can't understand a patient who got burned five days ago and did nothing about it until the injury was infected."
It is soon clear that she was oblivious for so long to the physical symptoms of infection, due to her mental distress:
"You've already forgotten how much you liked witty jokes and how much you cared about your appearance [...] that you liked to wear bright-coloured, free-spirited clothes [...] that you always wore a faint playfulness in your downward slanting eyes."
The distress is caused by the death, only a week earlier, but after a lengthy and painful illness which she kept secret until near the end, of her elder sister. Indeed the acupuncture was necessitated by an ankle sprain caused by supporting her mother at the funeral.
Her sister was much more conventionally successful in looks, finance and marital life, yet "you couldn't understand why your sister was jealous of all your shortcomings [..] she seemed to keep her life at a distance as if shunning foul smelling food."
Their already uneasy relationship changed fundamentally when, in college, she accompanied her sister to have an abortion. Part of her sister's hurt later in life lies in not subsequently managing to have children with her husband, and her simultaneous embracing of material happiness and yet shunning it, her sister explains as "hid[ing] behind generally accepted ideas [...] a quiet shell house like a turtle or snail."
"She knew that you were the only person who would forever keep the secret from anybody, including your parents. Because she knew that you loved her with all your heart. Despite that knowledge, your sister no longer loved you after that day. She didn't want to talk to you, or even look you in the eyes. Although you tried very hard to regain her heart for a few years after, you realised one day that no effort of yours could bring back her love and you turned away from her.
[...]
You asked who was colder, you or your sister?
[...]
You tried to freeze your heart to be as cold and hard as you could."
After visiting hospital for an initial, not totally reassuring diagnosis, on her ankle she returns home despite knowing "that you have to visit your parents this weekend to comfort them. Even if you don't make any effort to comfort them, you, their remaining child, will comfort them just by being there.
But you are trying not to do that.
You want to be alone."
And as she returns home the story switches very effectively from the present to a future tense, as the narrator describes the physical healing process that will eventually occur but of which she is currently ignorant, with a series of:
"You don't know yet that..."
But it isn't at all clear she wants to be healed. At the end of the story, she rides her previously beloved bike despite being "afraid of remembering that joy, You're afraid of remembering that dizzying speed", but finds that in practice, the riding merely exacerbates the pain in her ankles.: "You think you'll keep riding anyway. You don't need to fear joy. You don't feel joy."
But the bike ride ends in a crash and as she lies on the ground assessing her new injuries:
"You mutter a prayer over and over again to no specific god that you may not recover from whatever you're suffering now, that the cold soil may become even colder so that your face and body are frozen hard, and that you never get up again."
Overall a powerful but too brief work, with the themes more fully developed in The Vegetarian.
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