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dreamingpages's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.0
This book is heartbreaking. Check the trigger warnings before reading.
I knew nothing about the Gwangju Uprising or the labor movement in South Korea before reading this book. It was really eye opening to see the hardships South Korea has faced in recent history.
Each chapter of this book takes place from a different character's perspective, each loosely tied to a central character: a boy who was killed during the Uprising. The chapters expand out in time, from 1980 to 2013. Choosing to write the book in this way encapsulates how these events ripple through time and S. Korean society; trauma like this doesn't just go away.
Han Kang examines the sheer staggering human capacity for cruelty and questions the existence of the soul. I cried several times and felt this book in my core.
I knew nothing about the Gwangju Uprising or the labor movement in South Korea before reading this book. It was really eye opening to see the hardships South Korea has faced in recent history.
Each chapter of this book takes place from a different character's perspective, each loosely tied to a central character: a boy who was killed during the Uprising. The chapters expand out in time, from 1980 to 2013. Choosing to write the book in this way encapsulates how these events ripple through time and S. Korean society; trauma like this doesn't just go away.
Han Kang examines the sheer staggering human capacity for cruelty and questions the existence of the soul. I cried several times and felt this book in my core.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Sexual assault, Grief, Gun violence, Torture, Murder, Rape, Suicide, Police brutality, and Sexual violence
ros_scallydandler's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Not an easy book to read but beautifully written.
ametakinetos's review against another edition
4.0
Human Acts is a slim number of 218 pages, but weighs on your soul like nothing I have read before.
It's a rarity in that it genuinely encapsulates the national and yet personal trauma that occurs after an event like the Gwangju uprising. The years of pain and survivor's guilt and knowing there are parts of yourself that are never coming back, questioning how you can ever claim to be a united people after the atrocity that occurred.
Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi? As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them.
Kang's straightforward approach captures how life still has to go on, even in the face of tremendous grief (as The Mother says, "the thread of life is as tough as an ox tendon"), but it is accompanied by beautiful, heart-shattering prose that keeps the emotional edge sharp and raw in every line. Using the singular life and death of a middle-school boy, emphasizing the miniscule like a Monami Biro, a candle in a soda bottle, the betrayal of hunger, water from the fountain, the snow seeping through The Writer's socks...the human mind cannot comprehend tragedy on this scale, and thus it is the little things that break us.
I still remember the moment when my gaze fell upon the mutilated face of a young woman, her features slashed through with a bayonet. Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't even realized was there.
Another review mentioned this, and I echo it: seeing a POV for one of the soldiers would have been fascinating. It is important to note that mandatory military service for South Koreans began in 1957 and would have been alive and well in 1980. These soldiers didn't enlist out of support for the regime or any particular desire for violence - they were likely not much older than the high schoolers. Exploring their angle would have continued to serve the narrative that we truly don't know the conditions that transform a human into a piece of meat. That all of us have that potential to be just as cruel and unfeeling.
Overall, I recommend this book, but it is no manner peaceful bedtime reading. It will leave you in a much different state than when you began, and there is little in the way of hope.
It's a rarity in that it genuinely encapsulates the national and yet personal trauma that occurs after an event like the Gwangju uprising. The years of pain and survivor's guilt and knowing there are parts of yourself that are never coming back, questioning how you can ever claim to be a united people after the atrocity that occurred.
Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi? As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them.
Kang's straightforward approach captures how life still has to go on, even in the face of tremendous grief (as The Mother says, "the thread of life is as tough as an ox tendon"), but it is accompanied by beautiful, heart-shattering prose that keeps the emotional edge sharp and raw in every line. Using the singular life and death of a middle-school boy, emphasizing the miniscule like a Monami Biro, a candle in a soda bottle, the betrayal of hunger, water from the fountain, the snow seeping through The Writer's socks...the human mind cannot comprehend tragedy on this scale, and thus it is the little things that break us.
I still remember the moment when my gaze fell upon the mutilated face of a young woman, her features slashed through with a bayonet. Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't even realized was there.
Another review mentioned this, and I echo it: seeing a POV for one of the soldiers would have been fascinating. It is important to note that mandatory military service for South Koreans began in 1957 and would have been alive and well in 1980. These soldiers didn't enlist out of support for the regime or any particular desire for violence - they were likely not much older than the high schoolers. Exploring their angle would have continued to serve the narrative that we truly don't know the conditions that transform a human into a piece of meat. That all of us have that potential to be just as cruel and unfeeling.
Overall, I recommend this book, but it is no manner peaceful bedtime reading. It will leave you in a much different state than when you began, and there is little in the way of hope.
Spoiler
As a Christian, this book was especially heartbreaking for its grasping for answers. Is there such a thing as a soul? Should the dying be pitied or envied? Do we linger? Does anyone remember? Do we carry on? These questions have answers that none of these people, fictional here but very real elsewhere, ever found. And that saddens me above all.lostinliterary's review against another edition
5.0
I have never felt such deep emotions for any book before. After I was done reading I felt so empty and broken that I started crying. Now it has ultimately become my favourite book and I still find myself thinking about this book every now and then even after two years.
petals4pages's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Gore, Gun violence, Body horror, Mass/school shootings, and Police brutality
Minor: Self harm
yarfaqikhdir's review against another edition
5.0
Until the very end I was comforting myself by hoping none of it was true but even more gruesome than the stories is perhaps the fact they're all true and happened not only in South Korea but also in other countries, anyways let's hope no pig dictator ever rules any country.
Honestly I will be brutal to Japanese lit, it's improper and childish and pale compared to Korean lit, this is no favoritism, but every Korean book I've stumbled upon had a deeper message and was heavy but evidence to the events that have happened, when I think about the Japanese ones...they're not only immature but also lack creativity and generational trauma and heartbreak that makes historical books actually meaningful and not redundant!
Content warning: there's so many from hate speech to body horror to torture and rape, if you get triggered by these don't come near Human Acts.
Honestly I will be brutal to Japanese lit, it's improper and childish and pale compared to Korean lit, this is no favoritism, but every Korean book I've stumbled upon had a deeper message and was heavy but evidence to the events that have happened, when I think about the Japanese ones...they're not only immature but also lack creativity and generational trauma and heartbreak that makes historical books actually meaningful and not redundant!
Content warning: there's so many from hate speech to body horror to torture and rape, if you get triggered by these don't come near Human Acts.
ebrark's review against another edition
5.0
"It’s sunny over there, Mum, and there’s lots of flowers too. Why are we walking in the dark, let’s go over there, where the flowers are blooming."