Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Greek Lessons

I struggled to engage with the story and the characters, I think mostly because their past experiences and life circumstances are narrated in a very disjointed way, and it wasn't easy to match the pieces and get a complete picture. It was an overly ambiguous and blurred type of storytelling that didn't work very well, for me at least.

However, I can still appreciate the beautiful writing style. There were many moments when I re-read sentences and reflections just to savour how expertly and poetically they were constructed.

In the end, I think I was more disappointed because I've previously read and absolutely loved other books by Han Kang (namely Human Acts and The White Book) and I started this one with a lot of expectations.

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sanctuary_in_the_pages's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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keegan_leech's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

I adore Han Kang's writing, and if you are a fan, then Greek Lessons will almost certainly appeal to you. For those who aren't familiar with the author, this would be a great first novel to read.

Han is a writer strongly fixated on metaphor. Greek Lessons, like her other novels has a central narrative conceit which is less a focus of the novel than it is a vehicle for Han's philosophical concerns. In this case, a woman who has lost speech but is fascinated by the linguistic and textual structures of language, and a man who teaches a dead language and is slowly loosing his sight. The history and relationship between these two become Han's basis for exploring the limits of expression, connection, and experience.

Some of these explorations stray into "philosophy first year getting a little wasted and speculating about existence with friends" territory. Characters have a tendency to wonder to themselves questions which could have been left implied, but the novel is not badly hampered by this occasional heavy-handedness. The novel is quite blunt, but Han never condescends or forces a conclusion on the reader. Instead, the novel pushes a reader back and forth between questions about language and trauma and human connection, provoking thoughts, but never settling on a particular one for long.

Beneath it all runs a deep and powerful emotional current. A kind of bittersweet reflection on the characters' lives and experiences. It shapes the novel well, and connects what might otherwise become disordered and overly-intellectual meanderings.

If you want a collection of thematically-connected Imagist prose-poems then Han's The White Book is pretty much exactly that, but Greek Lessons leans a little more towards the prose side. Its thematic concerns a little more direct and its narrative throughline more concrete. It is an excellent journey into Han Kang's wonderfully affecting style and her challenging, ruminative content. Highly recommended, whether you are a returning fan, or someone stumbling upon her work for the first time.

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