A review by belladonnashrike
The Vegetarian by Han Kang

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

the premise is really intriguing and I loved the commentary on differing from your family/peers as well as your culture/society altogether and I felt that was very strong. the institutionalization aspect of it was even stronger.

it was very character-heavy but the characters felt very hollow, which I found odd. I saw others mention how they wished the story was also told from the perspective of yeong-hye - but I feel like telling the story from her point of view would defeat the purpose of the narrative. the entire point is that she’s an outcast, and that she’s behaving in ways that others find odd and harrowing.

I don’t like when writers switch perspective styles (it starts off in first person, then the final two chapters are in third) - I find it very distracting.

I also feel like it was too short and could’ve gone more into psychological horror
(i loved the parts detailing her dreams and how she seemed to be photosynthesizing… i know that i wouldn’t have found out why she was doing what she was doing, and i wasn’t too concerned with that. I just wanted to see more of the behavior that terrified her family so much, it was interesting).
  the time jump between the first two stories felt off to me - I think there should’ve been 2-3 short stories in between. 

I did like the story itself, I just had issues with the execution. 
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