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A review by inherbooks
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
4.0
“It’s your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you’re free to do just as you like. And even then that doesn’t turn out how you wanted.”
✨
This is an intimate exploration of autonomy, its breach and subsequent perversions. What starts out as a decision to stop eating meat for Yeong-Hye turns into a torturously painful war for the right to choose, to exist and not to.
Her story is told through their story – her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister – and is told in three separate parts. In her quest that transforms into one where she no longer wants to exist as she does, everyone else takes the opportunity to project their own insecurities, wants, needs and burdens – as though by ceasing to exist, she is now a vessel, a blank sheet or canvas for all that they did not have the courage to be.
✨
“Only then did he realize what it was that had shocked him when he’d first seen her lying prone on the sheet. This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire and yet it was a body from all desire had been eliminated. But this was nothing so crass as carnal desire, not for her – rather or so it seemed, what she had renounced was the very life that her body represented.”
✨
Each part fleshes out the jealousy they felt towards Yeong-Hye. Her choice, was treated as a threat to their livelihood – she was subjected to *repeated* acts of violence throughout the book simply because they did not agree. (sound familiar?)
Han Kang has packed a punch and then some into just over 180 pages. There is no page or sentence that shies away from detail that makes you FEEL. Yes, I lost my appetite for a few hours but that didn’t mean I put it down.
A page-turner in a truly unconventional way that leaves you grimacing, angry, mouth wide open, Han Kang has (once again) has served us the meat (no potatoes) on a plate of societal/humanity's deficiencies and kept it coming. Are we so closed-minded that we would rather see someone caged all in the name of supposedly 'doing the right thing' no matter the cost?
TW: suicide, rape, assault, self-harm, eating disorder, rape
✨
This is an intimate exploration of autonomy, its breach and subsequent perversions. What starts out as a decision to stop eating meat for Yeong-Hye turns into a torturously painful war for the right to choose, to exist and not to.
Her story is told through their story – her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister – and is told in three separate parts. In her quest that transforms into one where she no longer wants to exist as she does, everyone else takes the opportunity to project their own insecurities, wants, needs and burdens – as though by ceasing to exist, she is now a vessel, a blank sheet or canvas for all that they did not have the courage to be.
✨
“Only then did he realize what it was that had shocked him when he’d first seen her lying prone on the sheet. This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire and yet it was a body from all desire had been eliminated. But this was nothing so crass as carnal desire, not for her – rather or so it seemed, what she had renounced was the very life that her body represented.”
✨
Each part fleshes out the jealousy they felt towards Yeong-Hye. Her choice, was treated as a threat to their livelihood – she was subjected to *repeated* acts of violence throughout the book simply because they did not agree. (sound familiar?)
Han Kang has packed a punch and then some into just over 180 pages. There is no page or sentence that shies away from detail that makes you FEEL. Yes, I lost my appetite for a few hours but that didn’t mean I put it down.
A page-turner in a truly unconventional way that leaves you grimacing, angry, mouth wide open, Han Kang has (once again) has served us the meat (no potatoes) on a plate of societal/humanity's deficiencies and kept it coming. Are we so closed-minded that we would rather see someone caged all in the name of supposedly 'doing the right thing' no matter the cost?
TW: suicide, rape, assault, self-harm, eating disorder, rape