Review by marievol6 - The Vegetarian

marievol6 's review for:

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

0.75

I’m struggling to figure out how to begin this review but honestly, if I didn’t know anything about the author and you told me Han Kang was a misogynistic man I would’ve believed you after reading this book.

I have no excuses to give to the author or the characters she wrote, or how she wrote them. First of all, the main character Yeong-hye stops eating meat because of horrifying, recurring nightmares. This, I understand. This I can relate to. Everything else happening around her shouldn’t have been written in my opinion. The way Yeong-hye is blatantly sexualized and abused and raped by her husband, not to mention force fed meat by her own father because they’re some “meat loving family” was awful and I cannot sit and read this and at the same time find nuance in this.

Chapter 1 is all about how Yeong-hye changes seemingly over night and how her husband can’t understand what’s going on, but he also doesn’t even make an attempt to help her, understand her or give her the opportunity to in honesty confide in him about what is clearly tormenting her. He sexualizes her. He complains about her. He rapes her. Multiple times. While having sexual thoughts about Yeong-hye’s sister. Instead he basically goes behind her back, gets her to her parents house for a dinner to corner her where her father quite literally holds her down by force and shoves meat down her throat. What the fuck.

In chapter 2, Yeong-hye is divorced from her husband (thankfully) but that doesn’t stop her terrors. Because now she’s being sexualized and taken advantage of by her sister’s husband because he learns about her having a mongolian mark on her ass which somehow sparks some weird fetish and desire in him. An artist who films himself painting her naked, then films them having sex, then films one of his art friends basically fucking Yeong-hye. No one’s helping her!!!!! The only reason she doesn’t end up having sex with this J guy is because he says “no, fuck you. why would you make me have sex on camera for an art project” (not a direct quote). The chapter ends when Yeong-hye’s sister walks in on her and her husband.

At no point in this book does anyone around her try to understand her, her illness or her plagued mind. They just use her, abuse her and lock her in a closed ward.

All this aside, the sexualization throughout this book, the SA, the abuse, everything going on left a horribly sour taste in my mouth and it was absolutely awful. To read something like this written by a woman baffles me, and if this was my first Han Kang book i’d never pick up another one again.

Content Warnings