A review by dawntin
The Vegetarian by Han Kang

dark sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

What a dark and devastating book! I read this for a class, and was told it would go well with the ecofeminist analysis of literature. It did, though definitely not in the way I thought things would go. Some of the story was definitely lost in translation but I still thought it was okay. The plot was a bit hard to get through at times because of how violent it was: full of family/marriage issues, mental illnesses, and trauma. The narrator changing with each section of the book was interesting, but I did not like
the main character’s husband or her sister’s husband’s perspectives
at all. The drama that unfolded was like a wreck I couldn’t stop looking at. The narrator was never who I wanted to hear from (Yeong-hye gets her small snippets in the form of dreams, but nothing else). I guess that was a part of the book’s main point.
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