The Vegetarian - Moé for Solarpunk Books

eBook, 200 pages

English language

Published Feb. 2, 2016 by Hogarth.

ISBN:: 978-1-101-90611-8
OCLC Number:: 896855397
ASIN:: B00X2F7NRI

Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.

A disturbing, yet beautifully composed narrative told in three parts, The Vegetarian is an allegorical novel about modern day South Korea, but also a story of obsession, choice, and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.

Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.

A disturbing, yet beautifully composed narrative told in three parts, The Vegetarian is an allegorical novel about modern day South Korea, but also a story of obsession, choice, and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.

4 editions

Fionnáin reviewed The Vegetarian by Kang Han

A tough novel about social norms

4 stars

With The Vegetarian I have now read four of Han Kang's five novels that have been translated into English. I adore her prose and artistic storytelling. This is her most famous novel, a story of Yeong-hye, a woman who becomes vegetarian and then makes a series of choices that give her other forms of agency, as the people around her become more and more aghast at these simple acts of refusal. Pointedly, the protagonist never gets to tell her side of the story. Her actions are told through three observers: her pathetic, patriarchal husband, her sister's artist husband, and her caring and diligent sister. Each observes her changing over time.

The first story is very difficult – her husband is an atrocious, weak and pathetic character who only married so he could dominate another human, and he is revolted by her small acts of refusal. The second is more …

With The Vegetarian I have now read four of Han Kang's five novels that have been translated into English. I adore her prose and artistic storytelling. This is her most famous novel, a story of Yeong-hye, a woman who becomes vegetarian and then makes a series of choices that give her other forms of agency, as the people around her become more and more aghast at these simple acts of refusal. Pointedly, the protagonist never gets to tell her side of the story. Her actions are told through three observers: her pathetic, patriarchal husband, her sister's artist husband, and her caring and diligent sister. Each observes her changing over time.

The first story is very difficult – her husband is an atrocious, weak and pathetic character who only married so he could dominate another human, and he is revolted by her small acts of refusal. The second is more mystical, and opens up fascinating questions about consent – Yeong-hye, despite being perceived as mentally incapable, still displays agency at key moments. Her mental capacity is judged more by those around her than by her – she seems perfectly comfortable with her decisions and her body. The third story, from her sister's perspective, is the best of the book. Here these questions of consent come to a head, and they are dealt with in heartbreaking fluidity by a text that seems to slip forward and backward in time.

Wonderful writing, but a very hard story and compared to her other novels it is maybe a little less refined, if still very powerful.

nerd teacher [books] reviewed The Vegetarian by Kang Han

I Liked the Final Story Far More

3 stars

Content warning Could have spoilers for the final story.

I want to start out with this: I don't know that this book is entirely for me. That's fine. It was still an experience to get through, and I only really started realising what the structure of the book was doing when I explained my discomfort with the first two stories to a friend and was starting on describing the beginning of the first.

To my friend, I had said: "All of these people are abusive assholes. I don't know if the sister is going to be, since I'm not done. But the husband and the brother-in-law were atrocious and disgusting." As soon as I said that, it finally clicked what was being done and the kind of message that Han Kang had wanted to transmit. And it's because the key figure, the person whose interiority we often don't have and who we're being pushed to look at as strange... is Yeong-hye. She's central to every story, but we're only allowed to follow the people harming her.

I do want to say, however, that the first story used shock value that hadn't been choreographed or foreshadowed multiple times. This includes the utilisation of suicide (which I thought this was done well despite the lack of foreshadowing, especially for the situation it is in) and two instances of animal torture and abuse (the first of which felt like it came entirely out of nowhere and was deeply frustrating, and the second was much more mild than the former but still could be upsetting). The second story involved a lot of sexual behaviours that were entirely questionable, which mostly felt discomforting because we know what the character we're following is thinking and the kind of obsessive attitude he has taken towards to object of his sexual desires. It's uncomfortable because we know what kind of tricks he's using to get what he wants and why he's treating people the way he is, which really isn't positive.

The third story, though, is her sister. Her sister isn't shown to be a good person. She's going through all the 'what if' moments and wondering where she screwed up and if she could've done better for Yeong-hye. She realises that she caused some of Yeong-hye's problems through the control she's had over her, by wanting to lock her away... and recognises that she's in the wrong. She's not presented as good but as changing. (I also like that she realises the kind of control that women are under by their husbands and the societal pressure of having children. It's woven in the story well.)