The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)

 

From Goodreads

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalisation. She unknowingly captivates her sister's husband, a video artist. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, while spiralling further and further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming - impossibly, ecstatically - a tree.

Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another. 

My thoughts

I chose this as one of my books to read on both of my 2021 Reading Challenges, one via The Book Club on Facebook (TBConFB) and the other with Debbie Macomber the Author, hers was spotted on Twitter.  I grabbed a copy via BorrowBox the digital lending side of my local Library.

I gave this a 4 stars or 8/10.

This is such an unusual book to review.  Told in three parts or three chapters, some of the characters appear in more than one part, so they are interlinked.  The book is very dark it features a lady who decides to become a vegetarian, yet that is only one aspect of the story as it has far more meaning to the story than just giving up meat.  Yeong-Hye has issues and feels that her life is passing her by in some ways, as she takes up vegetarianism her life takes her in directions that she hadn't anticipated.  Her husband comes across as bland and it's his blandness that she feels she needs to escape from.  Her means of escapism take her down a path that she probably never intended and she finds herself becoming quite an exhibitionist taking a lover and the book becomes quite sexually charged in many ways as we learn of her enlightened side.

Translated from Han Kang's native tongue, this is an odd read that had me entranced in it from time to time.  This is not the sort of read that I would recommend to the easily offended due to some of the erotic passages contained within the pages.  It certainly is a quirky dark read that deals with some sensitive subjects.