The Vegetarian by Han Kang Book Review

 The Vegetarian 

By Han Kang (South Korea)

Published Year: 2007

Page Count: 166 pages 

Medium used : Kindle PW 

Genre : Contemporary Fiction, Fantasy, Suspense, Trees, Child Abuse, Sexism, 2023-read.

Man Booker International Prize Winner 

Rating : 4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The narration/text-prose flows right out of the page into reader's mind - making this an easy to imagine and memorize most of the scenes novel. While the text is easy, the underlying implications and messages are a bit harder to grasp. What the narrator, through multiple characters associated with the protagonist,is trying to convey about her internal struggle or the absolute lack of it - is a brilliant mind bender. Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Totally a worthy read!! 

Yeong-hye is a married woman, who due to a series of horrid dreams, makes a decision to stop eating meat. She stops buying it,cooking it and eating it. She loses lot of weight and becomes a bundle of bones encased by a thin layer of translucent skin. Her husband, who comes off as a forceful character, tries to pull in her family for intervention in the matter. Her father, who was abusive to her all her childhood and most of adult life,tries to forcibly mouth feed her some meat. She spits out whatever is put into her mouth and in a desperate attempt to get out of her predicament, slashes her wrist with a fruit knife. Commited to a mental hospital and against all opposition and cajolery, she sticks to vegetarianism and eventually stops eating anything. Her sister, In-Hye, tries to convince her to mend ways but she is so sure that her dream/desire to become a tree are going to be realized. Perhaps that's true or she is just a schizophrenic who is imagining stuff. Her sister can make no sense of it. But In-Hye also starts getting some recurring dreams and gradually begins to lose grip on reality and finds it hard to be happy at all. 

To be completely honest, I don't fully get what the ending implies! Is Yeong-hye, who has passively accepted every abuse she was subjected to all her life, doing herself a favor and checking out of a pathetic human life by becoming a tree? Is there really such a thing as a human turning into a tree? Is her sister, In-hye, by association with her, taking on the role of a bird now that Yeong-hye's conversion into a tree seems complete? How and where do these transformed people live? Will they both starve themselves to death and awaken as the species they mutated into? 

I guess, I will keep searching for answers and pondering on this for a while! An interesting and unconventional book this one surely is!