Reviews

• Good!

  For a used book, this was totally fine for me. There are a few small creases from previous use and a slight stain, but nothing major. It’s still readable and original, I’m happy with it.

• おもしろかったです

  日本語訳が出ていたのを知らずに英語版を購入したのは、BBCで紹介されていたからだ。 ちょっとめんどくさい……と思ったけど、翻訳者も同時受賞したので、賞の価値をあじわうには英語で読むべきなのだと思う。 ＊ ＊ ぷっつんと来た妻が主人公の奇妙な物語でした。 ある日、夫が帰宅すると、冷凍冷蔵庫の肉をすべてぶちまけていた妻…… そしてなぜか唐突に肉断ち宣言…… そしてなぜだか妻は同時期に「のーぶら生活」も始めて…… 力ずくで菜食主義をやめさせようとする親たち…… 強引に肉の交わりを求める夫…… そしてちょっと悲しい結末…… 韓国人の生活の一部が描かれていて興味深く読みました。 やっぱり文学のよさの一つはその世界の人の生活が描かれていることだと思います。 それにしても、韓国人の名前が覚えにくい。 日本でも基本カタカナ表記になってしまいましたが、アルファベットでもその認識しにくさは同様でした。 いんへよんへよんほ…とか出てくると、男か女かもよくわかりません。 （昔みたいに漢字に韓国語読みで書いてくれると覚えやすいんだけど……） まぁそんなことはいいか…… man booker international prize おめでとうございます。

• bizarre

  Yeong-hye は30歳代でごく普通の平凡な結婚生活を送っていたが、ある日突然恐ろしい悪夢を見て、vegetarian になると決心する。 以後、両親や姉との絆も結婚生活も壊れ、彼女自身の身も心も狂気のうちに壊れていく。 この物語は、特にとりえもないが失敗もない会社員の夫、ビデオアーティストとしてあくなき探求にのめりこむ義兄、そして５歳の息子を抱えつつ化粧品雑貨の店を営む姉、この３人がそれぞれ Yeong-hye と関わるようすを描く三つの章から成っている。 著者の Han Kang （韓江）は韓国人で、その英訳版が２０１６年ブッカー国際賞を受賞したので（大江健三郎氏の Death by Water も longlist に入っていたのだけれど）読んでみようと思い入手した。 英文自体は読みやすいが、その内容はあまりにも bizarre 、カフカの変身を思い出させるような。 どんな感動も希望もなく、重い読後感が残った。

• As expected

  As expected

• 第三部が一番出来が良い

  1. ３部構成小説で、第三部が一番出来が良いと思う。ちなみに２番めは第一部。第二部は取ってつけたような内容なので、読み飛ばしても良いと思った。 2. 現実的な家族小説としても怪奇小説(とちょっと表現が変かな）として読むことが出来るが読者にそれを決めさせないところがこの作品の肝だっと思う。 3. いわゆる現実的な小説として作中の出来事は一応合理的な説明(またはその糸口)らしいものは提示されているが、それにしたがって解釈されるのは作者の本意なのだろうか？と疑問をいだきながら読んだ。 4. 作品としても面白かったが、他の人の解釈も気になる作品でありそういうのはある種の功徳なんだろうなぁ。

• Why?

  I liked this book a lot, in an odd kind of way. The topics presented in the book aren't light ones and the book creeps under your skin, leaving you bare and raw to the naked eye. It repeatedly has you asking the question "why?" and it leaves you hanging at the end in limbo, still asking "why?".

• Timely, tragic, truthful

  It’s timely, tragic, truthful......... i can relate with the sister more though. Every body is strange, some are just good in pretending to be ‘normal’, or atleast what the society requires of us.

• Just wow!

  This must be some book because I am not an avid reader yet I was able to finish this in 4 sessions in 4 days!

• A fascinating, dark read

  A fascinating read. Very different to anything I've read before. I had no idea where it was headed and had to keep turning the pages on a very strange and tragic journey. Explores some pretty deep and dark themes - mental illness, anorexia, and the way we relate to people who make choices that are different to ours. A difficult but rewarding read.

• Wow

  The first reading I had from this author. Fabulous and deep. It is about the choice. It is also about the human nature. The choice that goes beyond the extreme. After this, I bought other books from the same author. Warmly recommended.

• Inquietante, incómodo y absolutamente brillante

  No es un libro fácil; he ido leyéndolo un poco despacio, pero creo que por eso es tan bueno. La historia parte de una decisión aparentemente simple (dejar de comer carne) y la convierte en algo mucho más profundo, oscuro y perturbador. Es una historia incómoda, incluso "violenta" por momentos, pero escrita con una sensibilidad y una belleza muy poco comunes. La estructura en tres partes, contada desde distintos puntos de vista, hace que la protagonista resulte casi inalcanzable, lo que refuerza esa sensación de extrañeza constante. Más que una novela “sobre vegetarianismo”, es una reflexión sobre el cuerpo, el control, la identidad y la incapacidad de entender a los demás. No es para todo el mundo, pero si conectas con ella, es una muy buena lectura.

• It gets under your skin

  The Vegetarian is a tree-part novella, each narrated by a different character. The main character is Yeon-hye, a young married woman who suffers a mental crisis and becomes a vegan in a country and family where veganism is not well-seen. Her crisis will affect all members of her family in unexpected ways, opening a box of Pandora that will varnish with emotional crisis everyone it touches. The other two major characters are her sister In-hye, and the unnamed artist In-hye's husband. The three parts are: 1/The Vegetarian = We are told the story of Yeon-hye'd through the eyes of her husband Mr Cheong, 2/Mongolian Marks = We are told the story of Yeon-hye's artist brother-in-law. 3/Flaming Trees = We are told the story of Yeon-hye through the eyes of her sister In-hye. The Vegetarian is Yeon-hye's vanishing act in three chapters as each shows a progressive deterioration of Yeon-hye's body and state of mind. The Vegetarian is also an three-way immolation: self-destruction, self-obliteration, and self-denial (Yeon, In, and the artist respectively). **************** The Vegetarian is not an easy book to read, sad, tragic and depressing but also artistic, erotic, lyric an poetic. The book has layer upon layer of meaning, and touches many different subjects that are organically intertwined, and that the reader will discover as they read along. # Some of these subjects and themes are immediately obvious: ~ The social and family structure in South Korea. ~ The objectification of women. ~ The nature of desire. ~ The nature of artistic creation. ~ The effect of trauma and the suppression of emotions on the psyche. ~ The many facets of violence in our daily dealings. From feeding somebody against their will, to emotionally using somebody disregarding their emotional needs, having intercourse with a person who is not in his right mind, or enduring life without living it fully. ~ Social and personal boundaries. # However, I see four major themes in the novel: ~ One is the seek for the real self, because that true self is what we really are, the voice in our inner speech. The closer you are to your true self and your true inner voice the healthier your state of mind. This novel shows this masterfully. . ~ The second is that reality is perception, which is tarnished by our psychological projections.What is more, reality is part o our dreams and dreams are always real no matter how fantastic and mysterious they look like. All the characters say, at certain point in the novel, that the other person is a stranger to them, or that they don't really know them, even though they are family. We can only know other people to a certain extent, even when we think we know them well. We are projecting all the time. ~ The third is mental illness. Which are the repercussions on the social network of the sick person? Where and what is the line that separates sanity from insanity? Who is most insane, the insane person whose mind exteriorises the trauma, or the sane person who cannot deal with the trauma within their own sanity? ~ The fourth is Human Nature vs. Nature. In the book, the former is equalled to violence, suffering, lack of peace, and being stuck, while the latter is equalled to peace, fluidity, happiness, movement, truthfulness, to life as in zen. In fact, the three characters develop a special relationship with Nature, Yeon-hye wants to be a tree, the artist wants to self-obliterate himself into nature through flowers, while In-hye sees trees and forest as holders of the mysteries and answers she is still to get. This links well with Korean culture and Korean connection with the forest, trees and mountains and with some ancestral animist believes that still permeate Korean culture. **************** There is a heavy presence of strong oneiric elements and moments in the novel that affect all the main characters in the book, Yeon-hye, In-hye, her husband and her son. The oneiric element works perfectly in the novel because dreams are the messengers of the psyche, they are the bed where the soul rests, the mirror of the true self, that part of the human being that is honest and says to you how you feel. Dreams are also a space where reality and non-reality mix in organic but mysterious ways. The dream is the seed of our hidden truths, of our moments of elation and those of despair and anguish. The dream is always emotional. And this is the case in the novel. We see our characters' frigid emotionality in their awaken life, but very emotional in their oneiric life. We see their dreams speaking their inner truth. However, the dream is not only an literary element here. There is a strong dream culture in South Korea, still alive nowadays. **************** Regarding influences, we Westerners have a western-centric view of the world that we project all the time, especially with successful Asian artists. We tend to see the influence of any major Western artist on any successful Asian artist who becomes popular in the West, and also a tendency to put in the same bag all those Asian artists who become popular in the West. In a way is understandable. Those are the cultural anchors we have because, when it comes to South Korea, we don't have enough knowledge of the language and culture of the country to do differently. Besides, we are reading a translation and, no matter how good the translator is, this is never the same as reading a work in its original language. What can we say about the use of language, play of words, choice of words, sentence structure and on any other linguistic characteristic that is intrinsically linked to the literary value of any literary work? Some critics with too much space to talk nonsense have made connections between Han Kang's writing and Murakami, and found all sort of Western literary influences on this book. Well, I don't see the connection with Murakami at all, mind you. The connection with The Metamorphosis could be made, albeit quite vaguely. I also have my own projections, of course. Here my mental association. The second chapter and the erotic flower theme resonated with me and brought to mind a video who I saw many-many years ago, the scene of the copulating flowers in Pink Floyd's The Wall (you can still find the clip on YouTube) because, somewhat, I found there was a similar energy, the madness, and darkness even. Han Kang has personally said in some interviews, that her work is indebted to Korean literature, that some of darkness and themes in her works are directly linked and indebted to her experience of the massacre in Gwanjiu in 1980, and that she writes from an Universal standpoint even though she is Korean. She is the daughter of a writer, grew up surrounded by books and artists, she says, but she doesn't really mention any major Western author as her major literary impromptu even when asked about this. So that should suffice to stop speculating about Western influences. **************** There are images powerfully lyric and visually artistic and cinematic in this book. One of my favourites is in the fist part, when Yeong-hye in the courtyard in the hospital with a bird in his hand.Almost like a modern painting. Or the image of In-hye reflected in the mirror with a bleeding eye. Others, on the contrary are very dramatic, shocking and horrific, like the dream with the dog. Those images will stay with you for a long time, printed in your retina long after you close the book. **************** The translation by Deborah Smith is good. Most of the book flows and that is the sort of experience we want as translators and readers to have when translating literary works. Having said that, I thought that the first part needed of a few more commas, cutting on some unnecessary wordiness and another choice of words (this being a very personal thing, of course). TWO NOTES || The Vegetarian was originally published in 2007, compiling three novelettes previously published separately. However, the story, according to Hang herself, developed organically, but turned dark, from a short story of hers "Fruits of my Woman" written in the year 2000. || The book was taken to the screen in 2009 under the direction of Woo-Seong Lim. The movie was also called The Vegetarian. TYPOS > I couldn’t get my head round it. (Locations 48-49). > natural it was to not wear clothes. (Location 1220). A WARNING This word contains explicit violence, human and animal, and explicit sex scenes. A QUERY Why was the book called Vegetarian in English is the character becomes a vegan? Was the title in Korean the same?

• Not a good print quality

  This review is only for the quality of the print..the paperback is of very poor quality. The cover is not even cut to size! For 17sgd its not atall worth the money

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