THE VEGETARIANBook Review

Hi everyone today I'm here to do a
review of "The Vegetarian" by Han Kang. This recently won the Man Booker
International Prize which is awarded now yearly to a novel which is translated
from another language into English. It was originally written in Korean and
translated by Deborah Smith who, from what I understand, just learned Korean in
2010 and really taught herself through the translation of this novel, which I
think is pretty remarkable. The story itself is quite remarkable as well.

It follows a woman in South Korea
who decides one day, after having a dream, to become a vegetarian. And while that might
seem like a not totally abnormal life choice, in this novel, which is somewhat
short, has some drastic consequences and it feels like a very earth-shattering,
life-changing decision. We see how the story unfolds through three
different perspectives. So really the book is broken up into sort of three
novellas, and the first one is told from the perspective of the woman's husband;
the second is told from the perspective of her sister's husband, so her
brother-in-law; and the final section is told from the perspective of her sister.
And all the sections are about two years apart.

They never overlap at all so you're
getting these kind of snippets into her life when she decides to become a
vegetarian and then two subsequent sections of her life after, and you kind
of see how things devolve and what that really does to herself, to her family and
it's fascinating. It is a very strange premise; it almost feels like a thriller,
although the atmosphere of the story is not thriller at all. It is quite placid;
everything feels very kind of covered, and calm, and yet underneath that tone there
is a lot of tension. The only way I can really explain how she does that is
through the writing; it's very direct, but at the same time, which
seems kind of impossible, it hides a lot of things.

So you're told everything up
front, but you know that underneath there are just these layers that the storyteller
isn't really giving you. I think because you're seeing this woman's story through
other people's perspectives, you don't hear a lot from the woman herself as she
decides to become a vegetarian; you're really just viewing from the outside. So
I think that kind of increases the tension. It's not just a book about
moral, ethical choices of vegetarianism.

In fact, it's not really about that at
all. It's much more about, from what I came to
understand it as, a story about choice and how this one woman, through her
life and things preceding the story, have informed her in almost a
subconscious way to this choice that other people don't agree with. And so by
continuing to embrace this choice she is sort of rebelling. And it was a really
interesting psychological study almost.

Overall just quite an engaging read. It's
not long like I mentioned. You could probably read it in one sitting. I read it in a few sittings, but I think
each section is really a great kind of stopping point; they all feel complete
and yet they all inform each other as well.

So the more you get into the story
the more things in the past sections make sense, and it just builds in layers on
itself, and I absolutely loved it. It's definitely one that will stick with me
for a long time. I think reading it a second time would really unpack even
more of what exactly was going on. The final section is very psychological and very heady, so I think it could  warrant a second reading and hold up to that which is always great.
And I definitely see why this won the Man Booker Prize this year for the
International choices.

It definitely lived up to the hype for me and I would highly
recommend this. I will give the sort of caveat that there's some pretty adult
material in here; it's not used without purpose, but I just wanna throw that out
there that. If you're young I would not recommend this book. I would wait on it.
If you feel comfortable with that kind of content then I think you should read
this because it is a great piece of translated fiction.

And I'm excited to
read more from this author. I think she's great at examining humans and looking at normal things in kind of a
different sort of twisted way. I really enjoyed it, so if you have read this
novel please let me know your thoughts. It seems like it's making its rounds and
i'm happy for that cause I think it deserves the attention.

And let me know
if you've read anything else by this author and what you thought of it. I hope
you guys enjoy this review. I hope you decide to pick up "The Vegetarian" if you
have not, and I'll see you in my next video. Bye!.