I visited Seoul in March for a flash holiday and on my way back, I stopped in a bookstore at Incheon airport. In their small English section, the only books they provided were English translations of books by South Korean authors or travel guides for the country. No Tim Cook biography, no Mitch Albom, no Dan Brown or whatever else you’d typically find in an airport bookshop. I found that so clever — restricting the English-language offerings to art created by South Koreans. This capitalistically pushy act is probably why South Korean literature, TV, movies (and not even mentioning K-pop) are dominating the world.
So that’s where I got The Vegetarian from Han Kang, which I’ve been eager to read since she won the Nobel Prize last year.
The book opens with Yeong-hye randomly deciding one day not to eat meat or dairy anymore (I guess The Vegan doesn’t have the same ring to it). She sticks to her guns on this, astounding her husband and family with that decision when she refuses to even bend those rules for polite society. The reverberations from her decision is told in three parts, each from the point of view of people in her life — her asshole husband Mr. Cheong, her brother-in-law, and her aggrieved sister.
The only time we get a brief glimpse of what’s going on in Yeong-hye’s head is early on when she explains that her snap decision was because “I had a dream”. We get snippets of the dream, but they slip quickly back into her husband’s worldview — part one of the book — in which it becomes clear that he is a man who does the bare minimum. He wants a dutiful wife, he wants to clock in and out of work, and maybe get a bit praise from his boss, and what he really, really wants is for his wife to eat meat again. There are no redeeming qualities about her husband, except that at least in his narration, he is honest about his utter uselessness as a human.
The next section is from the point of view of her brother-in-law, who I don’t believe is named throughout. A struggling artist, he is supported by his business owner wife who still shoulders the bulk of child-caring responsibilities while running her shop. One day — long after Yeong-hye goes vegetarian — his wife remarks that Yeong-hye has a “Mongolian mark”, a birthmark. This triggers an obsession in him that he feels he needs to soothe by creating art around that idea.
I don’t really want to give too much away about his section, only that it was probably the most irritating for me because it was the most stereotypical of what “deep” and “serious” writers try to do when they’re trying to show subversion in their books. You know what they do — they use sex.
So either Kang wrote part two in earnest — in which case she was leaning on a stereotype to portray subversiveness — which I guess is fine since everyone does it anyway.
Or she was portraying insufferable artists as cliches by using a stereotype, thereby calling the brother-in-law a hack (a spoiler I’ll give — he is).
Or she wrote this to call out authors who’ve sexualized women — usually voiceless like Yeong-hye since we barely get a sense of their inner worlds — going through something. You know the books I’m talking about, the ones in which having sex — usually with a man or multiple men — becomes the answer for being seen, being understood, being freed. Barf.
The third part is from In-hye’s point of view. She’s older than Yeong-hye and has real elder daughter syndrome — she is responsible, takes care of everything, puts a brave face to the rest of the world as the world around her crumbles, her mental health hanging on a thread. “I have to be strong for everyone, let’s make sure everyone’s plants are watered while I’m dying of thirst” — you know the type.
As her sister spirals into her own world, In-hye tries to maintain an image of a loving mother, a responsible business owner, and a doting, sympathetic sibling. It’s through her chapter that we see more into Yeong-hye and In-hye’s family dynamics, like how abusive their father might have been growing up and how her mother uses overbearing guilt and maybe even silence to assert power. In-hye doesn’t understand Yeong-hye but she realizes how close she is to becoming her sister, how very porous the line is separating society’s view of sane and insane.
So yea, in a nutshell, this book is about subversion. When you do something that most others don’t, are you being true to yourself — or are you holding a mirror up to the rest of world about how insane they are for abiding by social norms? There are people who are true subversives, those who want to meander through life (Yeong-hye’s useless husband), those who play at being individuals (the “artist” brother-in-law), and those who are just trying to keep their head above water.
In the end, we’re probably most like In-hye. For me, her chapter felt the most boring because nothing she said felt that revealing. We feel a sense of obligation to keep trucking along because we’re aware of the consequences when we no longer play by the rules. But is it our fault if life makes us feel unhinged? Maybe running off into the forest and just submitting ourselves to nature is the sanest thing we can do given what’s going on in the world.
Yea, so that’s where my head’s at.
I ended up liking this book less than I thought I would, and I definitely don’t think I got it (a friend of mine who read it said it was about being a woman, which I see, but I didn’t feel that). I’m still glad I got the chance to read it. And I wish every single country does this model of selling translations of their local authors in their airport bookstores.