I’m ashamed that it took me so long to understand part of The Vegetarian: that one of its themes is control of your own body. I guess that’s a result of my privilege as a man and it embarrassed me that I only realised 10 pages from the end that vegetarianism and not eating was one way Yeong-Hye exerted her own autonomy.
Han’s novel is unsettling in the kind of way that makes it hard to turn away, I found my fingers pressed tight around the covers of the book with anticipation. But not understanding much I was like ‘this is good, so what?’.
I still don’t understand the large majority: the bloody face; becoming a tree; vegetative copulation, and just enjoyed it without any deeper reading. I guess part of it is about inexplicable madness, and as a result is inexplicable. Perhaps part of it is about contagious madness, and the contagious madness that makes us conform to our everyday lives.