The Vegetarian by Han Kang Book Review

Spoiler Free Review: 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang
My rating: ❤❤
The Vegetarian by Han Kang is the most confusing book I have ever read. I read this book as an effort to expand my reading and I was very disappointed. The basic plot line is advertised as a young women who becomes a vegetarian in order get rid of her traumatizing nightmares of blood, violence and meat. While this is the first 60 pages the other 120 pages are an inconsistent mash up of horrible perverted characters and extremely confusing events. After reading this book I was left feeling unsatisfied and unknowing of any of the characters fates. While this book was relatively short each sentence felt three times as long as what I normally read and the whole thing felt like a run on short story. The only redeeming factor of this novel was the descriptive tone the author used. I wish I could say that I enjoyed the writing but sadly the fact that the plot was so confusing clashed with the poetic description and just created chaos for the reader. Honestly the main problem I had with this book was the fact that it was utterly unrelatable to me. This book contained adult characters, a foreign culture and setting as well as many beliefs that I don't share. The characters made so many decisions that I don't understand or agree with and this caused many problems for me as a reader. Overall I was very disappointed in this book and I would not recommend it to anyone who does not already enjoy worldly adult novels and especially not to anyone who only reads young adult such as myself. Disclaimer: I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.

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Recommended Mindset for Reading 

 Not everyone has the same taste in reading so even though I was seriously disappointed with this book that does not mean that others will share my opinion. I think my main issue with this book was the fact that I'm a young adult and I have nothing in common with any of the characters. So I would recommend this book to adults. Now before you get all mad and on your high horse saying that you can handle just as much as an adult, please just stop and hear me out. Not only does this book contain highly displeasing adult content it also contains themes that just can't be comprehended by young adults. The Vegetarian is really only going to be enjoyed by people who can understand its concepts and characters. For this reason I would highly recommend to wait to read this book until you are sure that you can fully appreciate it. I honestly wish that I wasn't given this book for review now and had instead waited to read it until later in my life when I could have enjoyed it instead of being horrified by things I don't understand. If you are an adult then by all means read away. This is not the kind of book to try and read in a day so don't be deceived by its short length. I would recommend reading another easier book with a happier tone at the same time just as a way to balance out your emotions because this book is heavy. Knowing that the majority of my readers are teenagers and young adult fanatics I would not recommend this book to my average reader and only the extremely open minded should take on the challenge that is The Vegetarian by Han Kang.

Full Review:

Initial Reaction 

I honestly hated every minute of this book. I was horrified and disgusted by the plot and especially the characters. That is all I have to say about this because my reaction was the same through out the whole book and it was not good.

Character Analysis 

To be honest with all of you I finished this book about a month ago and I don't even remember the characters names. The fact that the characters were so perverted just killed the book for me. Because each character only had sixty pages written from their perspectives I didn't feel connected to them at all. Also the characters were all adults and seeing as that I am 15 and I am not married and have no children there was nothing I could relate to with these characters. Because I fundamentally don't understand any of the characters in The Vegetarian I sadly can't analyze them and honestly even if I did understand them I wouldn't even want to try.

Themes/Symbolism

While I may not have understood much of this book I was able to recognize that there were many themes present throughout the story. The main theme that I picked up on was mental health and how it affects families. I think that The Vegetarian shows a worst case scenario on how mental health can affect others because everyone in this book handles mental health horribly. A mother abandons her child, a main character starves herself to death (possibly I didn't understand the ending see below), a man rapes his sister-in-law and a husband abuses his wife for choosing to stop eating meat. And yes I know a lot of these things are metaphors for the struggles that women face in an abusive relationship and the freedoms that are being taken from all of us but I have to say that most of the metaphors in this book didn't make sense to me. I think the problem was that there were too many metaphors which just made the book all the more confusing.

Plot 

The plot in this book made literally no sense and I couldn't understand any of it, enough said.

Ending/Resolution 

Seeing as the ending is part of the plot I have the same thing to say about it. I have no idea what happened. Something about wanting to slowly starve yourself to death in order to be a tree. I actually don't know if the main character died or not. If someone could actually tell me what happened that would be much appreciated. This is really all I have to say about this book because I didn't understand enough of it to write any more.

Thanks for reading I love all of you so much! -Becca