Rating: WARTY!
This advance review copy of an English translation from Korean ought, as other reviewers have pointed out, to have been titled "The Vegan" rather than The Vegetarian, but 'vegetarian' is a widely recognized word, and 'vegan' not so much, so I can see why a writer might make a technically incorrect choice of title. The bottom line is that it's a misnomer either way because it really has nothing to do with vegetarianism or veganism. The central character's act of choosing a new diet is really a symptom, and not even a symptom of her own problem, but a symptom of what really is a mentally-ill family circle.
Other reviewers defined it as being about the main character's mental health problem, and the question of Yeong-hye's sanity is one I wrestled with for the first two parts (of this three-part) novella. The bottom line is that I have no idea whether the author intended this to be unclear, or was commenting that the people outside the psychiatric institution were insane and those inside sane, or whether we were to understand that Yeong-hye's behavior was merely a reaction to the appallingly brutal treatment she received, and wasn't intended to signify insanity at all, or whether this really was nothing more than a savage depiction of a slow descent into insanity
In the first two parts, I was less ready to blame Yeong-hye's behavior on psychiatric causes. To me it seemed much more like a rebellion against oppression by a woman who had reached the end of her tether, and with very good reason. Her behavior there found its best parallel in the changes Yossarian underwent in Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Only later, in part three, did she descend into readily identifiable mental illness, and by this time it was arguable that she'd been driven there by members of her own family and her husband, each of whom were quite frankly deranged. So maybe it was a comment that some people can get away with being mentally unstable, or at least exhibit it in a form which is socially acceptable.
The truly warped thing was not so much that these people were insane, but that the medical profession was in the beginning, all-too-ready to look the other way and later, chomping at the bit to condemn people to asylums with absolutely no grounds whatsoever. I've never lived in Korea and know little about how society functions there, but I dearly hope it is nowhere near as dire as it's depicted in this story.
One of the doctors actually said, "Today we'll try feeding her some gruel intravenously"! Seriously? Way to kill a patient! Inject gruel into their veins! It made me wonder wonder what the author actually said in Korean, and if it didn't say this, then why the translation was so bad. The doctor struck me as grossly incompetent anyway, so maybe the translation was accurate. The text actually said, "In fact, the doctor doubted whether Yeong-hye had been taking her medication at all." This is a patient in this doctor's own hospital, and he has no idea whether his orders are being carried out properly?! This is a psychiatric institution. Do they simply hand out the pills and leave the patient to determine what's best for themselves?
Just as bad was the willingness of the medical profession to commit two people to psychiatric institution when all they did was paint flowers on their skin and make love. This makes me never want to visit Korea. I thought South Korea was relatively enlightened, but this author paints a chronic picture of that nation. The entire youth of North America and Europe all would have been committed under these rules had they been applied in the sixties summer of love! LOL!
Vegetarianism is insulted rather gratuitously and ignorantly by the characters depicted here. It's widely derided as an unfortunate aberration or a disease rather than a conscious choice to live a better life, and to me this seemed to be one more way in which the author was showing how barbaric these people were, they who surround and seek to control the main character. I'm not going to pontificate about vegetarianism here except to say that there would be far fewer hungry people on the planet if the west quit this habit of dedicatedly feeding tons grain to artificial herds of animals, and instead fed it to those who are in far greater need of the sustenance. But if this is how Koreans feel about vegetarians in general, I definitely have no intention of ever going there.
Although the story is superficially about Yeong-hye, it felt much more like it was a commentary on societal attitudes towards women in Korea, and it was truly disturbing to read it, especially in part one. I sincerely hope the Korean people in general do not hold these attitudes, but I have no experience of Korea, so I can't comment. Yeong-hye suddenly decides, after an awful dream of bloody, raw meat and carnivorous behaviors, to give up eating dead animals and animal products (such as milk and eggs). She also quits wearing clothing derived from animal carcasses. In short, she becomes a full-frontal vegan. She does this 'cold turkey' as it were, and without trying to read-up anything about it to prepare herself for the change in lifestyle. Because of this, she starts to lose weight rather alarmingly.
She's not very communicative by nature, and her husband is disturbed by her behavior, but she seems perfectly rational as she explains to him that it will affect only his breakfast, since he eats other meals at work and can therefore choose to eat whatever he wants. In her sudden change, brought about without any preamble, she seems rather selfish, but she's nowhere near as selfish as her husband is in his behavior towards her. Initially he's tolerant, but his and her own family's treatment of Yeong-hye in the long run is nothing short of brutal, be warned.
Depending on your own sensitivities, the first part of this novel may nauseate you or make you want to drop it and read no further. I had a hard time with it, but I hoped this was going somewhere, so I could stand to read it in that hope and in the knowledge that there are, unfortunately, people like this in real life. It's not like the author is pulling these behaviors out of nowhere, and the story was short, but in the end, literally int he end, I had a hard time reading it because i could make no sense of it, and I took to skimming passages just to get it over with. But there is rape, more than once, and there are other forms of brutality directed at more than one female character.
Initially I'd thought this was actually three short stories, and I was ready to quit, so dissatisfied was I with the "ending" of the first part, but I realized that the second part was a continuation, so I continued, looking for some sort of resolution. It didn't come. I felt it would have been wiser had the author omitted the partitioning and simply told it as one continuous story, but this is the mess you get into when you start out in first person. You almost inevitably have to go to third person to convey some information, and your voice is lost.
It was lost again in part three where the voice changed once more to yet another third person perspective and suddenly the narrative was all over the place. We never do get Yeong-hye's perspective, and in many ways, I think this was the point of the novel. She's treated as a nonentity: an object or a problem rather than a person. It's hardly surprising, then, to see her react so negatively towards them and towards the life she had been forced to lead. Unfortunately, by that point, the story had been bouncing around like a pinball, and I cared no more about Yeong-hye than her family and husband did.
Yeong-hye's behavior leads to a complete alienation from those close to her. Her husband rapes her at one point, and her father hits her and tries to force-feed her at another. One of the worst acts of violence is committed by Yeong-hye upon herself in a dramatic and scarily defiant reaction to her father's brutality. At this point she appears to have divorced herself from all society, having no modesty, baring her body in public, and seemingly drifting through life with her eyes open but seeing nothing of interest.
The truly scary part, however, is that her husband and family are so callous that at no point does any one of them consider getting Yeong-hye the psychiatric medical treatment she appears to need right then. Even when she's temporarily in the hospital, there seems to be no health-care giver who's interested in her mental welfare. This is perhaps the most shocking part of the entire novel, and it's admirable how Yeong-hye bounces back despite the neglect of those who supposedly love her, but her reprieve is short-lived.
As I mentioned, the novella is translated from Korean, so I can't speak to the quality of the original. It's Brit English rather than American English too, but it's not unintelligible as long as you remember that a jumper is a sweater and training shoes (or trainers), are not for children but for athletes! There is a Korean measurement, the p-yong or pyeong, which is for reasons unknown, not translated. Nor is there a definition of it in the book. The p'yong appears to be a measure of internal space, such as in residences and offices, and it's about 35 square feet.
Overall, I was not impressed. The brutality and abuse depicted here demands some sort of explanation or preferably a resolution given how gratuitous and misogynistic it is, but the book offers none, and the third section is largely unintelligible due to the random jumping around of the voice, perspective, and story. I had a hard time following it, so for me the only really readable part, for one reason or another, was the middle section. This was supposed to be erotic and artistic, but it could not avoid rape and abuse either, so overall, what can this novel offer? For me it was nothing, and I cannot recommend it. I wish the author all the best in future endeavors, which I hope will be more harmonious than this was.
