This won the International Booker Prize, so many, many, MANY people have expressed their thoughts on this book much more eloquently than I could hope to. But I do have <i>thoughts</i> and it's so hard to put them all together in a way that makes sense. Maybe this will just be a rambling entry for me to look back on in a year or two when I think about re-reading this.

First, I'm going to say veganism here because that's essentially what Yeong-hye switches to, not just vegetarianism.

On the surface this feels like an obvious metaphor: Yeong-hye uses the switch to veganism to take back some control over her life and her own body. The oppressive weight of the controlling men in her life is skillfully shown by the decision to make the first section's narrative from the POV of her husband. He sucks. He's a massive dick. His thoughts about Yeong-hye are so baldly indicative of what patriarchy looks like in a way that is incredibly obvious and easy to understand. 

But then part two happens, and holy shit things take off. The synopsis didn't really prepare me for how off the rails this was going to go, and I think a LOT of people miss the point when they come out of this thinking it's <i>only</i> an indictment of patriarchy and reactions to someone switching to veganism.  Part two from the perspective of the brother-in-law and his own obsession with Yeong-hye is just fucking wild - but also kind of brilliant? I didn't really take much from this part at first beyond thinking here is another man taking advantage of her, but as we learn more about Yeong-hye's mental illness in part three, part two takes on so much more significance. The brother-in-law's obsession leading to painting her in flowers leading to her believing that the only way she can escape this life and the violence of it is to become a plant...OMFG. The sexual imagery fever dream in his POV was almost too much, and especially so when looking back. There's the first layer of things where its obvious Yeong-hye is not be mentally well enough to consent to sex and we're reading rape on page, but then adding the layer of just how this rape is fueling her mental illness...I feel so gross. It's brilliant and I hate it for that. 

Part three kind of loses steam, I'd agree, but I think it also does a LOT to inform the first two parts and show how the oppressive upbringing In-hye and Yeong-hye went through have affected them both in different ways. The somewhat open ending left me with a sense of loss, with the thought that these sisters' lives didn't have to end up like this. They could have been okay (maybe?) had the abuse from their father not been compounded by the absolute shit men they married and stayed married to because that's what they were expected to do. Where Yeong-hye is mentally and physically in part three is an obvious manifestation of what the constant pressure of their lives has done to them, but In-hye's narrative, memories, mental state are all indicative of the silent violence that is done to women living in heavily patriarchal systems. In-hye has only survived her entire life, never lived, and that hit me just as hard as Yeong-hye's obvious visual breakdown.

This book was a lot. Content warnings should be heeded carefully if you need them. But it gave me so much to think about. 

There's a very interesting interview with the author that is a great read and helped me clarify a lot of my feelings about the book after reading it. https://lithub.com/han-kang-on-violence-beauty-and-the-impossibility-of-innocence/