Cecily's Reviews > The Vegetarian

How to review this cold, voyeuristic, sexy, ugly, beautiful, disturbing novella?
The single story is told in three sections, from three points of view - in three different genres: from a domestic drama of a marriage suddenly under strain, through erotica, to madness and borderline magical-realism. But we never hear from the subject herself.

At the end… I felt adrift, rather than rooted. Intrigued, moved, and pleasantly bemused.

Triggers: This book is probably unusable for those in the depths of eating disorders, body dysmorphia, or suicidal ideation. It’s not really about vegetarianism.

1. The Vegetarian

It starts simply: Yeong-hye is a young South Korean woman. She has been married for a few years to Mr Cheong, who narrates the first part. He is very aware of her ordinariness; it’s part of what made her suitable.

“If there wasn’t any special attraction, nor did any particular drawbacks present themselves, and therefore there was no reason for the two of us not to get married.”

When Yeong-hye has her first vivid and disturbing dream about butchered animals, she becomes a vegetarian.


Image: Abattoir (Source.)

“I ate too much meat. The lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there.” [on her chest]

This change is shocking and disgusting to Mr Cheong, shameful in front of his colleagues, and anathema to her traditional family. Conformity is required, individualism reviled.

The nearest Mr Cheong comes to demonstrating any passion is when he describes, in almost fetishistic terms, how delicious his wife's meat-based cooking used to be. Yeong-hye may be becoming anorexic or delusional, but he shows neither sympathy nor curiosity - just anger and resentment at the effect on him.

2. Mongolian Mark

(A Mongolian mark is a type of grey birth mark at the base of the spine, that usually disappears by age 5 and almost always before puberty.)

The middle section opens at a dance show with an ox-blood coloured curtain.
“The carnality, the pure sensuality of this image, was nothing short of monstrous.”

It focuses on the unnamed husband of Yeong-hye’s sister. He’s an unsuccessful video artist, emasculated by his wife’s success: “their only shared business was their child”.

His dramatic inspiration for a new artwork is personal, passionate, and transgressive. The story transmogrifies into artistic erotica, with undertones of paedophilic desires.


Image: “Magnolia”, by Cecilia Paredes (Source.)

“The monochrome world, entirely devoid of the colours he was now experiencing, had had a calmness that was beautiful in its way… All of his energy was taken up in trying to cope with the excitement, the heightened awareness of living in the present moment.”

3. Flaming Trees

“She had merely absorbed all her suffering inside her.”

The final section, narrated by In-hye (Yeong-hye’s older sister), mostly in the present tense, is a darker exploration of change, humanity, family ties, duty, and madness.

“Soon now, words and thoughts will disappear.”

Is she like Kafka's The Hunger Artist (see my review HERE) or more like the girl in one of the stories in Daisy Johnson's Fen (see my review HERE)?


Image: Woman doing handstand in a forest. (Source.)

Men versus sisters

“Hand, foot, tongue, gaze, all weapons from which nothing is safe.”

This felt like a book written by a man until part way into the middle section. I think that’s because it was told by/from male points of view, one of them judgemental, controlling, and cold, and both objectifying women.

“It was a body that made one want to rest one’s gaze quietly upon it.”

The final section by In-hye was different. Although the story is ostensibly about Yeong-hye, the relationship between the sisters is at the heart of it all.

• One is serene, self-contained, and possibly brave:
“She radiated energy, like a tree that grows in the wilderness, denuded and solitary.”
• The other is successful, dutiful, conventional:
“The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive”.
Both have deep inner strength, and they are tied by blood and by the shared suffix of their names (whereas the men are Mr Cheong and... who knows what In-hye's husband is called?).

• How much does one owe family - and what happens when there are conflicting needs?
• What’s the toll of guilt, betrayal, and jealousy?
• To what extent can one break free of genes and expectations, and at what cost?

Imagery

The dreams, described in short italic passages, involve blood, flesh, and eyes.
Blood and eyes recur throughout.
As do breasts, birds, and trees.
I felt there was more to these symbols than the obvious, but I'm not sure what.

Quotes

• “The kiss was a palimpsest of memories.”

• “Dreams overlaid with dreams, a palimpsest of horror.”

• “With my round breasts, I’m okay… So why do they keep on shrinking?... Why are my edges all sharpening - what am I going to gouge?”

• “It was impossible to tell whether or not he was pleased to see his father.” Of a five-year old. Tragic.

• “As if there were a wire linking her tongue with his body, every time that little pink tongue darted out [licking shaved ice] he found himself flinching as though from an electric shock.”

• “This was the body of a beautiful young woman… yet it was a body from which all the desire had been eliminated…. What she had renounced was the very life that her body represented. The sunlight that came splintering through the wide window… and the beauty of that body… was also ceaselessly splintering.”

• “Her calm acceptance… made her seem to him something sacred. Whether human, animal or plant, she could not be called a ‘person’.”

• “The brush was cold, and the sensation was ticklish yet numbing, a persistent, effectual caress.”

• “She’d been unable to forgive her for soaring alone over a boundary she herself could never bring herself to cross,”

• “She had never lived… she had done nothing but endure… Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama.”

• “Her voice had no weight… neither gloomy nor absent-minded… the quiet tone of someone who didn’t belong anywhere, someone who had passed into a border area between states of being.”


Image: “Her bare feet kissing the tiles.” (Source.)

Notes about the original Korean novella

The three parts were originally published separately. I think a slightly firmer delineation of the parts is probably helpful. The disconcerting and dramatic change of viewpoint and genre is part of the appeal, and what makes this so unusual.

There's also controversy about the English translation, as highlighted in Nocturnalux 's comment below, and discussed in knowledgeable detail, with links to other articles, in the comments of Paul's review.

Is the English version I read barely recognisable version of the original, or are the criticisms themselves rooted in racist stereotypes?

Another good article, courtesy of Chinook's review is this one. It picks out specific examples of clearcut "mistakes". But it concludes:
"And ultimately, Smith carried out perhaps the most important task of all: She successfully introduced a work of literature to people who might otherwise never have had a chance to read it. In that regard, Smith was faithful to the end."
I'm glad I was able to read it.