The Vegetarian

 As I began to read into Han Kang's The Vegetarian, I was instantly reminded of Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, two stories about two people who say "No", the only difference being in the mantra--Bartleby's mantra, "I prefer not", and Young-hye's, "I won't eat it." Kang's novel begins with a woman who decides that she will no longer eat meat and from that point on spirals down to increasingly extreme measures, ending in her refusal to eat anything at all. As in Bartley, there are those who plead with the woman in their various ways, approaching her with anger, with reason, with compassion, and of course with frustration, all to no avail. There is a grotesque-ness in Young-hye's adamance and ultimately in her dissolution, but I don't think that Han has inspired the same helpless sympathy that we find ourselves feeling for Bartleby. Nonetheless, Han's short novel is engaging, a bit weird (South Korean writers seem to have the corner on weird these days), and overall worth reading. But Booker prize material, Nobel prize work? Well, she received both, so I guess I disagree somewhat with the enthusiasm of the judges. I will give her another chance, and have moved on to another of her novels, Human Acts.