Roman's case takes place in modern Seoul. A young girl, Yonghe, first begins to see strange and terrible dreams that deprive her of a normal night's sleep, and then refuses to eat and cook meat, claiming that it only makes her worse. The family of the rapidly losing weight and fading before the eyes of the Yeonha looks at her as if she was dazed: the husband reproaches her for starving him, the father is ready to force his daughter to eat a piece of meat, and the others are even thinking of putting her in a mental hospital. But this is all just the beginning, Yonghe's gastronomic preferences become the starting point for the destruction of a couple of families and several lives...
Compositionally, "Vegetarian" consists of three parts, each of which offers the reader a new central character, and, oddly enough, despite the fact that this text is dedicated primarily to Yeonha, she herself has never been at the forefront of the chapter. In the first part, her husband takes the floor - a practical and strict man who expects two things from his wife - food and so that "it does not shine". In the second - the brother-in-law, the husband of the elder sister of Yonghe, a freelance artist who still can not find his place in this life.
Well, we will find out the finale of this story through the prism of the view of the elder sister of Yonghe, a woman who is forced to carry her own business, house, child and husband, not expecting help from anyone for a long time. Such a narrative divided into several parts with a change of narrator and point of view, in my opinion, offers a look at the central problem of the novel from several sides, and, most interestingly, not from all sides the problem will exist at all.
What is going on in the soul of Yonghe is the biggest mystery of the "Vegetarian", and it is a mystery for everyone, because not only the reader, but also none of the narrators / heroes penetrates into this strange soul - darkness.
Despite the fact that Han Gan suggested to me as a reader to invade the family circle, it is the intra-family relationships that are striking in the "Vegetarian" first of all. It seems that Korean marriages are not even a contract or a contract, but just some kind of accident that they try to come to terms with and live on: the spouses are on "you" with each other, everyone lives their own lives, practically without intersecting with the other half outside of the common bed, everyone, ideally, has some kind of responsibilities, and everything will be fine exactly as long as the husband or wife fulfills their obligations.
The relationship of children with their parents is a relationship of unquestioning submission, and even grown-up children cannot say words across to their mother and father, for fear of seeming ungrateful. In general, it will definitely not work to relax in such a family, it is not surprising that some heroes seek to escape from home or spend as much time at work as possible.
I am sure that "Vegetarian" is a novel that will be about different things for every reader: about violence against a person, about human cruelty, about a patriarchal society where a woman, no matter how independent at first glance, is obliged to serve a man, about lack of freedom, about a dysfunctional family, about loneliness, about disrespect for someone else's choice - there is plenty to choose from in this case, and all these topics are fully revealed in just 320 pages (in electronic form there were 260 at all, which means that the text in the publication is very stretched).
I have come to the fore thinking about how other people allow themselves to decide for another what he should do with his life: under the guise of caring, they cross all imaginable and unimaginable boundaries, impose their opinions and actually strangle, depriving a person of the desire to choose something, decide, and then live. It would seem that what is so terrible about refusing meat (although I understand that in Korea most dishes are meat), especially if a person does not condemn others at the same time?
But no, personal choice turns into a big problem that needs to be solved collectively and the more radical the better. It reminded me how any teetotaler who finds himself on a drunken party listens to endless "come on, let's just one at a time", "what are you so incompetent for?" and endless silly jokes about his refusal to drink alcohol.
Of course, Yonghe actually has a problem with her head, her vegetarianism is an attempt to alleviate her condition, a kind of compulsion, a ritual designed to save her from bad thoughts and terrible dreams, a way to escape from the world of predatory carnivorous people who are ready to devour not just a cow or a dog (the most unpleasant scene of the novel is a scene with a dog, although there is plenty to choose from in "Vegetarian", so if you have a subtle mental organization, it's better not to risk it), but also each other.
Such a salvation flap is eventually found in everyone, as well as a whole snowball of problems that the heroes are no longer able to cope with themselves, but only Yonghe - the woman who wrote other people's words into the circles of comics, does not have her own voice.
Although the English translation of the novel that won the Booker, as it turned out, was significantly different from the original text, Russian readers got the translation of "Vegetarian" not from English, but from Korean, and even the translator got the most Korean - Lee Sang Yoon, which, I think, played a role. Apart from a few minor typos, such as repeating phrases, particles and inserting the wrong letter, there is nothing to find fault with in this case.
Although I perfectly understand why the English-speaking translator of the text Han Gang succumbed to the temptation to embellish the narrative: sometimes she asks for it, especially in the second part, but at the same time you understand that the absence or minimalism of means of artistic expression is a very significant technique in this very artistic expressiveness.
389.076 SRY