AUTHOR: Han Kang
PUBLISHED: January 17th, 2017 (in the US)
CATEGORY: Adult
GENRE: Historical Fiction, Drama
PREMISE: Several different people recall their experiences during a violent student uprising in South Korea
MY REVIEW: So confession time: I tried to read The Vegetarian last year. Which was the book that Kang first wrote that finally got translated to English in 2016 and has basically put Han Kang's name on the map now. I...couldn't get into it. I got what the author was doing. Her writing was damn good in it. It...just wasn't for me, so I wound up ditching it. But I thought perhaps it was just because I'm not into horror all that much. So I decided to give Kang one more shot with this one. Luckily, this one was much more my speed.
I do admit...I was a bit confused at places. It's a very metaphorish sort of book and the author tends to assume you know about the event she's talking about. This is a fair assumption. This was published in Korean first and from what I've been able to gather, this event was huge in South Korea. Me...well, we don't get much news about other countries out here unless that news directly involves the US somehow. So...I was lost in places to say the least. But, I understood enough to get the gist of what happened.
This book is beautifully written. I may not have understood some of the historical bits going on, but there was enough commentary on human nature and whatnot for it to not really matter.
WHO SHOULD READ: fans of The Vegetarian, literature fans, Murukami/asian literature fans
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five gorgeous sentences
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