“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her successes had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn’t understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.”
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
The Vegetarian by Han Kang is a disturbing but compelling literary horror novel. It’s a short book, but it is a harrowing story of what it means to struggle with trauma and identity in a world that demands so much from you.
Divided into three parts, this novel focuses on a young woman, Yeong-hye. Part I is told from the perspective of her husband, part II from her brother in law, and part III from her sister. Yeong-hye has been a fairly ordinary woman living a fairly ordinary life. She has been married for the past five years and if her husband had to describe her, it might be as boring or plain. But he also confesses this is why he married her. He didn’t want a busy, chatty wife who would need to be exhausted at the end of the day in order to be calm. (He is such a catch, isn’t he?).
One day, he wakes up in the middle of the night to find Yeong-hye standing in front of the fridge in a daze. It takes him awhile to snap her out of it, and the next morning she is throwing out all of their meat, eggs, milk. She tells him she is no longer eating meat, and he thinks she is going crazy.
At first, he just waits and sees what happens, but it isn’t long before he gets her family involved in an attempt to snap her out of whatever phase she is going through. But Yeong-hye is insistent that she will never eat meat again. All because of a dream she had.
What unfolds is a disturbing narrative of a young woman and her family trying to cure her of whatever is ailing her mind. Yeong-hye spirals into a dark place where she is trying everything to assert her own freedom in the world. Even in the novel itself, Yeong-hye doesn’t have much of a voice. Her entire story is being told through the perspective of other characters. Even as much as I tried to understand her as a person, I don’t think I ever did, and I am not sure I was meant to. This book is not an easy read in the sense that it is very dark, and I would definitely review the content warnings before reading. But for me, this was an exceptional horror novel and I will be thinking about it for a long time to come.
Of Worlds Forgotten 
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