shortireads

I read The Vegetarian next to the sea. It was some seaside town in Europe, picture it as one of those with rocky shores, where hardly anyone dares to venture. Your feet aching for the relief of the cold water after gripping and balancing on the sharp stones.
Actually you can imagine it as a crowded beach, with sand so hot one can only expect it to turn into glass before your very eyes. Your elbow almost touching your neighbour’s, that annoyingly keeps stealing glances at you.

I can tell you that there was a subtle breeze that brushed my hair back and stubbornly tried to flip the pages of my book as if it wanted me to skip ahead.

Who decides what makes the cut to be remembered? What does one need to pour into words to make history, to win a Nobel prize for literature?

Han Kang definitely poured something Nobel worthy. At first glance the book is slim, fussy-less, pocket sized. I mistakenly thought it would be a summer read, something that would slide through my thoughts unnoticed, words slipping in and out with no resistance. Instead it was a blackhole of consciousness. As Asian literature tends to be, it was hyperaware of existing and hopelessly trapped in a society ridden with boundaries that beg to be crossed.

With a kafkaesque awakening, Yeong-hye‘s life is shaken by a sudden realisation, an impulse to stop eating meat. The temptation to put the book down at that point was fairly strong, I could see it evolving into some moral crusade, that would only leave me with the troublesome feeling of an awakened conscience, only to fade the moment my teeth sank in a medium-rare fillet. I’m hardly ever surprised, hard to see something not coming. Needless to say Han Kang surprised me in the most wonderful way.

The story unravels on a multi-layered basis where perspective shifts seaminglessly between the components on the protagonist’s family. The urge of the Yeong-hye to become a plant, to assimilate herself with a primordial form of existence, free of thought and ideas, inevitably clashes with her brother in law’s carnal, animalistic desires. When their bodies finally join on the floor of his art studio, their figures merged but their needs diverged, for one merely chases the unattainable pleasures of the flesh, whilst the other takes pleasure in the sight of the flowers painted on her skin

Her body is meant to be a part of the flora, she is meant to stand on her head, her hands digging in the earth as roots to absorb nutrients. Her body consumed by a simple thought, a pervasive idea to be something other than human. A single birthmark shaped like a flower, the Mongolian mark, makes me wonder if she was predestined to ascend into plant existence, to be freed from her sorrows as a meat-eater, from the very beginning.

Writing is the single most revolutionary invention of humanity, our entire being is meant to look inwards, made to be inaccessible to others. Our thoughts have only one way out and have to go through a meticulous filtering by the tongue. When we write we accept to translate ourselves into words that defy time. I’m glad Han Kang chose to reveal a story embedded with an intimate feeling, an oneiric sensation that left crumbles of dream-like thoughts in my brain.

In a small seaside town in Europe, I wondered if I was destined to be something other than what I am, if I could turn on my head and become entirely different, my toes touched the water and for a second I felt my veins tense, hoping to consume the salty liquid.