The Vegetarian

BOOK NOTE

Author: Han Kang

Read: March 2025

I devoured The Vegetarian in less than a week—something I rarely do with fiction. And if I’m being honest, it’s been a long time since I immersed myself in good literary fiction (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee was it!). The Vegetarian is a short novel, but like any exquisite work of literary fiction, Han Kang’s writing is so visceral, so hauntingly evocative, that I found myself completely immersed in the inner worlds of her characters. The story follows Yeong-hye, an ordinary woman in South Korea, who makes the abrupt decision to stop eating meat after a series of disturbing dreams. On the surface, it’s just seems like a dietary choice. But it ends up unraveling so much more—how she fits into her world, how others respond to her, and how much of herself she’s willing to lose or hold onto.

One thing that really stood out to me is how the novel is told entirely through the perspectives of people around Yeong-hye—not from her directly. The first chapter is from her husband’s point of view, and it’s marked by frustration, annoyance, and his sense of being “inconvenienced” by her new life decision. He doesn’t see her as a person, but as someone disrupting the predictability of his world. The second chapter shifts to her brother-in-law’s perspective, and this section can be quite disturbing—his gaze is voyeuristic and objectifying, turning her into a kind of canvas for his fantasies.

It isn’t until the final chapter, through her sister In-hye’s perspective, that we finally encounter a real attempt at empathy. It’s quiet. It’s imperfect. But it’s the first time someone pauses, reflects, and tries to see Yeong-hye beyond what she represents to them. That structural choice—the way these three chapters are laid out—almost as if Han Kang was showing us how rare real empathy is, and how long it takes before someone stops projecting and starts simply trying to understand.

What moved me most about this novel was how masterfully Kang explores the theme of empathy—not by naming it, but by revealing it in the quietest, most human moments.

There’s a moment toward the end of the novel that just hasn’t left me. In-hye visits her sister in a psychiatric hospital. After witnessing the doctors aggressively wrestle with Yeong-hye to force a feeding tube down her throat—until they have to sedate her—In-hye finally intervenes. She can’t bear to hear her sister cry out in pain like that.

Later, after the chaos settles and there’s a rare moment of calm, Yeong-hye opens her eyes and looks at her. And in that stillness, In-hye silently asks herself:

“What is stirring behind those eyes? What is she harbouring inside her,

beyond the reach of her sister’s imagination? What terror, what anger,

what agony, what hell?”

Those lines capture the emotional labor of empathy: not assuming, not fixing, but sitting with the not-knowing. That moment—that pause to imagine the emotional world of someone who can’t articulate it—is empathy in its rawest form. And then, without trying to pull her back or make sense of it, In-hye leans in and softly whispers: “I have dreams too, you know.” That line really struck me. It wasn’t loud or dramatic, but it carried a kind of quiet empathy that felt so deeply human. While still holding onto a glimmer of hope to save her sister, she was also just with her—expressing a desire to empathize, even if she didn’t fully understand.

That line has stayed with me, especially because empathy has been such a central theme in my life lately. I’ve been asking myself what real empathy actually looks like, to me—how it feels when someone is truly trying to understand you, versus when someone simply shows they care on a surface level. I’m not struggling to recognize it—if anything, I see it more clearly now, because I once experienced that kind of deep, attuned empathy with someone who was in my life. That connection set a standard. It made me painfully aware of how rare that kind of presence and desire for emotional understanding actually is—even in relationships that are supposed to feel close. And then here comes Han Kang, piercing through all of that with these quietly devastating scenes that show it without ever naming it. Through her writing, she gives shape to the kind of empathy I’ve been trying to define: not the kind that tries to fix or explain, but the kind that dares to sit quietly beside your pain and say, I see you—even if I don’t fully understand. There was something in the way she wrote these moments that made me want to shout,

Yes, Han Kang—this. This is what it feels like. This is what I’ve been trying to put words to.

Another quiet but unforgettable scene happens when In-hye lies fully clothed in a bathtub, recalling a time when her ex-husband came home late, emotionally distant, and fell asleep in the tub the same way. Despite everything he had done, there’s this flicker of empathy—a moment where she imagines what that bathtub might have meant to him. Not as a place to hide, but maybe as the only space he had left to feel still. Kang doesn’t excuse his actions, but she still lets us see the pain behind them, and her attempt to understand. And that nuance really hit me.

Han Kang’s writing doesn’t just tell a story—it lingers. Her language is evocative and detailed in so few words, yet hits you deeply. I finished The Vegetarian a week ago, but it’s still echoing in me. I’m already onto another book of hers, Greek Lessons, because I can’t get enough of her writing. If you’re someone who’s been reflecting on emotional depth, psychological nuance, or what it really means to connect with another person—this book will stay with you long after the last page.

READ IT OR NOT: I highly recommend The Vegetarian to anyone looking for a deeply immersive literary fiction that explores identity, repression, and emotional intimacy through language that’s evocative and detailed in so few words, yet hits you so deeply. This is for the reader who wants to feel—not just be entertained, but moved. Read it if you’re drawn to stories that reflect back the rawness of being human. It’s no surprise to me that Han Kang was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (2024).