There is no comfort in reading The Vegetarian, and it kept me stuck to the broken dynamics and characters we’re faced with, leaving me wanting more.

The story touches upon a vast breadth of themes, and now only 24 hours after having finished it, I don’t have capacity to dive exhaustively into them.

The main thread that felt growingly central through the three novellas was its focus on bodily autonomy and agency.

Vegetarianism is figuratively (and concretely through the book we are holding) a cover for issues that are never faced directly. Through the unnerving unfolding of the interactions of our characters, we get to face the brutality of a disempowering patriarchal family around our main protagonist veiled behind this single lifestyle change.

Being vegetarian myself, I thought that I could understand Yeong-hye better through her trials as I got situated with the environment. Yet it was clear that the narrative itself made sure that I could not bond or relate to this character.

The three novellas are each narrated by members of her family interacting with her in different ways, immediately reducing her agency to answering violent inquisitions and calls for change.

Almost no one in the story and by extension us, the reader, gets to make a real attempt at understanding Yeong-hye.

She mentions dreams being central to her motivation. We only get a few glimpses of those dreams, and no one shows any interest in making sense of them. No one until In-hye, far too late, cares to reflect with her on the fear they induce, or understand their impact on her psyche.

At every step of the way, her desire of bodily autonomy is brutally denied. The more she is refused what she truly desires, the more she backs out. As readers, we become powerless witness to the disturbing behaviors of all her family members.

One powerful trick the book plays on us is to almost make us forget about her. The second novella completely turns her into a figure of desire, foreign to any immediate discussion, secondary to our worries. Her presence reduced to brief smiles and passive interactions.

A late grace of hope comes within the last novella, where we witness from our only female narrator, In-hye, her sister, a sense of care, compassion, and deep desire to help, sadly coming too little, too late.

Her frustration for not being able to save Yeong-hye is only matched with the desperation I felt reading this last chapter. I was sad.

Sad that she was never given a chance to be understood, that her desire for autonomy was never respected, and that she was continuously violated throughout the story.

Sad that we focused our time and attention on her now ex-husband, brother-in-law, and sister, where all I wanted was to hear her more.

But there she was, disappearing physically and metaphorically from the book I was closing.

Dreams, desires, motivations barely explored, only to be buried behind an unremarkable and reductive name given to a human being, a vegetarian.