The Vegetarian is a deeply unsettling, faintly ominous, disturbing yet beautiful novel fraught with emotion. Han Kang's simple, descriptive style of writing hooks you right from the start, and once I'd started reading this I just couldn't stop. This book explores dark and twisted events in an engaging way that captivates you immediately. It's not scary or horrifying, but more in the direction of unnerving and slightly sinister - I could never fully guess what was going to happen next, and at times I nearly couldn't bear the suspense. 
 This story is told from three different perspectives in three different chapters, but each chapter/perspective is related to each other, and follows a timeline of events (ie. events in the first chapter take place first). Here is the description: 
 Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more "plant-like" existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye--impossibly, ecstatically, tragically--far from her once-known self altogether. 
 The first chapter is from Yeong-hye's husband's perspective, and it describes Yeong-hye as completely ordinary - until the day she decides to stop eating meat, which her husband views as an act of defiance. This issue is escalated by her family's furious response at a dinner, and everything starts to spiral out of control. The second chapter sees her divorced from her husband, living in her own flat. But then, she is subject to erotic exploitation by her brother-in-law, who has a secret raging lust for her. At the end of the third chapter, she is sent to a psychiatric hospital by her sister, who visits her from time to time. By this point, she has already retreated very, very far from the real world, and is single-minded in her decision to become a tree. The final chapter is told from her sister's perspective, and also unearths some truths in the process. It is heartbreaking to read. 
 Often I felt like some parts of the book were too deep for me to fathom. I never fully understood some of the dreams, or Yeong-hye's rationale behind her actions, and this is the main reason why this book was unsettling - it was so unpredictable . But that's the thing - I think that is where the beauty of this book lies: in that it keeps readers guessing, while describing grotesque events in an almost pragmatic way. 
 If ordinary people like you and me stretch our memories a little, we will remember what we learnt in primary school science: how to classify living and non-living things. Automatically we will classify humans, animals, plants, fungi and bacteria under living things and the rest under non-living things. But Han Kang blurs that divide and pushes it to scintillating heights, facilitating travel between the two states of being, reducing that clear line to a mere fissure. I found myself questioning my very own beliefs, and I had to stop many times throughout the book to ponder the meanings behind the text and wrap my head around it. 
 It hurt me so much to see Yeong-hye's mental state slowly deteriorate and watch her slowly retreat from reality. I couldn't believe this major decision she'd made about her life was all because of a mere dream. I also felt that her situation could genuinely have improved if she'd had support from the people closest to her, ie. her family members. Instead, Yeong-hye was faced with scandal, abuse, and much backlash by her own inner circle. Her marital and filial relationships are torn asunder, and she is deserted by her family members. What follows is her heartbreaking journey where she attempts to assign meaning to her inner voice. She defies all common convention and seems to detach herself from the world around her, even as she experiences divorce, erotic exploitation, and relocation to a psychiatric hospital. She moves from her home, to an artist's studio, to a hospital - all with quiet determination and singular passion to become a tree. 
 The book has a very obscure, ambiguous ending. It never truly states what finally happened to Yeong-hye, and the reader is left to infer it. However Yeong-hye is left in a state that can no longer be considered human - she refuses to eat and only wants water, and sunlight, and stays in a plant-like state - conscious but unresponsive until she is forcefully moved. I also never fully understood the last chapter of the book from In-hye's perspective. My take on it is that when both of them faced physical and emotional trauma from their father, In-hye found a way to tether herself to reality and the world of the living, but Yeong-hye never found a way to handle it. The prose was slightly confusing, but that's what I gathered from it. 
 I'm a vegetarian myself and I have been since birth. I've never touched a strip or even a single trace of meat, and I'm a healthy young woman with absolutely no health problems. Given this, I think that this book isn't so much about the vegetarian diet itself. What I took away from The Vegetarian is that people can be cruel. Cruelty is rampant, even among your own family members. This book is about the importance of love and acceptance, especially from the people closest to you. I believe that Yeong-hye wouldn't have sunk so deeply into the mental state she had, if only she had received support and love and acceptance from her family. Instead, she was left feeling trapped, like no one truly understood her and her reasons at all. 
 "I had a dream... and that's why I don't eat meat." 
 "Well... what kind of dream?" 
 "I dreamed of a face." 
 "A face." 
 Seeing how utterly baffled he was, she laughed quietly. A melancholic laugh. "Didn't I say you wouldn't understand?" 
 I still don't know how to really rate this book. All I know is that it's bizarre and polarizing and primal and ominous and yet beautiful. It opened my eyes to mental illness, no doubt. This book has an underlying sense of sinister, it breathes down your neck as you read it with your spine tingling. It was an utter train wreck that I could have jumped off any time but just could not. No matter what you have to say about it, it is definitely a book you cannot put down from the very first page. I've never read such a heartwrenching, evocative book like this and don't think I ever will again, for a while at least.