{"id":65712,"date":"2017-01-04T17:47:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T22:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=65712"},"modified":"2020-05-07T13:28:56","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:28:56","slug":"reading-selection-for-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2017\/01\/04\/reading-selection-for-january\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Selection For January"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the_vegetarian_-_han_kang\"<\/a>The Book Beat reading group selection for January is The Vegetarian <\/em><\/strong>by Han Kang. The Reading Group will meet on Wednesday, January 25th at 7pm<\/strong> in the Goldfish Tea Room (117 W 4th St #101, Royal Oak, MI 48067). Reading Group selections are discounted 15% at Book Beat. For more information, please call (248) 968-1190. All are welcome!<\/p>\n

A beautiful, unsettling novel about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul
\n\u00a0<\/b>
\nBefore the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams\u2014invasive images of blood and brutality\u2014torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It\u2019s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that\u2019s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.<\/p>\n

Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian<\/i> is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman\u2019s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.<\/p>\n

\u201cSurreal…[A] mesmerizing mix of sex and violence…vivid, chiseled…Like a cursed madwoman in classical myth, Yeong-hye seems both eerily prophetic and increasingly unhinged.\u201d \u2014Alexandra Alter, The New York Times<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cFerocious…[Han Kang] has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea\u2026 Han\u2019s glorious treatments of agency, personal choice, submission and subversion find form in the parable. There is something about short literary forms \u2013 this novel is under 200 pages \u2013 in which the allegorical and the violent gain special potency from their small packages… Ultimately, though, how could we not go back to Kafka? More than \u2018The Metamorphosis,\u2019 Kafka\u2019s journals and \u2018A Hunger Artist\u2019 haunt this text.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Porochista Khakpour,\u00a0New York Times Book Review<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cAstonishing…Kang viscerally explores the limits of what a human brain and body can endure, and the strange beauty that can be found in even the most extreme forms of renunciation.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Entertainment Weekly<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“Sometimes how a book or a film puzzles you\u2014how it may mystify even its own creator\u2014is the main point. The way it keeps slithering out of your grasp. The way it chats with you in the parlor even as it drags something nameless and heavy through the woods out back\u2026.That\u2019s the spirit in which to approach\u00a0The Vegetarian<\/i>\u2026\u00a0The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0has an eerie universality that gets under your skin and stays put irrespective of nation or gender.\u201d\u2014Laura Miller, Slate.com<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis book is both terrifying and terrific.\u201d\u2014Lauren Groff<\/b><\/p>\n

“The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0was slim and spiky and extremely disturbing, and I find myself thinking about it weeks after I finished.” Jennifer Weiner, popsugar.com
\n<\/b>
\n\u201cThe Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0is one of\u00a0the best<\/i>\u00a0novels I\u2019ve read in years.\u00a0 It\u2019s incredible, daring, and stunningly moving. I loved it.\u201d\u2014Laura van den Berg<\/b><\/p>\n

“A short novel of sexuality and madness that deserves its great success.\u201d\u2014Ian McEwan<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cIf it’s true you are what you read, prepare to be sliced and severed, painted and slapped and fondled and broken to bits, left shocked and reeling on the other side of this stunning, dark star of a book.\u201d\u2014Amelia Gray<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a gifted storyteller to get you feeling ill at ease in your own body. Yet Han Kang often set me squirming with her first novel in English, at once claustrophobic and transcendent\u2026 Yeong-hye\u2019s compulsions feel more like a force of nature\u2026 A sea like that, rippling with unknowable shadow, looks all but impossible to navigate\u2014but I\u2019d let Han Kang take the helm any time.\u201d\u2014Chicago Tribune<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cProvocative…shocking.\u201d\u2014The Washington Post<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“[An] utterly deserving winner of this year’s Man Booker International Prize…with haunting, almost hallucinatory beauty.”\u2014Entertainment Weekly<\/i>, Best Books of 2016 so far<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a deceptive novel, its canvas much larger than the mild social satire that one initially imagines. Kang has bigger issues to raise\u2026 The matter of female autonomy assumes urgency and poignancy.\u201d\u2014The Boston Globe<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“Compelling…[A] seamless union of the visceral and the surreal.\u201d\u2014Los Angeles Review of Books<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“Indebted to Kafka, this story of a South Korean woman’s radical transformation, which begins after she forsakes meat, will have you reading with your hand over your mouth in shock.”\u00a0\u2014O<\/i>, the Oprah Magazine<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you love books that grab you by the throat and keep you wide-eyed and shocked throughout, you\u2019ve got to pick up Han Kang\u2019s\u00a0The Vegetarian.\u201d\u2014<\/i>EW.com<\/b><\/p>\n

“A complex, terrifying look at how seemingly simple decisions can affect multiple lives…In a world where women\u2019s bodies are constantly under scrutiny, the protagonist\u2019s desire to disappear inside of herself feels scarily familiar.”\u2014VanityFair.com<\/b><\/p>\n

“A\u00a0sharply written allegory that extends far beyond its surreal premise to unexpected depths.\u201d\u2014The Millions<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cVisceral and hypnotic.\u201d\u2014Michele Filgate<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cAn elegant tale, in three parts, of a woman whose sudden turn to veganism disrupts her family and exposes the worst human appetites and impulses\u2026 [a] stripped-down, thoughtful narrative\u2026 about human psychology and physiology.\u201d\u2014Huffington Post<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“Adventurous readers will be blown away by Han Kang\u2019s The Vegetarian<\/i>, in which a once-submissive Korean wife\u2019s compulsion to stop eating meat spirals out of control. This moving story engages complicated questions about desire, guilt, obligation and madness.\u201d\u2014MORE <\/i>Magazine<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis elegant-yet-twisted horror story is all about power and its relationship with identity. It’s chilling in the best ways, so buckle in and turn down the lights.\u201d\u2014Elle.com<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Vegetarian<\/i> is the first\u2014there will be more, let\u2019s hope\u2014of Han Kang\u2019s novels to arrive in the United States\u2026The style is realistic and psychological, and denies us the comfort that might be wrung from a fairy tale or a myth of metamorphosis. We all like to read about girls swapping their fish tails for legs or their unwrinkled arms for branches, but\u2014at the risk of stating the obvious\u2014a person cannot become a potted bit of green foodstuff. That Yeong-hye seems not to know this makes her dangerous, and doomed.\u201d\u2014Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis haunting, original tale explores the eros, isolation and outer limits of a gripping metamorphosis that happens in plain sight\u2026 Han Kang has written a remarkable novel with universal themes about isolation, obsession, duty and desire.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“Complex and strange…Han’s\u00a0prose moves swiftly, riveted on the scene unfolding in a way that makes this story compulsively readable…this is a book that demands you to ask important questions, and its vivid images will be hard to shake. This is a book that will stay with you.”\u2014St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cBrutally yet beautifully explores the gap between one person\u2019s expression and another\u2019s reception.\u201d\u2014Harvard Crimson<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0is incredibly fresh and gripping, due in large part to the unforgettable narrative structure… Han Kang has created a multi-leveled, well-crafted story that does what all great stories do: immediately connects the unique situation within these pages to the often painful experience of living.”\u2014The Rumpus<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cDisquieting, thought-provoking and precisely informed.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Shelf Awareness<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA horror story in its depiction of the unknowability of others\u2014of the sudden feeling that you’ve never actually known someone close to you\u2026.Its three-part structure is brilliant, gradually digging deeper and deeper into darker and darker places; the writing is spare and haunting; but perhaps most memorable is its crushing climax, a phantasmagoric yet emotionally true moment that’s surely one of the year’s most powerful. This is an ingenious, upsetting, and unforgettable novel.\u201d\u2014Publishers Weekly<\/i> (starred review)<\/b><\/p>\n

“[A] spare, spectacular novel…Family dysfunction amid cultural suffocation is presented with elegant precision, transforming readers into complicit voyeurs. Fans of authors as diverse as Mary Karr and Haruki Murakami won’t be able to turn away.”\u2014Library Journal<\/i>\u00a0(starred review)<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cKorean writer Han Kang\u2019s elegant yet unsettling prose conveys her protagonist\u2019s brother-in-law\u2019s obsessive, art-centered lust; her sister\u2019s tepid, regret-riddled existence; and Yeong-hye\u2019s vivid, disturbing dreams\u2026 Readers will want more of the author\u2019s shocking portrayals of our innermost doubts, beliefs, and longings.\u201d\u2014Booklist<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201c[A] beautiful and disquieting new novel…concise and swift, its language often almost poetic…haunting.\u201d \u2014Bookpage<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“The book insists on a reader\u2019s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.\u00a0An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.”\u2014Kirkus<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“Searing…[Yeong-hye’s]\u00a0extreme efforts to separate herself from her animal appetites reveal the sanity and normality of those closest to her to be mere matchstick houses.”\u2014Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird\u00a0<\/i>
\n<\/b>
\n“Suffused with a sensibility\u00a0that evokes the matter-of-fact surrealism of Franz Kafka, featuring a female protagonist as engagingly perverse as Melville\u2019s Bartleby, Han Kang\u2019s slender but robust novel addresses many vital matters\u2014from the politics of gender to the presumptions of the male gaze, the conundrum of free will to the hegemony of meat\u2014with a dark \u00e9lan that vegetarians and carnivores alike will find hypnotic, erotic, disquieting, and wise.\u2014James Morrow,\u00a0author of Gal\u00e1pagos Regained<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“A strange, painfully tender exploration of the brutality of desire indulged and the fatality of desire ignored, rendered all the more so by Deborah Smith’s exquisite translation.”\u2014Eimear McBride, Baileys Women’s Prize-winning author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“Visceral and terrifying,\u00a0The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0is\u00a0a startling reminder of the utter unknowability of another’s mind. Nonetheless, reading it, you will feel it in your flesh: the desire for peace, a plea for safety, for escape from your own inevitable mortality. It is artfully plotted yet reads like a fever dream, sweeping and surreal. It will leave you aching.”\u2014Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“Like a small seed, Han Kang\u2019s startling and unforgettable debut goes to work quietly, but insistently. Her prose is so balanced, so elegant and assured, you might overlook the depths of this novel\u2019s darkness\u2014do so at your own peril.”\u2014Colin Winnette, author of\u00a0Haints Stay<\/i> and\u00a0Coyote\u00a0<\/i><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0is a story about metamorphosis, rage and the desire for another sort of life. It is written in cool, still, poetic but matter-of-fact short sentences, translated luminously by Deborah Smith, who is obviously a genius.”\u2014Deborah Levy, author of\u00a0The Unloved<\/i> and\u00a0Swimming Home<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0is hypnotically strange, sad, beautiful and compelling. I liked it immensely.”\u2014Nathan Filer, 2013 Costa First Novel award-winning author of\u00a0The\u00a0Shock of the Fall<\/i><\/b>
\n \u00a0<\/i>
\n“A stunning and beautifully haunting novel. It seems in places as if the very words on the page are photosynthesising. I loved this graceful, vivid book.”\u2014Jess Richards, Costa First Novel Award shortlisted author of\u00a0Snake Ropes<\/i><\/b>
\n \u00a0<\/i>
\n“Poetic and beguiling, and translated with tremendous elegance,\u00a0The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0exhilarates and disturbs.”\u2014Chloe Aridjis, author of<\/i>\u00a0The Book of Clouds<\/i>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cDark dreams, simmering tensions, chilling violence\u2026This South Korean novel is a feast\u2026It is sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colors and disturbing questions\u2026Sentence by sentence,\u00a0The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0is an extraordinary experience\u2026\u00a0[It] will be hard to beat.\u201d\u2014The Guardian<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“This is an odd and enthralling novel; its story filled with nihilism but lyricism too, its writing understated even in its most fevered, violent moments. It has a surreal and spellbinding quality, especially in its passage on nature and the physical landscape, so beautiful and so magnificently impervious to the human suffering around it.”\u2014Arifa Akbar, The Independent<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis short novel is one of the most startling I have read\u2026 Exciting and imaginative\u2026The author reveals how nature, sex and art crash through this polite society\u2026It is the women who are killed for daring to establish their own identity. The narrative makes it clear it is the crushing pressure of Korean etiquette which murders them\u2026[A] disturbing book.\u201d\u2014Julia Pascal, The Independent<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“Immediately absorbing…The different perspectives offered are so beautifully distinctive…Every word matters.”\u2014Sunday Herald<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“Shocking…The writing throughout is precise and spare, with not a word wasted. There are no tricks. Han holds the reader in a vice grip…The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0quickly settles into a dark, menacing brilliance that is similar to the work of the gifted Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa in its devastating study of psychological pain…The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0is more than a cautionary tale about the brutal treatment of women: it is a meditation on suffering and grief. It is about escape and how a dreamer takes flight. Most of all, it is about the emptiness and rage of discovering there is nothing to be done when all hope and comfort fails….A work of savage beauty and unnerving physicality.”\u2014Irish Times<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Vegetarian <\/i>is a book about the failures of language and the mysteries of the physical. Yet its message should not undermine Han\u2019s achievement as a writer. Like its anti-protagonist, The Vegetarian <\/i>whispers so clearly, it can be heard across the room, insistently and with devastating, quiet violence.\u201d\u2014Joanna Walsh,<\/b> The New Statesman<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201c[A] strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose\u2026 What is ultimately most troubling about Yeong-hye\u2019s post-human fantasies is that they appear to be a reasonable alternative to the world of repression and denial in which everyone around her exists.\u201d\u2014Times Literary Supplement<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“The Vegetarian<\/i> is so strange and vivid it left me breathless upon finishing it. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever read a novel as mouth-wateringly poetic, or as drenched in hypnotic oddities, taboos and scandal. It seems to have been plucked out of the ether, ready-made to take us all by surprise. Exciting and compelling”\u2014Lee Rourke, New Humanist <\/i>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

“The Vegetarian<\/i>\u00a0combines human violence and the possibility of innocence…[A] frightening beauty of a novel.” –British Council Literature<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“Uncanny.”\u2014The Australian<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“Kang belongs to a generation of writers that aim to discover secret drives, ambitions, and miseries behind one’s personal destiny…[The Vegetarian<\/i>] deals with violence, sanity, cultural limits, and the value of the human body as the last refuge and private space.”\u00a0–Tiempo Argentino<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“[A] bloodcurdlingly beautiful, sinister story.”\u2014Linda<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“The almost perverse seduction of this book originates in the poetry of the images. They are violently erotic and rather nightmarish; the novel is like a room full of large flowers, where the musky odour takes you by the throat.”\u2014De groene Amsterdammer<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“For the fans of Haruki Murakami.”\u2014Gazet van Antwerpen <\/i>(starred review)<\/b><\/p>\n

“Piercing… I was touched the most by the directness, the images, the poignant phrases and most of all the imagination with which it was written.”\u2014nrc Handelsblad<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“A shocking, moving and thought-provoking novel.”\u2014Trouw<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“Outright impressive.”\u2014HUMO<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

“One of the most impressive novels I have read recently… You need to read this book.”\u2014Arnon Grunberg in De Volkskrant<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

“The Vegetarian<\/i> is exciting and original.”\u2014De Standaard der Letteren <\/i>(starred review)
\n<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"han-kang1\"<\/a>Han Kang<\/strong> was born in 1970 in South Korea. In 1993 she made her literary debut as a poet, and was first published as novelist in 1994. A participant of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Han has won the Man Booker International Prize, the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today’s Young Artist Award, and the Manhae Literary Prize. She currently works as a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.<\/p>\n

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The Book Beat reading group selection for January is The Vegetarian by Han Kang. The Reading Group will meet on Wednesday, January 25th at 7pm in the Goldfish Tea Room (117 W 4th St #101, Royal Oak, MI 48067). Reading Group selections are discounted 15% at Book Beat. For more information, please call (248) 968-1190. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,25,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-reading-group","category-world-lit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}