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Jan 11, 2018vm510 rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
I don't mind the heavy subjects in Han Kang's books and I also learned a lot reading this book. I kept thinking throughout how easily the state - and the humans who carry out the state's violence - can torture, maim, and kill citizens. I kept thinking about the unending pain and sorrow people feel after experiencing violence (PTSD, dreams) or after losing someone close to them to state-sanctioned violence. My qualms with this book have more to do with the different narrators, who go through wretched and horrible things, but who I rarely felt connected to. The Vegetarian also used multiple narrators, but unlike Human Acts, I felt way more connected to The Vegetarian's characters and compelled to finish without stopping. Many people enjoy Human Acts' message and storytelling better than The Vegetarian, though, so I might be alone in this.