Welcome to Litsy!

I can‘t lie - I didn‘t get it. I started in print and ended in audio. Both formats were a miss for me, but the audio was slightly better.

A strange little novel about resisting dominant social structures through a female protagonist who decides to stop eating meat and gradually
"devolves" further until she eventually wastes away, wishing to return to the earth as a tree. Graphic, violent descriptions, visually evocative. But overall didn‘t land as powerfully for me, perhaps something to do with the translation or because it leans toward fantastical which I typically don‘t enjoy.

Interesting book of living a life vicariously after a sibling‘s death. This exploration of feelings & reflections is taken even further when adding thoughts/ideas only related to the color white. Loved it‘s uniqueness.

This is a very tender, but also very sad book. In different very short texts, Han Kang talks about white things. White being the color of mourning in Korea. We learn about her older sister, who died shortly after birth. We learn how that still hunts Kang, how it affects her life. I was deeply moved by this work, by its calmness, by its insights.

I finally picked up a Han Kang book. She sure punches a lot into such a short novel. I think this is the first book I‘ve read about anorexia. Yeong-hye begins having dreams and becomes vegetarian. Mental health and trauma plays a big part. The story is told by multiple POV‘s, all infuriated with Yeong-hye‘s decision to go against the grain of society.

Starting my Han Kang journey…

4/5 ⭐️
Il racconto molto crudo di una persona in lotta con sé stessa, con gli altri e con l'ambiente che la circonda
Una storia molto forte e a tratti disturbante che lascia un senso di inquietudine e ti fa riflettere

A woman has become mute. She has lost her husband, teaching job, and custody of her 8-yr-old son. Lost herself, she takes a course in Ancient Greek taught by an instructor about her age who is losing his sight. Somehow a gentle warm story comes out of this, layered onto of darker histories and life pains, and terrific interesting prose. This completes my two week run through Han‘s four English-translated novels. (Another is due out in January)

Starting the next book - more from Nobel winner Han Kang

This reads like a collection of prose poetry. A series of white things, with a theme on an older sister who only lived a couple hours. Each topic gets a page or so. A blizzard is characterized by "this oppressive weight of beauty", a handkerchief is falling "like a soul tentatively sounding out the place it might alight". Very interesting, if generally mystifying to me.