“Because of meat. I ate too much meat. The lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there. Blood and flesh, all those butchered bodies are scattered in every nook and cranny, and though the physical remnants were excreted, their lives still stick stubbornly to my insides.”

Well that was… something. 

This book was unnerving, dark and painful to read and… I enjoyed it. A lot actually. Despite what the title might lead you to believe, the book hardly even focuses on vegetarianism. It touches on bodily agency, sibling solidarity/rivalry, familial hierarchies, generational trauma and picks apart married life— mainly looking at the role of “proper” wives and the selfish, entitled behaviour of their husbands. 

Really enjoyed the approach the writer took with telling this story because Yeong-hye— the vegetarian, our main character— doesn’t speak to us directly. We learn about her experience through those in her life, we learn about how it effects them all but we are fed very small amounts of her own perspective, with most of them coming through her dreams. This element of mystery definitely kept me reading.