one of the most difficult things i've ever read. i had to continuously put it down and take breaks. ( )

It ain't really about becoming vegetarian, it's about going insane. A bit frightening. ( )

Loveless but not Bloodless
I’m cataloging this book for reference rather than reviewing it. After reading the 2020 International Booker winner The Discomfort of Evening I checked other winners and saw that At Night All Blood is Black and Time Shelter were past winners, and although I couldn’t handle At Night All Blood is Black, I recognized it was well-written. Seemed to me that the International Booker judges are into dark, and I like dark so I looked for more.

I decided to give The Vegetarian a go. I had a feeling it’s be a dark read but as I’d been able to watch “Squid Game” I would be able to handle The Vegetarian.

I suspect this book might be readable in print, but in audio it just seemed sick. Blood doesn’t turn me on. Neither does an anorexic vegetarian woman who runs around her kitchen chucking the contents of her freezer all over the floor.

The book has chapters that alternate between the voices of husband and wife. The husband chose the wife because she was plain and he assumed he wouldn’t have to worry about her straying. I’m not sure why she chose him. I only know she had vivid dreams about blood. Nothing about the first three chapters grabbed me. Not the prose, not the characters, not the story if there was one. Life is short and is getting shorter. I gave up.

I think it might be a story of a marriage, loveless but not bloodless. But thankfully I’ll never know. ( )

Favorite quotes:

"Slowly she turned to face him, and he saw that her expression was as serene as that of a Buddhist monk. Such uncanny serenity actually frightened him, making him think that perhaps this was a surface impression left behind after any amount of unspeakable viciousness had been digested, or else settled down inside her as a kind of sediment."

"It seemed enough for her to just deal with whatever it was that came her way, calmly and without fuss. Or perhaps it was simply that things were happening inside her, terrible things, which no one else could even guess at, at thus it was impossible for her to engage with everyday life at the same time. If so, she would naturally have no energy left, not just for curiosity or interest but indeed for any meaningful response to all the humdrum minutiae that went on on the surface."

"There was nothing the matter. It was a fact. Everything would be fine as long as she just kept going, just carried on with her life as she had always done. In any case, there was no other way." ( )

3.5 stars ( )