We Do Not Part

There are a million ways to write a story, and Han Kang knows how to pick the weirdest one every time. In this fever-dream of a novel, she eerily blurs the boundaries between present reality, nightmare, memory, and hallucination so completely that you can hardly tell where one ends and the next begins.

I was previously unaware of Jeju and the uprisings and massacres that took place there almost 80 years ago. This book not only introduced me to that devastating history, but it also gave me an intimate sense of the grief and terror surrounding it. I was fully absorbed in both the visceral memories of the past, and in the cold winter atmosphere of the present, both of which were described with the most haunting and tragic beauty.

If I wait to write a review until I fully understand all the symbolism in this book, I'll never write one. But the overarching themes about the impossibility of burying the past and the importance of acknowledging historical trauma reminded me a lot of Unburied, Sung, I'm not smart enough to articulate why, but something about the layered storytelling, the journey to save the bird, and even the smaller details like bloody fingers and the burning candle all just felt exactly right.

Book author: Han Kang