i found the vegetarian remarkable, but i've loved the solemn reflections on human violence that han kang has published since even more. this book is deep and still and quiet, hugely emotional in the smallest strokes. it sneaks up on the reader in so many ways, and when i finished, i just sat with it. it's stayed with me since.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang, Translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Thank you @Hogarth and @NetGalley for the eARC)

We Do Not Part begins with a dream: thousands of black tree trunks of varying height like a crowd grouped together in the snow. While this novel is fiction, Kyungha’s dreams started shortly after she published a book about the massacre in G— providing a connection to Han’s previous novel Human Acts (which I have yet to read). Kyungha shares this dream with Inseon, a documentary filmmaker and a close friend who is much like a sister, and the two begin planning to bring the dream to life.

I was invested on page one and while I don’t think this can be called a page turner I was mesmerized by Kang’s writing, compulsively turning pages as I wanted to see what she was building toward. This book provides so much to think about and discuss. I think what interested me most was the way she “built” the novel and story. This is a deceptively simple narrative, but everything is in layers. The description of snow crystals being bound together is where this struck me most: crystals continue to bind with other crystals, and if it weren’t for the ground getting in the way they would become infinite. This perfectly captures the story, with Han starting with a small speck of dust to form the beginning of the story then continuing to add and build as the reader's understanding of the past slowly expands. Everything is layered (the flame with a bluish heart seed and a beating pulse) and textured (snow on the skin, the soft feeling of cotton, feathers on a baby’s skin), and rooted in things that are visual (shadows and shapes). Nothing feels solid or concrete. The integration of the natural world along with texture and images and its dreamlike quality is difficult to convey and capture but I know that it will be a book I continue to process and think about.

As I continue to be in awe of how Han constructed this story, I also love how she explored relationships, both friendships and familial connections. The close connection between Kyungha and Inseon was beautiful but I love the complexity of Inseon and her mother’s relationship. The rage that comes with misunderstanding a parent and also the challenges that come with caring for a parent when they need care at the end of their life and how we wrestle with forgiveness and loss and ultimately an understanding that we cannot separate ourselves from the history of the people we come from.

I was not familiar with the history at the center of this novel and it feels terrible to say I am grateful to have learned about it. Doing so feels like part of the purpose behind this novel–to shine a light on atrocities and uncover what has (literally) been buried. As we remember the past, even with its weight, this is a book about the vulnerability of life and living: “What astounded me was the sun’s rays, that they returned each day.”

A story with a lot of imagery that is easy to get lost in. At the root of the story is the lovely friendship between Inseon and Kyungha. I learned about a forgotten chapter in Korean history. At times it was difficult to know what was real and what was a dream. So many vivid images and trauma are presented, but the prose is excellent. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

Han Kang recently received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” While her writing certainly excels in all of that, We Do Not Part also spotlights Kang's capacity for tenderness. The story follows Kyungha's quest to rescue her friend Inseon's pet bird Ama from a snowstorm on Korea's Jeju island. Along the way, the novel unravels and reckons with the aftershocks of violence and generational trauma following the horrific Jeju April 3 incident, a historical massacre that took the lives of tens of thousands of the island's residents. As we follow Kyungha on her journey, there are scenes that feel surreal and others that feel downright psychedelic, but what I loved the most about this book is its optimism in life and friendship, even in the face of the irreconcilable.

This book has a dream-like, disorienting quality to it that is extremely immersive. I liked the switching narration styles and all of the nature imagery (birds, snow, forest, etc.). The atmosphere had an overall unsettling effect combined with domestic moments that felt almost comforting in their familiarity. The first half of the book feels slightly different from the second, with several parallels being drawn between the two main characters. Prior to reading, I was unaware of the events that the book was describing. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a personal quality to the stories that are usually only told through history textbooks.

Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever read something like this. What an interesting novel. I am left speechless, floundering for the words I want to say on this one. I’d recommend this to my serious readers, ones that dabble in many genres.

Tortured memories haunt not just those left behind but their descendants too in the aftermath of the April 3, 1948 Communist uprising in Korea. In this poetic account, the horror of mass executions of entire communities, particularly on Jeju Island, is explored in a way that lets the reader feel that time personally. The author’s writing is amazing, filled with beautiful metaphors and achingly poignant emotional moments.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hogarth Press for the ARC to read and review.

I really struggled with this book. Kang writes beautifully and the historical event here is certainly important, but it truly felt like a slog. I struggled to get through it because I never wanted to pick it up and read. In the beginning, I was compelled to keep reading, but somewhere along the way my eyes started to glaze over. It was probably just the wrong time for me to read this.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance reader's copy of this novel.

This book is about the cost of past sins; in this case the sins are national atrocities committed by South Korean authorities on its own citizens, but the costs and burdens are examined at the individual level. But it's also the story of a life-long friendship between 2 women that even, apparently, survives death. And it is beautifully told. The descriptions of the world are exquisite - the author's eye for detail is amazing - yet the tone of the book is slightly uncanny or hallucinogenic, especially in the final section.

This is a beautiful book, and it's easy to see why Han Kang won a Nobel Prize.

I'm grateful to Hogarth Books, NetGalley , and Random House Group for the eARC.

This is the second book I've read by Han Kang, after The Vegetarian. I wasn't aware until after I had read it, that it was a part of a trilogy, albeit standalone. In We do not part, Han Kang takes a dreadful incident in Korean history and weaves it into an imagery of poetic prose.
The story is told in many forms. It is narrated between two friends with flashbacks as interlude in between and at times like a documentary.

Subtle story telling has been interposed with vivid imagery and metaphors that can be imagined as two or more separate characters and incidents occurring simultaneously. Lines are omitted between human existence and spiritual, and you can never find out the difference. The book give the feelings of a devastatingly beautiful war poem, where the reader feels they are in the war, and times , a mere spectator.

The translated is brilliant, lucid and flows. It's a heavy, but required read, and says a lot in a short volume.

This book is beautiful and heartbreaking. It examines the generational trauma and grief of war and the atrocities that humans are capable of committing. The writing itself is poetic even while dealing with the gruesome subject matter. The descriptions of the Jeju Island massacre were heartbreaking. The heart of the story is the deep friendship between two women, Inseon and Kyungha.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely gut-wrenching. Beautiful. Han Kang did not disappoint with this one. This novel is in the same vein as Kang's novel Human Acts, this time about the Jeju Massacre instead of the Gwangju Uprising. The way Han Kang handles these tragic events in Korean history is unlike any other. She really demonstrates how much he deserved the Novel Prize with this one.

I haven't read Han Kang's other books, especially the Vegetarian, so I may have to go back and read them. We Do Not Part is beautifully written, and I am reading the English translation, but it's definitely not a straightforward plot. I visited Jeju Island last year and did a lot of historical reading, but if I hadn't, I would have had a hard time following it, and I'm still not sure I got all the symbolism.. Some of the story is told in dreams and visions, so you don't always know what is real or not. And it was very interesting, but the author makes you work for it.

We Do Not Part
By Han Kang

This is a strange book. Or maybe I just don't understand the cultural differences. But I found it very hard to follow. I really am not sure what the author is saying here.

On the plus side, the writing itself is well done. The story line, however, did not resonate with me. The two friends, the birds, the storm, the atrocities of war, both in Korea in the past and also in Viet Nam – all of these subjects merit thought. Just how they all fit together was not clear to me.

Maybe for a reader with a stronger background in Korean culture, this book would be much more meaningful.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for sharing this ARC.

Han Kang’s We Do Not Part is one of the more disorienting, unsettling books I have read in a long time. And I mean that as a compliment.

We Do Not Part begins in a dream and, just like the confusion you can experience upon waking, it continues to keep us off-kilter as the character awakes and we land smack dab in the middle of someone’s thoughts. And this someone has apparently holed up in an apartment for some time, not going out or interacting with anyone else. And I say “someone” because the narrator doesn’t take the time to introduce themselves; we are privy to their thoughts but they don’t appear to be aware of an audience. I was reminded of the rather solitary and isolated characters in Han’s Greek Lessons.

Eventually, this person (I’ll leave the discovery to you), is drawn back into the world by an urgent request from an old friend to come to the hospital. This subsequently sends our narrator on a quest to Jeju Island on the friend’s behalf.

We Do Not Part puts dream, memory, history, and reality into a blender and stirs them to keep readers constantly off balance. Like the ever-present snow in the story, edges are blurred, objects obscured. It’s cold and there’s a pervasive sense of danger.

I happened to be in the country when I read this. It was cold and snowy and there was at the time a sense of anxiety about what was to come. This book played right into that, got into my head and would not let me go. That speaks to the book’s ability to conjure a powerful feeling, but it did make it harder for me to gather my thoughts.

If I was a betting person (I’m not), I’d say We Do Not Part seems like a shoe-in for the International Booker longlist. It’s a deeply meaningful, claustrophobic, atmospheric read that stays with you long after you’ve finished.

In addition, Kang is the recently named Nobel laureate which might give the International Booker extra impetus to longlist We Do Not Part (not that they should need it) as they did with Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob in their year she was recognized by the Nobel.

I'm really torn on this one. The writing was beautiful and created such a haunting atmosphere as the novel progressed, but the pace was so slow for such a short read. I found myself wanting to read it but dreading it at the same time.

Overall though, this is still an amazing piece of literature, despite the slow pacing. The intense bond the author creates with the main character as she reflects on her life and the people in it will leave you a little broken, but in a way that will also leave you feeling more connected with humanity.

Thanks to netgalley for the ARC of this novel. This was my first Han Kang and I can see why she's a lauded writer. This book is atmospheric and sad, almost dreamy while also recounting some truly horrific parts of the massacre that happened in Jeju.
By the end I wasn't sure what the narrator had experienced and what was a dream sequence, but it didn't really matter by that point. The questions I had about the bird, and about her friend, they all just kind of melted away as I got further into her friend's mother's memories. I will think about this book for a long time.

4.5 stars. This book is so important. It tackles an understudied and not well known (at least not to me) era of violence in S. Korea in the years leading up to the Korean War. Like all of Kang’s books that I’ve read so far, this book seamlessly tackles aspects of the human condition with heart and gorgeous prose. This made me go on a Wikipedia dive to figure out how much of the history involved in this book I’ve somehow missed.

My main issue/struggle with this book was the mixed perspective and nonlinear timeline. Because it’s on a topic I’m so unfamiliar with, I got lost a few times and had to double back quite a bit to try and piece the story together and the family history of our main characters. Even so, I think this book is beautifully done and worth a read. I’ll probably reread it (in one go next time to avoid losing my train of logic with breaks or other books mixed in) and rate it even higher next time around.

The main character and first-person narrator of We Do Not Part by Han Kang knows her scientific trivia. Interesting facts percolate in Kyungha’s mind and drip meaningfully into her narration — especially, in Chapter 4: Birds, when she’s freezing her butt off at a rural bus stop in a snowstorm.

Kyungha is quiet, introspective, and extremely solitary. She’s a writer. She has spent significant time in archives fusing fact and narrative together. But no longer. Writing has wrecked her and her life.

In We Do Not Part, we meet Kyungha coming out of a housebound state, rising from the floor of her new Seoul apartment. Loneliness, migraines, and appetite loss have immobilized (and practically starved) her. She explains, in one of my favorite lines from the book: “I had not reconciled with life, but I had to resume living.”

She resumes living when her hospitalized friend needs her to travel to her home and take care of her pet bird.

Throughout the book, I got the sense that we are quite lucky, as readers, that Kyungha takes time to share this story with us at all. She doesn’t have the energy, vigor, or enthusiasm to offer information willy nilly. Given how her last book emotionally drained her, her sharing now has to serve a purpose and be efficient. Even for her own narrative, the effort it takes to tell pulls from energy she doesn’t really have.

I'm so glad Kyungha found the strength to share her story to save a bird. It's beautiful, sprawling, spiritual, and moving.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hogarth for the eARC!

This was such a emotional story, told with such depth and rawness. I breezed right through this book, and I can't recommend this book enough. This was my first Han Kang book; I can't wait to read her other works!