There is much to like about this novel, but in the end, I was underwhelmed. The crescendo of symbolism was subtle at first, but then became weighted down, like the deathly snowstorm itself. The novel was strongest in its depiction of the tie between the two main characters who came together to reveal stories of the past and became inseparable friends, even in death. The intertwining them of the genocide was so heavy-handed that it bordered on genocide porn. Worse than that, it was told in a distanced-dreamy way, concentrating on the magnitude instead of the individuals, which is dehumanizing for the victims. Stalin is purported to say that one death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic. Unfortunately, in this novel, the reader is buried under the deaths to such an extent as to numb the senses, turning each of those individual tragedies into a mere statistic. Thank you, Netgalley and Random House, for the opportunity to read this book.

Wow the complexity in her storytelling is unmatched. Books by this author always linger with me in a way that is so special.

It takes a special kind of courage and resilience to study the blackest corners of our history. It makes sense to never want to speak of the worst things humans have done to each other. And yet, if we never speak of the Holocaust, chattel slavery, genocide, etc., or only learn a distorted version of these events, how can we truly learn to be better, just people? As I read We Do Not Part, the brilliant and shattering new novel by Han Kang, I kept thinking of the mental toll Iris Chang paid after researching and writing her book about the Rape of Nanking. The protagonists of this book also find themselves haunted by what they learned when they researched the Jeju Uprising and the mass killings that followed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This book is beautifully translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris.

Kyungha, a writer, struggles with debilitating migraines and often finds herself so nauseous she can’t eat. Sometime before the novel, she left her family and moved into her own apartment. It’s hard to tell how long she’s been in the grip of terrible depression and pain, though she seems to be emerging from it. One wintry morning, she gets a call from Inseon, a photographer and woodcarver she collaborated with on a documentary about the Jeju Uprising and the survivors’ efforts to find, identify, and reclaim the remains of their lost loved ones. Inseon has suffered a terrible accident in her woodshop and, because she is as solitary as Kyungha, she needs someone to immediately go to her home on Hallasan, the dormant volcano on Jeju Island, to rescue her bird. Inseon tells Kyungha that she has to leave right away. The bird hasn’t been cared for in the days it took to get Inseon to the mainland, get through surgery, and start her horrifically painful recovery process. If Kyunhga doesn’t leave now, the bird will die.

The journey to the hinterlands of Jeju is not easy. The entire island is covered in snow. The buses are struggling to complete their routes and the airport is already canceling flights by the time Kyungha arrives. Her struggle to get to Inseon’s house begins to take on the air of the supernatural. People appear on the road like ghosts. (One of them might actually be a ghost.) Kyungha has to walk most of the way, through the deep snow and growing dark in her inadequate clothing. She falls, recovers, and finally makes it to Inseon’s house. Kyungha is so out of it that she starts to wonder if she died on the way and is in some kind of afterlife.

At this point, cold, hungry, tired, in pain from a migraine, Kyungha starts to drift through time. She slowly reveals the long, terrible history of the Jeju Uprising, a history that was illegal to speak of for decades under the repressive South Korean government. Kyungha remembers Inseon’s hunt to find out what happened to relatives and friends of her mother who were killed during the Uprising or its aftermath. Inseon’s intense quest mirrors her mother’s quieter but no less determined efforts to find out what happened to her lost ones, where, and when. None of them can forget, even though carrying the memories is clearly killing something inside of them. If they don’t remember, the people who were killed all those decades ago will be completely forgotten.

I marveled at Han Kang’s writing as we went deeper into Kyungha’s memories and the memories of Jeju Islanders. My summary is much more hamfisted than the subtle, thoughtful revelations in We Do Not Part. What really struck me about the book was the way that Kyungha settled into a peaceful acceptance of the past. She does not forget but she learns to move forward while carrying the memory of what happened on Jeju Island, all those years ago. It is possible to live even after learning the terrible reality of our histories if we are willing to bear the pain long enough to find our way through to the other side, metaphorically. If we can do this, the lost need not stay lost forever. Perhaps, we might even find a measure of justice for the crimes of the past.

This book is gorgeously written — beautiful, sad, and haunting. It is understandable why this author is a Nobel Prize winner. This book has opened my eyes to war crimes that were unknown to me and it saddens me that nothing in this world has changed. It calls for us to remember everyone in this world who has ever suffered a similar fate of mass murder and ethnic cleansing that has happened and continues to happen in the world for various reasons through the focus of Jeju 4:3 points massacres that took place in April 1948. Jeju 4:3 encompasses atrocities that stretched back into preceding months and continued over 1 year later where horrendous war crimes and other atrocities were committed. This is a powerful work and worth reading, I highly recommend it. The translation of this work is exquisitely written. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House | Hogarth for this ARC. This is my honest review.

This author is a master and I am so glad that she won the Nobel Prize in 2024. This is a newly translated to English release that will come out in early 2025. I definitely recommend this. It is haunting. She adds some history into this one which isn't always one of her elements. All of her books (the ones I have read) are amazing and I highly recommend all of them. This particular book is an excellent contribution to her body of work.

An absolutely incredible and profound story about the continuing cycle of intergenerational trauma and the suppression of the violent acts of the Jeju Uprising in 1948.

It’s harrowing. The dreamlike prose and often unreliable narration don’t make it an easy read but it’s not supposed to be. It’s a haunting depiction of violence and trauma, underscored by the human condition. You are put face to face with the violence, not to glorify it but to remember it.

Kang’s poetic prose is undeniably the strength of this novel, like many of her others. She has a way of writing that sticks in your brain and makes you think about certain passages over and over and over again. And what vivid metaphors, so deeply interwoven throughout the novel but without using any overly flowery language to exaggerate their points. I loved the feeling of the disjointed narrative, it really captured the essence of what it means to experience, remember, relive, and understand the trauma of a massacre. The literary choices felt very pointed.

Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is a favorite of mine so I was eager to read this new book. I was engaged at first and then I was so upset by the animal death that I had a hard time returning to the story. I was so depressed reading the book that I decided to take a break. Every time I thought about going back to it I just didn’t want to. I managed to start pick it up again once but it was bringing me down too much even though I tend to like melancholy stories. The writing is top notch but I just didn’t want to be in the world that was created, it’s too bleak even for me.
Thanks to NetGallery and the publisher for letting me read!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book.

"We Do Not Part" by Han King is a profound and haunting story of two friends; one is asked to go to Jeju Island to care for her bird while she gets treatment in South Korea for an injury. The perilous journey to the island amidst a blizzard snowstorm and the journey to her friend's house is scary and treacherous. This weaves in the story of the massacres in South Korea and a past that most people want to forget about.

Highly recommend his beautifully written book.

This book was a wild ride - a bit of a fever dream where it was hard to tell what was real and what was imagined. It almost felt like two books in one. The first part of the book really set the stage to get Kyungha down to Jeju Island to deal with the home and pet of her friend who was in the hospital. The second part of the book is where reality and dreams get a little murky -- there's a big snowstorm, and all of a sudden Inseon is back at the home (a ghost? real? who knows) showing and explaining important parts of her family's and the island's history to Kyungha. The historical details of Jeju Island in the Korean war time come to light in Inseon's retelling. I will say, the writing was beautiful, but for me a few things didn't work. I wondered why the first part of the book was necessary when it seemed like a vehicle to get the characters to the place where the history of Jeju could be told - that seemed like the more urgent part of the story. Why not just write a historical fiction without the friend, the injury, the snowstorm? I also think, for me, not knowing about that period in Korean history I was left with gaps in my knowledge trying to understand what was being told in the story (that's more a me issue than a book issue I suppose). With that said, I learned some things and was glad to read an advanced copy of this book.

Confession time, this book sounded fascinating which was why I requested it from Netgalley.

The reading started out brilliantly... the writing is really beautiful. Sentences that just linger and that invite you back to read them over.

All of that got lost for me though as I found myself needed to read passages over and over again to figure out what was going on in this very disjointed story. I knew absolutely nothing about a massacre that happened in Jeju, Korea in 1948 (I had to do a bit of a Google search to educate myself) and while the disjointedness of the story did not improve, I found that this dream-quest way of telling the story to make a bit more sense.

I wanted to find connections with the characters, but in the end... I just could not. I am not sure if the disjointed way of telling this story was the reason, but it certainly did not help. I also struggled to finish this book... I made myself just sit down and finish it. I have waited a few days to write my review, hoping that things would become clearer with some time and space... but they did not.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House | Hogarth for this digital copy to read. This book will be published January 21, 2025.

This book was challenging to read. The narrative felt disjointed, and it was often hard to follow which character each paragraph was focusing on, as the perspective shifted frequently. I found it difficult to grasp the history of the atrocities committed by Korean soldiers against Korean citizens, as this part of the story felt out of place and confusing, leaving me uncertain about the context and what was happening.

Kyungha has been asked by her friend Ineson to come see her. Ineson has had an accident with a circle saw
and is hospitalized. She asks Kyungha to travel to her home to take care of her bird. Kyungha endures a
perilous journey to Jeju due to the snow. Kyungha's nightmares are revealed along with details of Ineson's
family history and the 1948 Jeju uprising are revealed. Dreamlike sequences paint vivid pictures.
Story of friendship, family responsibility and history
#WeDoNotPart #RandomHouse #Hogarth #NetGalley

This novel was steeped in vivid imagery and engaging prose. There was a lot of ambiguity with certain aspects of the novel but I didn't feel like it retracted from the overall story. This novel definitely brings to life lost voices filled with love & friendship in the face of violence and horror.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

In spare but lyrical language, like brush strokes on a page, author Han Kang paints a haunting picture of two women in Korea, friends who are both emotionally damaged, and who seek wholeness by exploring the history of two modern massacres.

The ambience is as blurry as the snowstorm in which the narrator makes her way, with a sense of unreality and unreliability. Although the tale begins in a grueling heat wave, we enter the story as the she describes a chilling nightmare, and continue as she outlines the eerie, isolated life she has chosen to be living, deliberately cut off from those she loves.

The desperate call from a friend leads Kyungha (we eventually learn her name) on a journey to save the friend’s pet bird, and to understand how two massacres, one in the early 1950’s and one in 1980, both hidden from the public, continue to plague the present.

Originally published in 2021, this is the first English translation by the 2024 Nobel Laureate in Literature. While written with delicacy and subtly, the story is grim and graphic, and often confusing. Despite the importance of bearing witness to such atrocities, I would not recommend it to the people I know.

This novel was so beautifully written, and I loved the way it explored deep-rooted friendship alongside historical and familial trauma. The language was beautiful and full of imagery and detail I could clearly picture throughout, and I was consistently moved by the women’s strength and sudden motivations to survive after wanting so badly to die. I did get confused sometimes about whose memories were being related and how they connected to Kyungha’s book, and I felt like while the ambiguity kept me engaged, I wanted a bit more closure in the end.

I really enjoyed this magical, mystical tale. I wish it had been a bit longer but I very highly recommend.

"Han Kang's most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet - a white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon's house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal - or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades - bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence - and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be."

I must read it because I must know about the hidden history!

I still don’t know if I liked or disliked this book, but it is clearly a work or art. I think I may need to read this again. There is so much of the story left to interpretation- is her friend alive or dead? Is she alive or dead? Are the birds alive or dead? Is it a mystical story or literal story? I do not know. What I do know is that it is a very interesting backdrop to tell the story of the wartime atrocities that occurred on Jeju island. While WWII continues to provide fodder for historical fiction novels (and I am sure there are many more stories of atrocities yet to be written about), I really enjoyed reading about the easy relationship between these two women. I still don’t really know what is happening in this book, but I will likely not forget it.
Thank you NetGalley for a ARC.

How to even start this review. It’s like looking at abstract art and thinking - “anyone can do that”. And then suddenly you start crying and aren’t sure why.
This was my first Han Kang novel (certainly not my last). It’s a bit more artistic and lyrical than my typical read, so I suggest you be in the frame of mind for that. Nothing as overwhelming as an Olga Tokarczuk book, but still.
There are a number of repeating, thematic elements that are built upon as the story weaves through current and past, bus stop and hospital and cabin. I think this book has to be read in one long, depressing weekend. Get a giant mug of tea and begin. You will not want to resurface until the threads (or logs) are all unwoven and sorted.

Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her in a Seoul hospital, and is asked to visit Inseon's home on Jeju Island to take care of her pet bird.

Jeju Island under a snow storm brings back memories of history during the Korean War and also fifty years ago when residents were taken from their homes, the men incarcerated and eventually executed, all in the name of an anti communist purge by the military government. The book gives the appalling numbers of the thousands of people killed during this period of military rule in South Korea, their bodies thrown in the sea, buried in pits, some of which were since excavated, some still buried.

The description of the beauty of nature intermingles with references to the mass slaughter in Korean history. Han Kang writes with passion and conviction, yet her words fall gently but damningly at the same time. Her writing is full of pathos, yet it is easy to read and understand, as the topics seem personal. This is a great example of Witness Literature, a genre that aims to "mourn and heal" as it reveals and remembers. .