Tag: allegorical fiction

Day 996: World Light

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Cover for World LightAs much as I have enjoyed other novels by Halldór Laxness, I just couldn’t get into World Light. I think it was its allegorical qualities that put me off, as that is not my genre.

Olaf Karason is a foster child who has been brought up on a remote Icelandic farm. He is so badly treated there that in his teenage years he takes to his bed as an invalid. He is sadly aware of his own history, in which his father abandoned him, and his mother sent him away in a bag. He hears she is now doing well, but she shows no interest in him.

Olaf has a spiritual turn of mind and believes he has experienced some knowledge of God. He also wants to be a poet and is hungry for knowledge. But to the people surrounding him, this all just makes him seem more peculiar. He is almost ridiculously innocent, too, and because of his innocence and his hunger for love, he keeps thrusting himself into situations where he is misunderstood.

While Olaf is on the farm, I stayed with him, but more than 100 pages into the book, he loses his home and the parish sends a man to fetch him. That man, Reimar, takes him to a farm where he is miraculously cured before taking him to his destination in a convalescent home. But Olaf is cured, so no one knows what to do with him.

This section seemed to begin an entirely different book, and here it started to lose me. Because I felt as if I didn’t understand something, I began to read the Introduction, something I usually don’t do before finishing a novel, if then. Unfortunately, that told me enough about what was coming for Olaf that I developed a sense of dread. I struggled on but finally decided to stop.

Laxness’s novel is apparently an indictment of all the forces in the world against gentler souls. Certainly, the social climate and behaviors he depicts are brutal. As with some of his other novels, I had to keep reminding myself that it was set in the 20th century, because it seems to be several centuries earlier.

I hope my review doesn’t stop anyone from reading Laxness. Generally, I find him wonderful, with a keen, dark sense of humor. If this doesn’t sound like your kind of book, try Independent People (my personal favorite of the ones I’ve read) or Iceland’s Bell.

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Day 922: The Vegetarian

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Cover for The VegetarianThe Vegetarian is an unusual, transgressive work, full of disturbing images and violent scenes. When I first began reading it, I wondered how seriously we were supposed to take it as a work of realism. My answer was, not at all.

The novella is divided into three parts, each written from the point of view of a different character. The first is Mr. Cheong, the self-centered, repellent husband of Yeong-hye. He has already alienated us by describing his wife in insulting terms, even when remembering when he chose to marry her.

He tells us the story of what happens when Yeong-hye decides to stop eating meat. Her only explanation is “I had a dream.” But we get short glimpses into Yeong-hye’s thoughts, and they describe a disturbing vision that keeps recurring. This section climaxes in a shocking scene during a family party.

The next section is from the point of view of Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, an artist. He has his own visions and compulsions.

The final section is from the point of view of In-hye, Yeong-hye’s older sister. In-hye tries to understand her sister’s condition in terms of the hardships of her childhood, when she was abused by their father.

As Yeong-hye decides to embrace her inner plant, bending to her obsessions, the novella becomes more divorced from reality. The three main characters all are gripped by their own visions.

link to NetgalleyThe description of this novel on Goodreads calls it “an allegorical novel about modern day South Korea.” I would agree that it is allegorical (not my favorite genre), but that it’s actually about life in modern South Korea, not so much. It is set there, but it don’t think we’re supposed to see its events as representative of life in South Korea. The review in the New York Times points to the danger of “a focus on the ethnographic and sociological” and attributing much to differences in culture. If you believe this, you’ll think Koreans have very odd attitudes toward vegetarianism. I pondered this when reading, but decided that the behavior of the characters in some scenes was too extreme to be taken at face value.

Did I like The Vegetarian? Not so much, but it made me think.

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