We Do Not Part is told from the perspective of a woman named Kyungha, an investigative journalist and writer based in Seoul. She lives alone and suffers from recurring nightmares that seem to symbolically intertwine natural elements and mass human suffering. She receives a message from her long-time friend and collaborator, a photographer, artist and filmmaker called Inseon. Inseon has been hospitalised following a woodworking accident, in which the tips of her fingers were sliced off (notably while working on a project suggested by Kyungha and inspired by her dreams, which she had asked her to stop).

In an attempt to recover the use of her digits, Inseon is subject to a torturous-sounding recovery programme involving regular injections into her hand that must be adminstered 24/7. When Kyungha visits, she is surprised to be asked to travel immediately to the remote Jeju Island where Inseon was based, in order to feed her pet bird. She nonetheless complies with the request, and arrives to find the island in the midst of an intense snowstorm, with transport impacted and only her memory of a previous visit to guide her to Inseon's home. The first half of the book focuses heavily on her seemingly doom-laden journey to try to rescue the bird, in which the elements seem to be conspiring against her. By the book's midpoint, it seems all is lost: while Kyungha makes it to the house, there is no heating and the cold seems unsurvivable. The bird, it seems, has not survived.

While the first section of the book has elements that are both specifically based in dreams and more generally 'dream-like', the book takes a more dramatic shift into this space in its second half. Kyungha awakes in the house to find the bird once more alive, and more confoundingly still, Inseon with her in the house, seemingly uninjured. With minimal questioning, Kyungha accepts this situation and is taken by Inseon on a guided history of her family and its history around and in the shadow of the 1948 Jeju massacre, in which government forces violently suppressed what they said was a left-wing insurgency based on the island.

According to estimates, around a fifth of the island's population, including civilian innocents, women and infants, were massacred on Jeju, with a rolling campaign of detentions and further executions over subsequent years. Like many related incidents in that era of Korean history, discussion was suppressed and facts only began to be made public decades later. In the book, Inseon's parents both survived the massacres by chance, and her mother in particular lived with that weight for the rest of their lives. We learn that her mother, recently passed away, was a key figure in campaigns to reveal the truth of the island's history, and that Inseon has taken on some of that work, both in the form of painstaking research and in translating some of the horrors into her art.

It's a really interesting and unusual framing device that Han deploys here. The book's second part takes us into the real substance of the book's purpose; a rich and detailed depiction of the horrific history of the island (and county), which is rooted very deliberately in real, specific events. And yet we are ostensibly learning about this reality through a strangely unreal scenario. If we're interested in figuring out what is 'happening' to Kyungha in this section, we may speculate that she is on some kind of boundary of consciousness, working through an understanding of what motivated her friend and in the process piecing together ever-deeper and darker elements of her family's history; or that she's consciously awake and engaged in the same process more physically, trawling through Inseon's boxes of documents while (as a result?) having some kind of breakdown in which she invokes her friend's spirit as a kind of consolatory guide.

Han leaves all of this deliberately open, and it ultimately doesn't matter. The blizzard in which Kyungha is caught both blankets out the present-day reality and brings with it a connection to a past that has been erased and is now resurfacing. It's a really storytelling sleight of hand that foregrounds questions of how atrocities can be covered up, made 'unreal' and memories altered and 'erased' (Inseon's mother's dementia is another metaphorical nod to this) and the struggles (political, journalistic, artistic) that try to work to recover some of that lost truth.

It's clearly a masterful book and its combination of immensely heavy subject matter and beautifully constructed prose, in which the lightness and fragility of nature (snowflakes, bird's wings) act as counterbalances to that historical weight, make it very evident why Han is now a Nobel Laureate. At times, I found the dream-like nature a little too wispy and hard to hold onto, and early on questioned whether I'd get on with it as a result (I am one of those people who really does not enjoy hearing about others' dreams). However, the way the whole of the book comes together to render that insubstantiality somehow deeply meaningful was impressive and powerful.

(9/10)

I'm not sure that, at almost any point in this book after the arrival at Jeju island, I knew what was going on. But, it is a testament to Kang's writing, that even with no clue what was real and what wasn't, this is still an incredibly powerful, moving, and altogether beautiful book.

I know very little about the history of South Korea, and even less about the history of jeju island. This book does an incredible job of explaining the atrocities that took place from the April uprising onwards, but captures them in the tale of survivors. Of escapees and relatives, desperately seeking for their family, either in flesh or in bone.

This story makes you question and reconsider family and relationships. How much do we really know about what our parents and grandparents have been through.

I was left with many questions, not least of which being - is Ama actually alive?

Han Kang is a complete genius when it comes to creating scenery and atmospheres that completely absorb the reader. During the scenes of snow and struggles against the elements, I could feel every sense that she described and I felt I was right there with the characters.

This book, like Kang’s others, starts as one thing and ends as something completely different. A story of two friends spans into something more sinister and more beautiful.

We Do Not Part is an important novel about a time in Korean history that is not talked about enough. It is harrowing and it is dark, and Kang dealt with the subject matter so masterfully. Her narrative voice is so strong that even when it gets hard, you still have to go on. Kang was once blacklisted in South Korea due to one of her earlier novels, ‘Human Acts’ but Kang has persevered and continues to write about parts of history many would wish to have hidden. Through her devotion to writing about the realities of humanity and the struggles that come along with it, she has yet again written another powerful and timely novel. It is no wonder Kang won a Novel Prize for literature.

I will forever be in awe of Han Kang and her writing. I have yet to find a book of hers I did not devour and adore and take with me after reading. This novel is definitely one that is going to stay with me forever, I still cannot shake the chill Kang’s descriptions.

This is a novel that everyone needs to read.

I previously read a couple of Han Kang’s works in English, and I struggled to get into them. Han Kang tends to lend a certain amount of hidden meaning in her choice of words as well as adding ambiguous layers as to who exactly is narrating the story. She produces some very complex pieces that require effort to decode. However, after Han Kang won the Noble Prize for Literature, I felt I should come back to reassess her work by reading this newest title.
Instantly, echoes of her previous titles are here again. We are first plunged into a dream that is a throwback to Human Acts, and I wondered if I would be dragged through the Gwangju massacre tragedy again. I was to a certain extent. But, then, the horrible scenes are interspersed by quite ordinary biographical details, and I actually found Han Kang’s account of her everyday life and the positioning of herself in her own story more appealing. I definitely came away with more insight into Han Kang as a person and a writer.
We learn of the toll that writing Human Acts took on her. Following the publication of that book, she seemed to enter an exhausted, depressive state, haunted by visions of what happened in Gwangju. She also gives an account of when her friend lost some fingers in an accident. I guess the title refers to the author not being able to fully separate herself from both distant and present events and people, and the same could apply to all of us. The events are largely non-cheerful, so it’s not particularly an uplifting read.
If you are into modern Korean literature, including works by Han Kang, then you will find this book interesting. Otherwise, I think it might be difficult to appreciate.

How to describe this book? It was confusing, but I quite enjoyed the confusion which I assume was deliberate. This book also has a structure that's very different to anything I've read before. The friendship between the two women is beautifully depicted.

It's also highlighted incidents in history, the Jeju massacre that I knew nothing about, and from this book's information it seems a lot is unresolved. It is harrowing content. The way the author shows the effects of inherited trauma through the generations was hauntingly accurate. I particularly related to the scenes of dementia bringing up these memories.

A tough read and a beautiful read and one I'll revisit at some point

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review

As a massive fan of Han Kang's writings We Do Not Part was a great addition to her other works, for me it feels like a book that fits the same genre as Human Acts in regards to the historical references to the horrors of war (in this case the Jeju massacre of 1948) and like that novel it feels like a particularly raw reflection on the horrors and atrocities humans can and do commit to others and the cost faced by those survive such horrors, as well as the generational scars and impact, which can be seen especially in this novel in the character Inseon whose injury feels as much a metaphor to her mother's experience of finding the body of her elder sister in the snow.

A fascinating read and deeply thought provoking on the broader theme of loss and generational trauma.

Many thanks for the e-ARC Netgalley & Penguin.

I loved "The Vegetarian "by Han Kang but struggled with "Greek Lessons" and it's cold prose. "We Do Not Part" is a change in tone again and I really respect how Han Kang is unafraid to experiment and go in unexpected directions after the success of The Vegetarian. We Do Not Part is a book of two halves. In the first section Ineson is hospitalised and has no one to take care of her pet bird, as a last resort she contacts her old friend Kyungha who makes a long arduous journey by plane and through a snow storm to reach Ineson's flat and feed the bird. In the flat whilst looking through books and papers, Kyungha discovers that Ineson's mother is a survivor of the massacre that followed the Jeju uprising in 1940, in which many people were slaughtered by the US-backed South Korean government forces and which lead them on a journey back to the island.

I think the first section of the book would make a lovely novella and the second a book in its own right as they felt a bit separate in tone to me. I had not heard of the Jeju uprising so I did learn some new history. I thought that some of the segues and "flights of fancy" distracted form the main storyline but I loved the motif of weather and how it impacts emotions very effective.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Penguin UK, for giving me access to this book's ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

Just like in Human Acts, Han Kang once again blends reality and fiction to ensure another tragic period in Korean history is not forgotten. In this book, we follow the relationship between two friends through a highly fragmented and confusing narrative in the present, haunted by the Jeju Island massacre of the past. This historical event, which led to the division of North and South Korea after Japanese occupation, intertwines with the lives of Kyungha and Inseon in a tone that shifts between dream and nightmare—at times, making it quite difficult to follow.

“Sometimes, with some dreams, you awake and sense that the dream is ongoing elsewhere. This dream is like that.”

“I placed my hand over the photo of the bones. Over people who no longer had eyes or tongues. Over people whose organs and muscles had rotted away! Over what was no longer human - no. Over what remained human even now.”

Despite Kang’s unique ability to balance brutality and fragility so well (which has made her one of my favorite authors), I can’t give We Do Not Part five stars. Unfortunately, the surrealist elements made the narrative quite chaotic, to the point where I often couldn’t tell which character was speaking, what was actually happening, or whether it was about the present or the past. Because of this, I felt a barrier between myself and the text, which prevented me from experiencing the intended level of empathy—especially given such sensitive themes that usually move me deeply.

Even so, I believe it’s a must-read for those who have already explored Kang’s other works. It’s a profound study of the human condition, showing that even after witnessing traumatic events, after all the pain, suffering, and despair, after our vulnerability, the harsh winters of life, and the deep shadows of the past—it is possible to have hope. It is possible not only to survive but to truly live.

“I had not reconciled with life, but I had to resume living.”

“I knew that was where my mum had also found herself. Waking from a nightmare, splashing water on my face and gazing at the mirror, I saw the same persistent quality in my features that had branded hers. What astounded me was the sun's rays, that they returned each day. Steeped in the afterimage of my dreams, I would walk to the woods and find their brutally beautiful light penetrating the foliage and creating thousands upon thousands of light drops.”

We Do Not Part is one of the most enchanting and haunting novels I have ever stumbled across. The thematic concerns of pain, intergenerational trauma, and ultimately connection are all immediately clear with the inciting event of carpenter Inseon losing two fingertips. Our narrator Kyungha rushes to her aid, not entirely grasping the gravity of the situation. Tasked with saving Inseon’s beloved pet bird, Ama, a seemingly simple favour morphs into a treacherous journey to Jeju Island in a snowstorm that threatens Kyungha and Ama’s lives. In a dreamlike sequence, readers are forced to accept Keat’s concept of negative capability, whereby you must embrace uncertainty without seeking answers. This Kafkaesque approach to storytelling is quintessential Kang and I encourage you to sit with the confusion and discomfort. Not because it will eventually be resolved, because it won’t; if you want a clean narrative, Kang is not your author of choice. Sit with the confusion because this imbues the nature of trauma, memory, and the uncertainty between life and death. The friendship between Inseon and Kyungha is one of the only things to be sure of throughout the whole novel; their connection transcends planes of existence.

In the hospital, Inseon is injected with needles every 3 minutes to make sure her once-severed nerves stay intact. This premise functions as a demand for the reading of this novel. Every 3 minutes (give or take), we are exposed to something cruel, something shocking, something intended to make us feel alive and check that our humanity remains responsive. We must keep prodding our emotions to prevent desensitisation. Inseon and Kyungha’s art project is living evidence of this; they seek to honour the past in order to better understand their present.

Pairing this rhythmic pinprick with the intertextual layering of the Jeju massacre, Kang overlays the presence of haunting timelines in a way that demands recognition. This prolonged pain and censorship spills into the immediate, represented by poignant symbols like trees, snow, and birds, clear favourites used throughout Kang's novels. The ripples of the massacre long permeate temporal boundaries through the power of collective memory, further asserting that we can never stop pressing these pain points. Kang emphasises that facing history is the only way to keep our severed, disjointed nerves alive.

I really don't know where to begin. Han Kang really doesn't know how to get to the point; just when I was just beginning to grasp what I was reading, the author would go off into a tangent. Her writing was confusing and the conversations felt muddled up due to absence of speech marks.

I just didn't understand the narrator. Was it a dream? Was she dead? What on earth was going on?

The only aspect of this book that I appreciated was the historical context. The Jeju Massacre was absolutely horrific.

Had Han Kang just written about Kyungha and Inseon exploring the archives related to the massacre, the story would have been so much better.

Published 6 February. A novel almost in two parts but both parts are beautifully written and compelling. Han Kang herself in her lecture given when she received her NobelPrize tell us that the novel started with a dream that she had of thousands of black tree stumps. The main character, Kyungha, a writer, at the beginning has a recurring dream of black tree stumps and together with her friend Inseon, they plan to recreate the dream, to create a sort of art installation of hundreds of blackened tree trunks - something that keeps being put off and put off. Then she receives an urgent phone call from Inseon who has severed two fingertips and is now receiving critical care. She asks Kyungha to travel to her home on the volcanic island of Jeju to feed her bird which will die if left too long without water. And so we have the first part of the novel - Kyungha’a journey to Jeju, which Han Kang describes as being on a horizontal path, in a heavy snowstorm and the writing with its imagery, the lack of light, the cold and the fragile snowflakes t is breath-taking and there is a tension there as well. You worry for this bird that has been left alone and worry that Kyumgha might be too late to save it. And then we come to the second part which is darker and heavier. In Inseon’s house she finds the testimonies that Inseon’s mother has collected from the survivors of the massacre that occurred on Jeju after WW2 when hundreds of thousands were executed. There is a surreal, dreamlike quality to this part as Inseon seems to have joined Kyungha, and Inseon’s late mother also gives testimony. Han Kang herself in the lecture that I mention, describes this part as being on a vertical path to ‘one of humanity’s darkest nights – to the winter of 1948 when civilians on Jeju were slaughtered ‘ There is so much darkness and pain in this novel - it is tempting to look away, but I couldn’t. The novel is about question of love and that the very act of looking at these awful memories, of remembering if the power of love. A book that left me moved. Rounded up to 5*

5 stars. With thanks to Hamish Hamilton and NetGalley for the arc.
This is a book that is both beautiful and devastating. Kyungha, a young Korean writer, is asked by long-time friend Inseon to travel to her family home in the forests of Jeju Island to care for Inseon’s pet bird after Inseon is hospitalised following a (fairly unpleasant) accident. The story follows Kyungha’s difficult journey through a snowstorm and nightmarish landscape to finally arrive at Inseon’s home, where another journey, this time into the horrific events of the past, awaits her.
The writing is lyrical and haunting. Descriptions of snow - cleansing but also covering and hiding- are repeated throughout and really add to the claustrophobic feeling of the story. Kang interweaves memories, dreams and documents to discuss the power of family and friendship against the evils and depravity that humans can inflict on one another, and underscores the importance of the act of remembrance. Some of the writing, especially in the scenes set in the hospital with Inseon, and in the descriptions of the events of the 1948 Jeju massacres, are graphic and painful to read, but that is how it should be.
A haunting and powerful book.

This is a stunning and hypnotic story of troubled history and trauma, dreams and reality.
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One of the themes in the book is about friendship, and it’s about the friendship between the two characters, Kyungha and Inseon. We get to read about the alternating narratives throughout, but the earlier part of the book is all about how Kyungha finds out that her old friend Inseon is hospitalised following an accident and upon Inseon’s request, Kyungha travels to Jeju island to feed her pet bird. That part of the book is filled with description of the challenging journey. Kyungha is caught in a snowstorm, loses her consciousness briefly, but she eventually finds Inseon’s house, not aware of what’s awaiting. ⁣
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The second part of the book is where the great historical reportage lies. Inseon’s mother is a survivor of the massacre that followed the Jeju uprising in 1940, in which many local people were slaughtered by the US-backed South Korean government forces from the mainland. Inseon leads Kyungha through what she finds, her mother’s research and the painful memory passed down. This part of the book highlights her mother’s love for her family. ⁣
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I kept on thinking about how I truly feel about the book. Like her previous books, the book is a rather experimental one and it’s not one for single-sitting reading. You have to read it slowly, imagine the scenery described, admire the lyricism of the prose (and I genuinely wonder what it would be like to read it in the original language), and let it moved you. Glad I got to experience all of that.

Absolutely astounding. Beautiful, haunting and evocative. Explores trauma, connection, memory and loss in such a unique and quietly contemplative way. Genuinely just incredible and one I will read again and again.

I enjoyed Human Acts from Kang so I was very excited to read more from her.

I loved the vivid descriptions of the snow, which made it feel perfect to read in winter! Kang has a beautiful way with words. Although it could be confusing at times, it often felt like a fever dream with the way some things unfolded. So I felt like it was going over my head a lot of the time 😂

It also felt like two different books the way it starts versus how it ends. I had a hard time feeling engaged throughout the middle as things dragged with the telling over showing. While I did enjoy the imagery and learning about such a heartbreaking, horrific period in history (to the surprise of no one, once again US military involvement is to blame) I think I would’ve enjoyed the book more had it been more focused?

So to summarize:
-learned new history that I now want to look into more
-love the atmospheric setting/imagery with Kang’s poetic writing
-enjoyed the first and last thirds
-slumped in the middle
-too much telling over showing
-and for those that deeply care: there are no quotation marks for dialogue (I got used to it eventually)

TW/CW: animal death, death of parent, blood, medical content, violence, murder, grief, gun violence, child death, genocide, war, suicidal thoughts, injury/injury detail, torture, vomit (brief mention)

I’ll be sharing my reviews on social media (IG and TikTok) in the coming days and update with links when I do!

This was a beautiful and heartbreaking book about a period of Korean history in which hundreds of thousands of civilians were massacred in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Dreams are intertwined with memory to tell the story, as the narrator pieces together the facts she learns about the past.
The main themes are friendship, family, perseverance and pain. What is it like to suffer from pain - both physical and emotional - and how do we cope with the pain of separation?
Most of the story takes place amidst a snowstorm, which emphasises the narrator’s isolation and is an eerie, but beautiful presence in the book.
Black and white are dominant colours, adding a cinematic quality to the imagery. The language is poetic and rich with symbolism.
The ghosts of the past become manifest through the ghostly presence of the narrator’s friend in the second half of the book - is she a spirit, a vision, a figment of imagination? Several questions are left unanswered at the end, but we are left with an overall feeling of sorrow for what we have learnt.

I really liked this! I felt like it had more plot than The Vegetarian, but was as weird and otherworldly (in a good way). It's an ambitious novel, but it reads very quickly and it was very immersive.

This book gave me every feeling under the sun and then some. It is such a beautiful tale of friendship and the lengths friends will go to for each other set with the backdrop of South Korea's tragic history. So many themes are touched on, but the main takeaways touch the concepts of family, loss, tragedy and most importantly friendship.

Kang's writing style is so unique and elegant which only adds to the specialness and weirdly cosy element of the storytelling. I loved Inseon's character and even though it wasn't told through her perspective, I still feel like by the end of the novel I knew her remarkably well. There was such strong imagery of weather, particularly the snow in Jeju Island, that was also written so beautifully. The only criticism is at times it did feel a little boring to read paragraph after paragraph focused solely on the weather when I felt I wanted to hear more about the plot.

Throughout the book, I felt Kang had a wonderful way of sustaining tension and she weaves this feeling of disorientation and bewilderment into the story alarmingly well. I think it speaks of Kang's gift as a writer to be able to create so much eeriness in the context of a snowstorm and with the absence of anything particularly spooky or evil. There were many moments were it felt like Kyungha was in a fever dream and we were seeing it so intimately through her eyes. Her quest to feed Ama was so devastating and in an odd way kind of uplifting too because it gave us a chance to see how much Kyungha valued her friendship with Inseon and more importantly how much she valued Inseon.

So many quotable moments, one of my faves has to be 'I had not reconciled with life, but I had to resume living.'

I wasn't crazy about the flashbacks, whilst they did help develop Inseon's character and provide useful context I did find the flashbacks sometimes disrupted the flow of the story and plot points. Not always, but sometimes I would be itching for the flashback to end so I could get back to Kyungha's harrowing trip to Jeju Island that I was already engrossed in. I also feel like this extended to the documentary moments in the book, I felt so engaged in the present day plot that I wasn't super attached to the documentary even though objectively I understood it was illustrating a historical tragedy that threaded all the way through to the current day characters.

However, I still think this book was multidimensional and enjoyable on so many levels. It is truly unique how Inseon's presence was plotted in this book despite only seeing her in the hospital at the beginning. It felt really original and moving despite the incredible task Kang set herself of making an interesting novel about friendship and our identity with tragedy.

Managing to be both surreal and build increasing tension, We Do Not Part is an exploration of self and history, of past trauma passed through generations and onto the landscape itself. Kyungha is called by her friend Inseon who pleads for her to come to her in hospital, and tasked with going to Jeju to save her bird. Through the dreamlike prose of Kang’s writing and the stream of consciousness form flitting seamlessly between present, past, and inconclusive future Kyungha discovers and is enveloped in South Korea’s dark history and how it is stamped upon Inseon’s family. A beautiful exploration of friendship, and the unravelling of past horrors.