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.

I began this story with pretty low expectations because of the strange, dreamlike nature of the beginning. I'm not one for poetic and dreamlike prose. It begins with Kyunghaya, an author, trying to deal with her dreams and thoughts as she struggles to write the book we are reading.

It's an interesting device to write a version of yourself to explain the difficulties of writing an emotive novel.

The next part deals with the author's collaboration with a sculptor who has become her friend.

We Do Not Part deals mainly with the story of the sculptor's family and the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Koreans. It is not an easy read, but it will pull you in. The descriptions of the sculptor, her home and her family are beautiful and heartbreaking.

I may have started out with some reserve but by the end I struggled to put the book down.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the advance review copy. My love for Han Kang's work continues.

4.25/5

Dream-like, emotional, and brutally honest, “We Do Not Part” captures the Jeju massacres in vivid detail, while also addressing modern themes of family, fulfilment, love, and memory. The novel is split in two parts, with the first part focused more on Kyungha and her struggles in Seoul, and the second part set in Jeju, where the island’s horrible past is uncovered. Both parts had their distinct “vibes” and I appreciated the separation, as getting into the second part read like a nightmare, compared to the tangible coldness of the first half.

I enjoyed reading about between Kyungha and Inseon’s relationship as it developed, as well as Inseon’s own relationship with her mother. Every conversation had its purpose in revealing the bigger subject at hand, and the connectedness of it made it a satisfying reading experience. That being said, the book got incredibly emotional and I’m a sucker for maternal relationships in books. I definitely got teary-eyed, and was just shocked by the information revealed in the later half of this book. Reading this has taught me that I don’t know nearly enough about Korean history, and I feel moved to do my own research on such topics now.

Not for me. I just could not fathom what this was meant to be achieving. I abandoned it as not worth continuing and after skimming to the end. Prize winner…how?

I liked this book, but did not get along with mixed reality theme.
It is not clear at the latter end of the story which of the alternative realities presented was true.
What I did really like was the story of the astonishing friendship between the two main characters, very rare in reality but amazing if found.
The back story of the atrocities committed to many thousands of Koreans in the second half of the last century was harrowing, but probably necessary to tell.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang is a beautifully written, dreamlike exploration of memory, trauma, and history. Kyunghaya, a part-time teacher and writer, journeys to Jeju Island to care for her injured friend's bird and grapples with visions, mysteries, and Korea's violent past. The narrative blends the surreal and the historical, delving into the horrors of war and the weight of inherited pain. While the writing is undeniably beautiful, the story's deep ties to Korea's history left me feeling disconnected—I needed more background to fully grasp its layers. A thought-provoking but challenging read.

I didn't know what to expect going into We Do Not Part, because I never actually read the blurb before starting it. I just knew that I love Human Acts and the few pieces of Han Kang's short fiction that I've read, as well as the story "Heavy Snow" that appeared in The New Yorker late last year as an excerpt from this novel. I'd liked that piece a lot, and I really wanted to see the longer work that it came from.

It turns out that "Heavy Snow" is only sort of an excerpt from We Do Not Part. It takes pieces from a longer sequence - the majority of Part 1 of the novel, as it turns out - and abridges them, re-ordering and recontextualising them and adding new material to make the ellisions work. It's a seamless piece of work, and though "Heavy Snow" is a piece of this novel I think it's different enough that it stands alone. In its extended form here, that story takes on much more weight.

The first act, following Kyungha's journey from the hospital in Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island in the grip of an unending snow storm, is simply beautiful. It's quiet and contemplative but at the same time urgent and scary, and even though the stakes are on their face quite small - will Kyungha arrive at Inseon's house in time to prevent her pet bird from dying? - they're no less meaningful, underpinned as they are by the weight of years of friendship and obligation, by a history between these two characters that's shown to us only in small pieces.

The quiet beauty and escalating tension of Part 1 do an incredible job of priming us for the emotional impact of the rest of the novel. Once Kyungha reaches Inseon's home the story shifts into something that feels like a companion piece to Human Acts, as she is haunted by Inseon's past and discovers records around the Jeju uprising and massacre of 1948, in which the Korean government slaughtered thousands of civilians. I admittedly know very little about Korean history but, as with Human Acts, Han Kang presents the events she's concerned about in such a stark, unflinching way that it doesn't matter.
We Do Not Part's narrator is, herself, a writer who has previously written a novel about the massacre following the Gwangju uprising in 1980 - the same subject matter as Human Acts. Here Kyungha laments that she didn't tell the whole story in her book, that she allowed some of the atrocities to go unremembered. The final act of We Do Not Part grapples with ideas around forgetting and how we remember the dead, and how the past haunts the future.

This is a book with pain on every page, from Inseon's horrific injury at the beginning, to the frozen pain of Kyungha's journey and the uncovering of the terrible history in the back end of the novel. Kyungha, too, suffers with debilitating migraines, one of which grips her for most of the opening section of the novel. Both of the characters spend the entire book in pain that's exacerbated by their attempts to keep the past alive, and it would be easy to ask whether it's worth it. But the book closes with images that remind us that no matter how painful it may be, remembering is always an act of love.

We Do Not Part won the Prix Médicis étranger for its French translation, and I'll be very surprised if this English rendering doesn't appear on the International Booker Prize shortlist later this year.

I had promised myself not to read anything more by this author after “The Vegetarian,” but since she was then given the Nobel Prize for Literature, I tried to give her another chance. Netgalley then sent me this novel, dreamlike but based on true historical events that happened in Korea just after the end of World War II, the Korea of M.A.S.H. to be clear. I can't say it disturbed me like the previous book, but it certainly was not an easy read. This rarefied but heavy atmosphere, with the snowstorm, the cold and the absence of light, the flashbacks of Isehon's mother's past, the very peculiar protagonist and the two birds made everything almost chilling, nearly a horror book. So I would say that I tried, but I am definitely not able to appreciate even this Nobel Prize for literature.

Mi ero ripromessa di non leggere piú niente di questa autrice dopo "La vegetariana", ma siccome poi le hanno dato il Nobel per la letteratura, ho provato a darle un'altra chance. Netgalley quindi mi ha mandato questo romanzo, onirico ma basato su fatti storici veri accaduti in Corea appena dopo la fine della seconda guerra mondiale, la Corea di M.A.S.H. per capirsi. Non posso dire che mi abbia disturbato come il libro precedente, ma certamente non é stato una lettura semplice. Questa atmosfera rarefatta ma pesantissima, con la tempesta di neve, il freddo e l'assenza di luce, i flashback del passato della madre di Isehon, la protagonista molto particolare e i due uccelli hanno resto tutto quasi agghiacciante, quasi un libro d'orrore. Direi quindi che io ci ho provato, ma sicuramente non sono in grado di apprezzare nemmeno questo nobel per la letteratura.

I received from the Publisher a digital advanced review copy in exchange for a honest review.

The latest (to be translated into English novel) by the 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature – due to be published later in 2025.

Overall I would say that this might be the perfect place to start with the Nobel Laureate as it is a perfect (and it has to be said deliberate) combination of her two strongest other translated novels – the austere, white dominated imagery of “The White Book” and the traumatic investigation into South Korea’s dark post war history of military massacres (something perhaps which will appear much less at discard with the world of K-Pop and bao buns with events in late 2024) which featured in “Human Acts”.

The novel in fact opens with its narrator Kyungha haunted by a dream of black tree trunks (which she sense are graves or possibly even people) dusted in snow on a dark shoreline – a recurring dream she initially traces to her own authorship of a novel which is effectively “Human Acts” (and a dream which Han Kang herself also experienced).

We learn that over time (time like reality versus dreams is a fluid concept in the novel) she had discussed with a close friend Inseon (they initially met with Inseon as photographer to Kyungha’s artistic writing) – who lives with her mother on the volcanic holiday Island of Jeju and has largely given up her art documentary film career to be a carpenter – a joint project to recreate Kyungha’s dream.

In the present day – when Kyungha has largely abandoned her idea – she is urgently summoned by Inseon to a Seoul hospital where Inseon is receiving critical treatment for two severed finger tips (finger tips and blood are one of a number of recurring images): Inseon was medevac’d to the mainland after her accident and wants Kyungha to travel urgently to her home on Jeju where she fears her budgie may be dying.

The rest of the first part of the novel is perhaps the strongest of the book in a literary/figurative – documenting Kyungha’s increasingly difficult and ultimately it seems unsuccessful trip across a snowbound Jeju to Inseon’s home.

Part II changes the novel significantly and is perhaps best explained by the author herself in her Nobel lecture: “If the first part is a horizontal journey that follows 9 the narrator, Kyungha, from Seoul to her friend Inseon’s home in the Jeju uplands through heavy snow towards the pet bird she has been tasked with saving, then the second part follows a vertical path that leads Kyungha and Inseon down to one of humanity’s darkest nights — to the winter of 1948 when civilians on Jeju were slaughtered — and into the ocean’s depths”

Kyungha wakes in Inseon’s house – only to find that both the bird (who she remembers burying) and Inseon (who should be in hospital) are present. She has already realised that Inseon has been -unbeknownst to her – carrying on with their aborted project and that her injury was connected with her cutting and shaling of the black tree trunks. At the same time, we learn via Inseon’s memories of her mother (often with her mother addressing us directly) of her mother’s involvement in tracing the covered-up and suppressed history of the Jeju 4:3 massacres including various direct family involvements.

This second part is very powerful indeed although I perhaps have two criticisms: firstly there are rather too many heavy handed early references to effectively “is this a dream”/”is this real” which are not really necessary when a novel is so obviously blurring images, dreams and reality; secondly at times the exposition of Jeju’s troubled history can be a little too heavy – I would have preferred more left to my own research.

A brief third part – where Inseon and Kyungha complete their act of remembrance ends this excellent (if slightly flawed) novel strongly.

“That is how death avoided me. Like an asteroid though to be on a collision course avoids Earth by a hair’s breadth, hurtling past at a furious velocity that knows neither regret nor hesitation.”

Han Kang’s We Do Not Part is an intricately woven but complicated narrative that seeks to question the unsettling beginnings of the Jeju massacre, when Kyungha visits her friend Inseon after a terrible wood-chopping accident. 

The novel's introduction was intriguing, but as it slowly revealed more, my interest waned. At most times, I was confused. The book’s main flaw was the narration—constant perspective shifts and unquoted dialogue let this book down in navigating the story. Where timelines intersected, the book was an overall mess. 

Another flaw I had with the book was the detachment of the characters, especially Kyungha. That could have been an intentional move on her part. However, I felt that her characterisation was lacking. We only witnessed her monologues and all before her personality fizzled out within the contemporary setting.

As this is my first Han Kang book, it was a shame to find this a disappointing read.

The standouts for me were the birds, Ami and Ama. Yeah, that is right. The animals at the beginning somehow met an unfortunate end within the book.

[Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for a copy of an ARC in exchange for an honest review.]

I have read all Han Kang's works currently translated into English and have enjoyed them all, but I think We Do Not Part might be my favourite so far. Like Human Acts, this book focuses on a terrible historical event, in this case one that took place on Jeju island in the late 1940s. As such there is a lot of stark darkness within the work in terms of the subject matter, but this is contrasted with the lyrical poetics of the prose. Thus we drift back and forth between the terrible details of the events, more of which come to the fore as the book progresses, and the atmospheric description and philosophical pondering of the narrator as she navigates the emotions of her own life and those she experiences as she uncovers the story of events of Jeju, to which her friend has a personal connection. Elements of Human Acts weave through this work, and I feel that Kyungha and Han Kang sometimes overlap in this regard. This is a book both beautiful and horrifying, and I think that's where Han Kang's strength lies as a writer: the way she can combine the two. There is a deep sense of humanity in all her works, and the exploration of themes that are really universal, though seemingly focused on her country's history. I certainly hope more of her works will be translated in the future (or that my Korean will improve enough to read them in the original), and I am giving this book five stars.

(This review will go live on my blog, Goodreads and social media on 17 February, as per your preference to hold reviews until a week prior to publication. Links for where the review will be on Goodreads and my blog once published are below.)