Yeong-hye

Yeong-hye is an intriguing character, in that the entire novel is about her (she is the vegetarian of the title), but her story is told largely through the eyes and experiences of three other character. Subsequently, the reader learns about the book’s central character almost entirely as a result of how other people describe her, other people react to her, and other people relate to her. This, in turn, raises the question of whether, or how, it is possible to truly know Yeong-hye at all, given that almost everything that is revealed about her is filtered through someone else’s perception and opinions.

There are certain facts about Yeong-hye that are consistent throughout the narrations of the other three main characters. Before the story begins, Yeong-hye was quiet, slender, neither intellectually exceptional nor intellectually slow, and in many ways perceived as normal – traditional, conservative, in many ways...