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great addition to her other works, for me it feels like a book that fits the same genre as Human Acts in regards to the historical references to the horrors of war (in this case the Jeju massacre of 1948) and like that novel it feels like a particularly raw reflection on the horrors and atrocities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.

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.