A review by jdscott50
Greek Lessons by Han Kang
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Han Kang returns with a new work. She was first put on the map with her breakthrough debut, The Vegetarian. She has a knack for writing unusual characters. Their actions become a reflection of society.
In Greek Lesons, a young woman has lost her voice. She is unable to sound out the words to communicate. It's not the first time. When she was young, she solved the problem by learning a new language. The first time, it was French. This time, it's Greek, hence the title. We watch her heartbreaking journey as she goes from being a known writer and lecturer to losing her mother and custody of her eight-year-old son in the divorce. The novel examines her agony. The sharpness of words becomes too much. Just like in the Vegetarian, there is this metaphor for withdrawal from society. She seems helpless to stop it. The Greek professor is losing his sight. They come together in the conclusion. Will they be made new, or will everything vanish?
Poetic and haunting, its difficult not to get lost in this novel. I read it almost straight through as often as I could. A desperate connection to one another in a vanishing world.
Favorite Passages:
She no longer thought in language. She moved without language and understood without language—as it had been before she learned to speak, no, before she had obtained life, silence, absorbing the flow of time like balls of cotton, enveloped her body both outside and in.
Now and then, words would thrust their way into her sleep like skewers, startling her awake several times a night. She got less and less sleep, was increasingly overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, and sometimes an inexplicable pain burned against her solar plexus like a metal brand.
The most agonizing thing was how horrifyingly distinct the words sounded when she opened her mouth and pushed them out one by one. Even the most nondescript phrase outlined completeness and incompleteness, truth and lies, beauty and ugliness, with the cold clarity of ice. Spun out white as spider’s silk from her tongue and by her hand, those sentences were shameful. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream.
Around the period her child—the child she had borne eight years ago and for whom she had now been deemed unfit to care—first learned to speak, she had dreamed of a single word in which all human language was encompassed. It was a nightmare so vivid as to leave her back drenched in sweat. One single word, bonded with a tremendous density and gravity. A language that would, the moment someone opened their mouth and pronounced it, explode and expand as all matter had at the universe’s beginning. Every time she put her tired, fretful child to bed and drifted into a light sleep herself, she would dream that the immense crystallized mass of all language was being primed like an ice-cold explosive in the center of her hot heart, encased in her pulsing ventricles.
“It wasn’t an issue of vocal cords or lung capacity. She just didn’t like taking up space. Everyone occupies a certain amount of physical space according to their body mass, but voice travels far beyond that. She had no wish to disseminate her self”
In Greek Lesons, a young woman has lost her voice. She is unable to sound out the words to communicate. It's not the first time. When she was young, she solved the problem by learning a new language. The first time, it was French. This time, it's Greek, hence the title. We watch her heartbreaking journey as she goes from being a known writer and lecturer to losing her mother and custody of her eight-year-old son in the divorce. The novel examines her agony. The sharpness of words becomes too much. Just like in the Vegetarian, there is this metaphor for withdrawal from society. She seems helpless to stop it. The Greek professor is losing his sight. They come together in the conclusion. Will they be made new, or will everything vanish?
Poetic and haunting, its difficult not to get lost in this novel. I read it almost straight through as often as I could. A desperate connection to one another in a vanishing world.
Favorite Passages:
She no longer thought in language. She moved without language and understood without language—as it had been before she learned to speak, no, before she had obtained life, silence, absorbing the flow of time like balls of cotton, enveloped her body both outside and in.
Now and then, words would thrust their way into her sleep like skewers, startling her awake several times a night. She got less and less sleep, was increasingly overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, and sometimes an inexplicable pain burned against her solar plexus like a metal brand.
The most agonizing thing was how horrifyingly distinct the words sounded when she opened her mouth and pushed them out one by one. Even the most nondescript phrase outlined completeness and incompleteness, truth and lies, beauty and ugliness, with the cold clarity of ice. Spun out white as spider’s silk from her tongue and by her hand, those sentences were shameful. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream.
Around the period her child—the child she had borne eight years ago and for whom she had now been deemed unfit to care—first learned to speak, she had dreamed of a single word in which all human language was encompassed. It was a nightmare so vivid as to leave her back drenched in sweat. One single word, bonded with a tremendous density and gravity. A language that would, the moment someone opened their mouth and pronounced it, explode and expand as all matter had at the universe’s beginning. Every time she put her tired, fretful child to bed and drifted into a light sleep herself, she would dream that the immense crystallized mass of all language was being primed like an ice-cold explosive in the center of her hot heart, encased in her pulsing ventricles.
“It wasn’t an issue of vocal cords or lung capacity. She just didn’t like taking up space. Everyone occupies a certain amount of physical space according to their body mass, but voice travels far beyond that. She had no wish to disseminate her self”