Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.

Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye’s decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.

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I read this (very short) book on a recommendation from the reddit r/horrorlit club and I can’t say I loved it but for some reason, it has stayed with me. The story is told from the POV of the husband who I personally really, really disliked.

He’s fuelled by self-interest and doesn’t know a lot about his wife. He “chose” her due to her assumed mediocrity. His only complaint was that she didn’t wear a bra and sometimes her nipples would be visible.

This is something he talks about a lot.

She was wearing a slightly clinging black blouse, and to my utter mortification I saw that the outline of her nipples was clearly visible through the fabric.

and then

My wife sat there immobile while everyone else tucked in, her nipples resembling a pair of acorns as they pushed against the fabric of her blouse.

and then when they visit her family

Sure enough, when I looked closely I could see her light-brown nipples showing through like smudges on the cotton.

There are a few other instances but it looks like he has a slight obsession with his wife’s child-like face and her nipples.

The story itself is pretty bland. This man’s wife becomes a hard-core vegetarian and removes all meat-related products from the household. She tells him in no uncertain terms, that due to a dream, she’d no longer ingest meat or have anything to do with it. She will make him a vegetarian breakfast before he goes to work, but lunch and dinner will be on him if he wants meat outside of the household. Pretty average ask.

The conflict arises from the perceived entitlement of the husband to his wife’s cooking as he fondly remembers dishes she used to cook. He also has sex with her (even though she’s no longer willing to engage due to his stench (of meat)) and it’s a hard read.

“Well then, that means you need to eat some meat. That’s why you don’t have any energy anymore, right? You didn’t used to be like this, after all.”
“Actually…”
“What?”
“…it’s the smell.”
“The smell?”
“The meat smell. Your body smells of meat.”
This was just too ridiculous for words.

Instead of encouraging her new diet, he treats it as a fad and when she doesn’t relent and lose more weight, he calls in an intervention with her family. He hopes her sister and her parents are going to convince her to eat. Coercion, yay!

My father-in-law stooped slightly as he thrust the pork at my wife’s face, a lifetime’s rigid discipline unable to disguise his advanced age.
“Eat it! Listen to what your father’s telling you and eat. Everything I say is for your own good. So why act like this if it makes you ill?”

Is it that difficult to accept an adult child’s decision of not eating meat? I found it peculiarly disheartening as I was reading on. It’s different with children but surely, you don’t resort to threats.

It’s preposterous, everyone eats meat!

I can’t feel but the debate here is not about the actual vegetarianism, but more about an individual’s life choices and how people can react to someone different to themselves.

I’ve witnessed it too with people trying to mess with someone’s food just to gloat afterwards and say “see, I knew it wouldn’t kill you!”.

I expected an answer from my wife along the lines of “I’m sorry, Father, but I just can’t eat it,” but all she said was “I do not eat meat”—clearly enunciated, and seemingly not the least bit apologetic.

The husband doesn’t seem to understand or to be on board with the change and takes it as a slight against him, because why wouldn’t a woman submit to his every wish and be exactly how he wants her?

People turn vegetarian for all sorts of reasons: to try and alter their genetic predisposition toward certain allergies, for example, or else because it’s seen as more environmentally friendly not to eat meat. Of course, Buddhist priests who have taken certain vows are morally obliged not to participate in the destruction of life, but surely not even impressionable young girls take it quite that far. As far as I was concerned, the only reasonable grounds for altering one’s eating habits were the desire to lose weight, an attempt to alleviate certain physical ailments, being possessed by an evil spirit, or having your sleep disturbed by indigestion. In any other case, it was nothing but sheer obstinacy for a wife to go against her husband’s wishes as mine had done.

Her fragrant, caramelized deep-fried belly pork was achieved by marinating the meat in minced ginger and glutinous starch syrup. Her signature dish had been wafer-thin slices of beef seasoned with black pepper and sesame oil, then coated with sticky rice powder as generously as you would with rice cakes or pancakes, and dipped in bubbling shabu-shabu broth.

She’d made bibimbap with bean sprouts, minced beef, and pre-soaked rice stir-fried in sesame oil. There had also been a thick chicken and duck soup with large chunks of potato, and a spicy broth packed full of tender clams and mussels, of which I could happily polish off three helpings in a single sitting.

But, this is only the premise of the novel. It’s also about sexual desire, the unwavering power of lust and sheer emotional enthralment. However, it’s not about the body as an object of sexual desire; it’s not about the attractiveness, or the unattractiveness, of the female or male form; that’s just meat: it’s about the power of the individual: it’s about the power of an idealistic free spirit. And this is what drew me to the book. The lust in here is freedom. It is the ability to make one’s own life choice and live in harmony with the rest of the world. Labels don’t matter. Restrictions don’t matter. What matters is the freedom to be who you are and what you are.