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 book was changing and beautifully written, with the story itself being both mysterious and heartaching. Every second was engaging, even the slowest parts. It explores the idea of tragedy and the generational effects of violence with incredible metaphors of grief and loss that tie in with the wonder of the plot. It is truly talented. I would suggest researching the Jeju massacre before you read this story. The story is very informative but not until later on; you get the emotion and aftermath before the facts and origin. I feel like I would've felt very disoriented for the first half of this book without my prior knowledge of the island's history, but that may not be the case for every reader. Just a suggestion to enhance the experience! I highly recommend this book. It will stick with me for a long time.

This feels like a culmination of Kang's work to date. Echoes of Human Acts, The Vegetarian, and The White Book create a feeling of isolation, cold, and the lines between reality and dream. Han Kang is a true master of her craft, weaving metaphors and imagery together seamlessly to tell the story of Jeju 4:3. This book does have a sporadic storytelling style that switches between historical, thriller, literary, and so on, but maintains the metaphors and imagery that create a cohesiveness as a whole. I would recommend this for anyone who has read Kang before, but for those new to the author, I would recommend reading The Vegetarian and Human Acts before to have an extra layer of understanding to this book.

It took me a little while to get into but once I did… incredibly haunting, beautiful, sad, strange, at times scary. I loved Human Acts and this was obviously a response to that book in the sense that it flipped the focus back onto the author herself. It’s so easy to read a book (especially one that deals implicitly with the depths of human cruelties and the scale of our atrocities, as Human Acts does) and imagine that the harrowing effect of the tale is only felt by yourself, the reader. But Han Kang is painfully honest about the trauma writing it caused her, how it manifested itself as a physical illness even. That is partly what this book deals with, amongst other things. Like all ghost stories (and I would certainly call this a ghost story), it’s ideal for a dark winter night. Especially once you remember that shelter from the cold can be just as claustrophobic as it is cozy.

We Do Not Part feels like an absolute gut-punch. Kang explores the depths of meaningless massacres and trauma inflicted on the residents of Jeju island in a way that somehow keeps the reader grounded and present with the characters at the centre. I honestly don't think any other author (or translators) could have pulled this off; I was absolutely transfixed despite the seemingly thin set-up. Even as the narrator seems to cross from the real world into an uncertain liminal world, every step, every conversation felt real and weighty, and the relationship between the narrator and Inseon was a beautifully realised centre of gravity for the story to form around. While I occassionally felt a little disoriented from the timelines, I could feel every bitingly cold step, could see every haunting interaction vividly and I felt genuinely dazed when it finished. This is a book by a master that you have to experience in its snow-swept glory.