Winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Publisher's Weekly • Buzzfeed • Entertainment Weekly • Time • Wall Street Journal • Bustle • Elle • The Economist ...

This sub-read did not work for us. Kang's novel is basically a fable about a woman finding an independent idea and then being ostracized by her family because of it. That is an interesting plot to make into a metaphor, but the issue was that the choice the wife made that the family couldn't accept was that the wife became vegetarian. Now, perhaps this is a cultural thing, but is there any developed part of the world that hasn't heard that some people don't eat meat? Is it actually incredible to conceive of that? We know this was a parable, so the idea that the husband would blow this out of proportion and go to extreme measures was fine, but the seed of it was just so unbelievable that everyone got off the ride before any of the crazy stuff could start. NUBClub has had generally bad luck with modern fables, and this was no exception. The lesson here is that no matter how metaphorical you're going to be, you need to start with a seed we don't balk at, or else we lose suspension of disbelief in the first twenty pages and the rest of your novel is wasted.