In We Do Not Part, Han Kang, now crowned with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, continues to unravel the raw sinews of the human spirit with her trademark elegance, restraint, and haunting brutality. If you’ve read The Vegetarian or Human Acts, you already know that she is not here to comfort you. She is here to disarm you, to offer silence as indictment of past sins, and pain as a kind of testimony.

This latest novel is perhaps her most distilled expression of sorrow and connection yet. It is a story soaked in grief, not just personal grief, but historical and national grief, a grief that simmers beneath the skin, unnamed and yet entirely felt. Her language is stripped down to the bone, almost surgical in its precision, leaving vast, aching white space between sentences like unspoken truths hanging in the air.

At its core, We Do Not Part is about the relationship between two friends. But it’s also about war, memory, intimacy, and the ways violence echoes through generations like a haunting melody. The lines between presence and absence, love and loss, flesh and memory blur.

Han Kang does not offer resolution. She never has. But what she does offer is something far more rare: an invitation to sit in discomfort, to witness the beauty in fracture, and to confront the quiet devastation of history without blinking.

It is no surprise that the Nobel committee recognized her. Han writes not with ink but with absence, making you feel the ghosts between the words. We Do Not Part is not just a novel, it is a requiem for everything we cannot hold on to, and a prayer for what lingers anyway.

A devastating, masterful work. Read it, but don’t expect to emerge unchanged. Her books are always a favorite of mine even though they leave me devastated, and this did not disappoint. 

Check it out at the library.

Aimee Clark, IT Librarian

Cho Nam-joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is a simple yet powerful book that hits hard. It follows Kim Jiyoung, an ordinary woman in South Korea, as she slowly unravels under the weight of everyday sexism. One day, she starts speaking in the voices of other women—her mother, a former coworker—almost as if she’s lost herself completely. From there, the novel takes us through her life, showing all the ways society has pushed her down, from childhood to marriage and motherhood.

The writing is straightforward, even a little detached at times, but that makes the story feel even more real. There’s no big, dramatic moment—just a lifetime of small injustices that build up. What makes it even more unsettling is how normal it all seems. Jiyoung’s experiences aren’t unique to her; they’re just the way things are for so many women, in Korea and beyond.

The last part of the book, told from her psychiatrist’s perspective, is especially chilling. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say it makes it clear that nothing has really changed.
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This is one of those books that stays with you. It’s a quick read, but it packs a punch, making you think about all the invisible ways women are expected to sacrifice, adjust, and endure. If you’re interested in feminism, social issues, or just want a book that makes you feel something, this one is worth picking up.

Get the book at the library or download the eBook with your SPL card.