The novel’s structure is simple but effective: Almost every chapter introduces a new woman who is trying to escape or outwit a man who is making her life hell, and who seeks refuge among the greenery at Yoohee’s Plant Shop, where she either listens to or simply senses their troubles. Soon Yoohee is murdering these men with shovels or shears or poisonous fruits, and fertilizing her plants with their remains ... There is a gleeful quality to some of Yoohee’s murders, such as the 'Fargo'-esque feeding of a man into a woodcutting machine ... Ripe for a sequel, Plant Lady offers a twisted kind of escapism, and healing: an immersive world where women take down men, without conscience or consequence — a fecund fantasy of feminist revenge.
Every character is stock cardboard; every description is a flat soufflé of tired cliches and idioms; every one of the plot’s minimal twists is both illogical and thoroughly telegraphed. It’s not just fans of Little Shop of Horrors who’ll be bored by page 70 ... Either Minyoung Kang has written a trite, boring, and obvious little fable of spades-and-pruning-shears-against-the-patriarchy, or her translator has taken a book that is somehow original against considerable odds and turned it into such a thing.
Kang offers a suspenseful and satisfying tale centered on a Dexter-like character who seeks to free women from abusive and controlling relationships using vigilante justice and plant protection as her moral guides. While passages can be highly descriptive and even gory at times, readers will likely be intrigued by the novel’s focus on Yoohee’s introspective nature and preference for plants over people ... Interwoven with botanical insights and offering much for book groups to discuss, this book will be of interest to fans of suspenseful stories.
Smoothly translated by Tan, Kang’s prose is both propulsive and plainspoken, and glimpses of Yoohee’s past lend the narrative significant emotional depth. The result is an exquisite ode to female rage.
Like many agenda-driven narratives, this one requires a cartoonish strain of villain—in this story, the human male—which leads to flat characterizations. Nevertheless, Kang, a Korean writer, has terrific composure in capturing both the cozy vibe of the plant shop and the violence Yoohee unleashes within it. Kang gestures toward the thriller—she introduces a detective to her story—but her audience is those who aren’t in it for a traditional thriller’s payoffs; they are in it for the thrill of guiltlessly playing bystander to vigilantism enacted on behalf of a justifiably aggrieved group ... A tidy little feminist revenge fantasy with thriller signposts.
