Cursed Bunny, by Bora Chung

 

9781916277182

Honford Star, 2021

translated by Anton Hur

247 pp

paperback

I will just get this out of the way up front: I loved this book from the first story on down through the last, at which point I was so sorry that it was over.    I hadn't read any reviews of Cursed Bunny before reading it, so I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I bought the book last year.  Just a short while ago the nominees for the Booker International longlist were announced, and when I saw Cursed Bunny on that list, I grabbed it off my shelf, read it and fell in love.  It is the kind of book that once read stays with you for the longest time.    And let me say this up front as well -- Anton Hur did an incredible job translating Chung's work.  Not that I read Korean,  but I do know a great translation when I see one.  

The cover blurb reveals that the author 

"uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society,"

which is true, but these stories also take a look at the close connection between power, abuse and subjugation in many forms.  

Cursed Bunny, as also noted on the blurb, moves through and incorporates a range of different genres, "blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science fiction."  There is also more than a touch of dark humor at work here as well.   After a while, it starts to dawn on you that the characters in all of these stories seem to accept the strangeness or the absurdities of events happening in their respective, various worlds as just part of ordinary life, a factor that makes each and every story work and work well.   For example, in the first story, "The Head," there seems to be nothing at all remarkable about "a thing that looked vaguely like a head" speaking to a woman from inside of her toilet bowl, responding to her questions, with the rest of her family telling her to "just leave it alone" since "it's not like it's laying eggs or anything."   Then there's "The Embodiment," in which a young woman discovers she's six weeks pregnant from taking birth control pills longer than the doctor had prescribed.  One major theme of this story jumps right out at you from the start, when the doctor ask her about the baby's father and learns there is no one, and then tells her that she'd better "hurry up and find a man" who's willing to step into the role, or else the consequences will be dire.    In  "Cursed Bunny," a grandfather relates "the same story he's already told me time and time again" about his friend who had  "lost everything" after another brewery owner started a vicious "slander  campaign"  to eliminate his competition.  Grandfather was incensed, saying that 

"... for the alleged crimes of not being connected to powerful people, for not having the capital to make such connections, an entire family was smashed to pieces and its remains scattered to the winds... How can such things be allowed?"

But Grandfather has a plan to get even, and it's a good one, putting to good use his skill in the family's "line of work: the creation of cursed fetishes."   These first three stories not only set the tone for what's about to come next, but also impart to the reader a very physical sense of uneasiness and downright unstoppable dread that lingers through the last page.  

I won't go through each and every story because (as I'm so fond of saying), Cursed Bunny  is a book that really needs to be experienced firsthand and to give too much away would be a crime.  To mention just a few of my favorites,  "Snare" is an incredibly clever  take on the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs, moving well past the obvious theme of greed into family trauma. "Scars" has an almost  mythological feel to it, mingled with pure horror.  It starts with a young boy being  "dragged" into a dark  mountain cave  by men he didn't know while out "roaming the fields" one day and chained up.  He's not always alone --  once a month he is visited by "It," which "pierced his bones, and sucked at his marrow."  Years later, the boy manages to escape but because of the scars on his body, is treated like the monster he's fled from.   The worst though is yet to come, when he discovers the truth about why he was left there in the first place.   "Reunion," is one of the saddest, most poignant stories in this book,  and starts out by telling us that it is a "love story for you."  A young woman in Poland doing academic research meets a stranger one day in a plaza who tells her in his own language that he has been waiting for her and that he knew she would come.  It turns out they share something in common. Years later, she returns and meets him again, this time going with him to his apartment where he asks her to do him a certain favor before telling her about his life.  It is a beautiful story, the perfect ending for this book; I would also argue that it puts what came before into much clearer perspective.  As the woman realizes after listening to him,

 "once you experience a terrible trauma and understand the world from an extreme perspective, it is difficult to overcome this perspective. Because your very survival depends on it." 

Without saying any more about it, "Reunion" is one of the best modern-day ghost stories I've ever read, for a number of reasons.  

Cursed Bunny is definitely not for the squeamish, and won't be for everyone since there is plenty of horror and plenty of trauma to be experienced here, but  I have to say that while I found myself squirming any number of times, neither the violence nor the horror in this book can be labeled as gratuitous in any fashion.  This is an example of quality work that doesn't let up, and sometimes some of the worst anxieties or experiences that people must endure lend themselves to using horror/dark fiction as the perfect vehicles for relating them to others.   In writing her stories this way,  the author also forces the reader sit up and take notice of what's going on around them.  As noted in an article in The Korean Times, the "inexplicably frightening and bizarre elements" she uses "remind the audience of the very real horror and cruelty that exists in the world."  These stories are enigmatic and most certainly require concentration from the reader, but I'm used to that element being part and parcel of reading weird fiction so there was no problem there.  Cursed Bunny is also beautifully and intelligently written, its pull so intense that I didn't ever want to put it down.   

Highly recommended times infinity -- it's insanely good

************************

If you would like a very brief rundown on all of the stories in Cursed Bunny, you can find them here in translator  Anton Hur's "cover letter" to PEN/Heim which contains  the "outline and significance" for this book; or you can skip it until after you're read Cursed Bunny, which is what I did. 

Whisper, by Chang Yu-Ko

 

9781916277168

Honford Star, 2021

originally published 2018

translated by Roddy Flagg

287 pp

paperback

  I ran across Whisper while browsing through World Literature Today, one of my go-to spots for discovering translated books. Reading through the review by Sean Guynes (where that link will take you), the words  "literary horror fiction," "spooky stuff" and "ghost" were what caught my eye,  and I read no further than the second paragraph because I just knew I had to have this book and I didn't want to know what happened.  

When I started reading it, I couldn't stop, finally finishing at two in the morning but remaining completely wired from what I'd just experienced.  Sleep -- not happening. 

 

Taxi driver Wu Shih-sheng and his wife Kuo Hsiang-ying used to be happy, but after Wu was laid off from his job working for an electronics importer, their lives started taking a downward path.  To make matters worse, when he'd first started the taxi driving, he'd run over someone and the victim's family took him to court where as compensation he was ordered to pay over four million dollars.  Between that and the legal fees, they had to sell their apartment; although Hsiang-ying works more than one job, their reduced circumstances had landed them in a cockroach-infested iron shack;  their daughter left home and they haven't seen her since.   And now, as the novel opens, it seems their situation just might be getting even worse: after getting yelled at by her boss at work one day,  Hsiang-ying ran into a woman in the food court causing the customer's  "bubbling tofu hotpot" to fly, scalding the woman and disfiguring her face.   Hsiang-yang blacked out and was sent to the hospital by her boss, where she could think only about the compensation the other woman's family would demand and the loss of her job.  But as things turn out, these would be the least of her problems. Back home again,  Hsiang-ying hears "an ear-splitting burst of static" just before she hears someone saying something about "a great forest of bamboo" and the name Minako.  She then experiences something completely bizarre before a fall from a window sends her back to the hospital.  

Meanwhile,  Shih-sheng decides to take a break and parks his taxi in a local cabbies' spot.  Next to his car he notices a cab that has been "clearly long closed," and decides to take a look inside.  He discovers a cassette recorder in the glove box and presses play, hearing a man's voice "interrupted by regular crackling sounds" as well as the word Minako.  When he's called to the hospital after Hsiang-ying's fall, she begs him for help -- she's sure that Minako is going to kill her and their daughter.  Surprised at hearing that name, he brushes her off, saying she's mad,  but hearing her say the name Minako takes him by surprise.   Is there some kind of coincidence at work? Later at home as he begins to think about his wife, he begins to realize that "something wasn't right," bringing his thoughts back to the abandoned cab, the cassette tape and Minako.    By now, Hsiang-ying has been moved to the psychiatric ward where her conviction that she's going to be killed grows stronger, to the point where she's "screaming hysterically" and the doctors have to put her in restraints and  sedate her.  But there is no safety for Hsiang-ying here, and her roommate watches in sheer panic as Hsiang-ying fights whatever horrors are assailing her.    

Shih-sheng comes to believe that had he only listened to his wife then things would have been different, so he decides to get to the bottom of things.  Independently, so too does a social worker, Jui-yi who is working with Hsiang-ying's by now terrorized roommate who while in a deep state of shock begins calling out strange words, talking  about ghosts, and making references to a place named Mount Jade.   Indeed, it seems that all roads lead to this place, as by now Shih-sheng has also made a connection to Mount Jade and is determined to destroy the evil that he is sure has its origins there despite a warning to stay away since "the mountain is the gateway of the ghosts."  

Someone reading this post might wonder about how much I've potentially given away here, but don't worry -- we're only up to page 83 by this time and there is much, more that has already happened and which will happen before all is said and done.  The author has created a  truly eerie ghost story that weaves together Taiwanese legend and folklore, the severity of the problems faced by Taiwan's indigenous people, the troubled era of the Japanese occupation, and history that goes back to 1930s Manchuria and the Chinese mainland.   Taken together, all of these elements reveal how, as the dustjacket blurb so accurately states, "a past can still kill."   It also shows how the spirit world is alive,  surviving beneath the trappings of the physical world and that  it is definitely not a force to be messed with, and there is no doubt that he has captured the anxieties of a modern society.  There is much to be said about the author's skill here in using horror and the supernatural to reflect on the modern world -- this is no average ghost story but rather a strong departure into the literary zone. 

 I will say that I wasn't wild about the subplot involving Hsiang-ying's sister and her revenge on her cheating husband.  While it did make for some truly creepy horror moments and shows how natural it might be for people to turn to the occult for assistance, it could have actually been left out and I wouldn't have minded, because for me it was just too much as well as a major distraction in the reading flow and I became impatient to get back to the main story. And quite honestly, I didn't care.     I also thought the ending a bit off, but I won't go into any detail here to explain why -- it should be apparent to anyone who reads this novel.    However, I loved and was completely absorbed in the ghost story itself, as well as in how the past not only reverberates in but also shapes the present in so many unseen ways.  What a mind this author must have, and I will certainly look forward to reading anything more he writes in the future.  My manythanks to the translator, Roddy Flagg, and to Honford Star for making this work available to English-speaking readers.  

recommended, for sure.