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

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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. 

Bluebeard's First Wife, by Ha Seong-Nan

9781948830171

Open Letter Books, 2020

(originally published 2002)

translated by Janet Hong

229 pp

paperback

On the back cover there is a blurb from writer Brian Evenson who notes that Ha Seong-Nan  is "A master of the strange story," and as I discovered while reading this book,  he is not exaggerating.  It's also not an exaggeration to say that Bluebeard's First Wife is one of those rare books that can take me out of the here and now so thoroughly --it is a collection of stories  which often start out offering a picture of normal, every day life before slowly taking that turn that moves the reader to a point where it becomes obvious that not only has something gone very, very wrong, but also by then that it's too late. Each and every story in this collection took me by surprise and left me feeling completely off-kilter and disoriented, and I found myself  having to give my head a shake or two while reading to let go of the feeling of uneasiness each story provided. 

I loved them all but I won't be divulging story contents here, with the exception of  "The Star-Shaped Stain," which as an appetite-whetter opening tale serves as a signpost as to the strangeness found in this book.  It begins as a mother sifts through photos of her child in a pile on the floor trying to find the best one.  Each of the pictures doesn't fully capture her face, and as she notes, she herself is having trouble remembering her daughter's face.  Immediately the reader wonders why, but mom goes on to pick out a photo from last year.  It is framed, put in the mom's bag, and along with several other people, mom and her husband make their way to the site of the camp for a memorial service where their children died in a fire a year earlier.  A stop along the way throws all into chaos, as a shopkeeper reveals that there may have been one survivor, as he'd seen a "wee littlle thing in yellow" walking by "crying all by itself,"  just before the fire broke out;  he'd also noticed that on the shirt was a star-shaped pin.   The true horror here though is yet to come.    One goodreads reviewer  noted that this story was based "around a fictionalised version of a real-life incident ... in 1999 when a fire broke out at a summer camp at the Sealand Youth Training Centre," (you can read about it here)  which made me wonder if perhaps Ha had used any other true events in her work.  I found one in "Flies" (which in my mind is tied for most disturbing and unsettling story in this book along with "On That Green, Green Grass").  I discovered via translator Janet Hong's Twitter  feed of June of last year that with "Flies," Ha wrote this story, "imagining the circumstances leading up to Korea's deadliest mass murder to date."  Toward the beginning of this dark tale one particular image stood out enough that I knew that this was going to be horrific: twelve fish put out to dry hanging on a clothesline and teeming with maggots.    Added to the ranks of most disturbing is  "A Quiet Night," and the eerie, excellent  "Daisy Fleabane" which finishes the book.  

A large part of Bluebeard's Wife is concerned with the constraints on women or the expectations placed on them by family and society; sins, secrets, deception, despair and guilt are found throughout. There is a definite feel of detachment in the telling of these "paranoia-inducing, heart quickening stories," and there is also the sense all along that  something is just not right, making for unsettling reading.  There are no easy conclusions or resolutions to be found, leaving the reader with the feeling that what happens is inevitable, or that things are just how they are, which may just be the most frightening element of all.   Susan Choi's front-cover blurb says that these stories "unfurl with the surreal illogic of dreams," and that is really everything you need to know in a nutshell.  My kind of book, most certainly.  

I loved this book.  Absolutely. 

*****

I ran across an interesting take on Bluebeard's First Wife at Ploughshares , in which Marta Balcewicz examines this book through the lens of the fairy tale, given the book's title.   As she says about these stories, 

"This is a place where at your most vulnerable, you will encounter no fairy godmother, no knight will rush in on a horse."

I couldn't agree more.