Cursed Bunny: Stories

Product Information

This layout of the human mouth was hanging on the wall. I remember the five basic tastes that the human tongue can discern, written around the picture of the tongue. I was maybe five or six. Whether borrowing from fable, folktale, speculative fiction, science fiction, or horror, Chung’s stories corkscrew toward devastating conclusions – bleak, yes, but also wise and honest about the nightmares of contemporary life. Don’t read this book while eating – but don’t skip these unflinching, intelligent stories, either.’ After reading this book (and Happy Stories, Mostly) I can no longer say that I do not like short stories. There is clear proof that I can be fully swept of my feet by the right author. With the very real risk of being called a party pooper, a spoil-sport, old-fashioned and worse, I think Bora Chung's short story collection is bitter, sour, cruel, depressing, and yes ultimately evil. I took the first story seriously thinking that she was making a strong comparison between the haves and have nots - but by the end I was laughing because of the un-erasable image of that woman emerging from the toilet, with her wet hair hanging over her face - The Ring, horror film 2002 - anyone? Ok, so she's climbing out of a tv.

Bora Chung (born 1976) is a South Korean writer and translator. Her collection of short stories, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. How to define the genre of this book? Maybe I would call it literary horror. Some stories have elements of fantasy others of SF, historical fiction, feminist literature but all share a horror flavour and are very well written (and translated). Most story dieal wtih some sort of trauma and some have a moral at the end.The Frozen Finger (차가운 손가락) is a rather surreal ghost story, and Snare (덫) a genuinely creepy folk-tale type of story about a man who finds a fox, caught in a snare, that bleeds gold. He takes it home and uses it to build his wealth, but when the fox dies and his twins are born, his Midas-like obsession takes a sinister and disturbing turn, cursed perhaps by the fox. Few story collections greet their reader with an introductory sequence as disarmingly gross as the one in “Cursed Bunny.” “The Head” begins: There’s a Japanese saying that goes, “Cursing others leads to two graves.” Anyone who curses another person is sure to end up in a grave themselves.’ Five authors of Korean thrillers you should be reading: You-Jeong Jeong, Un-Su Kim, Young-Ha Kim, J.M. Lee and Hye-Young Pyun

Chi Tai-we’s ‘The Membranes,’ finally out in English, is dated as sci-fi, but its mind-bending narrative was a prescient exploration of identity. Now there are ten stories in this collection, but I’m not going to discuss all of them in this review—that’s something for another time. I’m going to focus in and pinpoint the stories I found most interesting and had values I could take away with, so let us delve a bit deeper, shall we? There are big kernels of truth to the reality we live in inside of the stories, so it’s not like it’s trying to be this way on purpose. Chung’s prose is like a knife, something that is very precise and clearly carefully deliberated upon when choosing its themes and subjects. The very first story is about a head appearing in a woman’s toilet, and she treats it with blatant disregard. The stories then moved towards heavier, somewhat sadder dark fantasy territory. I am not a great fan of fantasy or fairy tales and that was prevalent in the longer writings of “Ruler of the Winds and Sands”, “Snare” or “Scars” which can teach much about the exploitative nature of humans. There’s even some good science fiction hidden in the scary folds of AI brains.RASCOE: But the thing I also thought was that men could decide whether they wanted to be a father or not, whereas the woman in this case who was pregnant just had to deal with it. I mean, obviously, can get an abortion or whatever, but in this case, the woman was having the baby, and she didn't have a choice in that. She couldn't decide whether she wanted to be pregnant or not in this story, right? Whereas the men were able to say, I don't know what I want to do. Right? The Head” follows a woman haunted by her own bodily waste. “The Embodiment” takes us into a dystopian gynecology office where a pregnant woman is told that she must find a father for her baby or face horrific consequences. Another story follows a young monster, forced into underground fight rings without knowing the force of his own power. The titular fable centers on a cursed lamp in the approachable shape of a rabbit, fit for a child’s bedroom but for its sinister capabilities. CHUNG: It's less dangerous if you are aware that you're never going to understand this. I think Isaac Asimov said something to that effect. But as long as we believe that we are gods, that we've created this, so this thing will always listen to me and do as I say, then we are walking into deeper trouble.