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. 

Songs of the Northern Seas, by Mark Beech (ed.)

 

9781838396039

Egaeus Press, 2021

203 pp

hardcover

"this ice entombed wilderness has been driving people to the edge of madness for hundreds of years."

       from "In Orbis Alius", by Colin Fisher

I happen to be a huge, huge fan of fiction set in the earth's polar regions, largely because I happen to be a huge, huge fan of nonfiction about polar exploration.  That's been the case since like fourth grade, and unlike other interests that have come and gone in the meantime, that one is still going strong.  Naturally,  once I saw that Egaeus was publishing this book of strange tales set in the Arctic, it was a no-brainer -- this book had my name on it.  Not only did I get my fill of  Arctic weirdness, but the drawings inside that illustrate this anthology are also awesome.   I am one of those strange people who will pore over a drawing like this one for a long time, trying to take in all of the detail. 

from page 202

Opening the book just past the table of contents there first thing you see is a brief note:

"Herein are thirteen tales cast up in northern latitudes, hooked on the cardinal points of traitorous compasses. They are dark, strange, uncategorisable pieces, diverse in tone and theme, though each uniquely shaped by similarly restless Arctic tides, cold winds, and ancient ice-flows,"

 and then it's on to the strangeness.

While everyone's mileage will of course vary, I did have more than a few favorites in this volume,  beginning with  "The Ghosts of the Great Northern Sea,"  by  Leena Likitalo.  As should happen in any anthology, this first story sets the tone for the rest of what's to come.  A young woman named Soila finds herself strangely drawn to a stranger who has just arrived in her small village having traveled some two hundred miles on skates across the ice.  She's not sure why until she learns about the provenance of the sweater he's wearing; wanting to settle certain questions in her mind, she decides she'll go back with him when he leaves.  As they make their way across the ice, what happens on their journey will later become a "tale, and then a tall tale repeated around the fires when the wind howled outside," involving ghosts, murder, and above all, an unearthly justice.  This story is so well done that I could completely picture it in my head.  The next story, which is just as creepy as the first, is relayed via two sets of  journal entries from 1926.  In "The Tupilaq," by Stephen J. Clark, missionaries have arrived at Coral Harbour in Nunavut to "save these people from their primitive ways," and more importantly, "to make every conceivable effort" to convert the shaman, which would help in convincing the local population to "abandon their superstitions and embrace Christ as their saviour."   However, the shaman, Iksivalaq,  has been warned by the spirits that his rival  Kulaserk knows of this plan, and that there are dire consequences in store should the missionaries succeed.  All I will say about this one is that perhaps the missionaries shouldn't have been so quick to write off "pagan superstition."   Number three is  "In Orbis Alius" by Colin Fisher, in which Robson, an archaeologist working Viking settlements in southern Greenland, hears of the incredible discovery of an intact Viking ship on the northwest coast.  By the time he actually arrives at Qaanaaaq station (formerly known as Thule) he discovers that two anthropologists Martin and Angela O'Brien,  had been investigating, making three trips to the ship before Angela, for some inexplicable reason, "destroyed the site and the ship with it."   Martin is nowhere to be found.  When Robson begins listening to Angela tell her story, he believes she's become "unbalanced," especially when she starts talking about "Orbius Alius," which can mean "other Earth," "different place" or in Celtic lore, "Otherworld."   While she won't really talk about what happened to her at the ship site, she has kept a record which Robson reads, a thoroughly fantastical but also thoroughly frightening account.  In the meantime, strange things have started happening at the station that can't be written off as simple "mass hallucinations;" nor is it the case of being there in "this ice entombed wilderness" which has been "driving people to the edge of madness for hundreds of years."  

another fine drawing  ... 
"

After the tension of the first eight stories,  it was great to read Rhys Hughes' "Ice Flows in Eden," which not only brought my  pulse down but also made me laugh out loud.  It all begins when an iceberg finds its way into the waters off Goa, and the two people who first spot it decide they need to take it back to the Arctic Circle where it belongs.  Too much more would spoil the story, but it's a delightfully good one, perfectly placed in this book, allowing for breathing room after what had come before. The last two tales on  my favorites list begin with Jonathan Wood's "The Salon in the Woods," a tale of the "meeting of literary and spiritual minds" of two people (later joined by a third), who have isolated themselves from the rest of humanity in Russia looking to "write and compose and to unveil the Mysteries," to "construct that which will emerge out of nature..."  I would absolutely love to read more by this author, whose prose is absolutely gorgeous.  And finally, there's  Alison Littlewood's "The Light You Can Hear,"  in which a couple arrive at the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, a  Sámi word for "meeting place by the river."  The couple are there "to escape, to be somewhere else, something else, if only for a time."    They are given room 215, the plaque outside of which reveals its name:  "The Light You Can Hear."  Inside there's a sort of "static crackle" as part of the ambience of "sounds from the Arctic landscape," which gives way to a 

"soft, whistling, not quite like music, and something else: an almost unnoticeable breathy undercurrent, reminiscent of a voice." 

It is the sound of the Northern Lights, according to the Sámi people, "the light you can hear;" they also believe that the Northern Lights are souls" that "bring the dead closer to us."  But it's a trip to the nearby river that changes everything for this couple.  This story may be short, but the writing is absolutely beautiful, capturing not only the place but also a keen and intense sense of loss. 

I absolutely love the way in which these authors and some of those I didn't mention due to time considerations have  incorporated local, indigenous lore and belief (real or imagined, I can't say for sure) into their work; as just two examples, Chris Kelso in his story "Blood-Sea"  and  the authors of "Oil," Sean and Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley,  do a great job in that regard.   On the collection as a whole, well,  you can't love all of them, but that doesn't mean that the stories I didn't mention weren't also worth reading.    The Arctic has always seemed to me a mystical, eerie place, and each and every author in this book in his, her, or their own way somehow managed to capture that sense of otherworldliness in their work, as well as the effects of this place on the human psyche.  

recommended.