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Failed Summer Vacation
The debut collection of genre-defying short stories from the
Korean Literature and Society’s New Writer Award.
Seven diversely wild and gripping stories – dreamy, dark, lyrical and wry – that expose the oddness of how we live and how we might come to live. Moving between science fiction, surrealism, speculative fiction and uncanny realism, these are rich and exhilarating stories that will haunt your summer
Korean Literature and Society’s New Writer Award.
Seven diversely wild and gripping stories – dreamy, dark, lyrical and wry – that expose the oddness of how we live and how we might come to live. Moving between science fiction, surrealism, speculative fiction and uncanny realism, these are rich and exhilarating stories that will haunt your summer
184 pages, Paperback
First published June 25, 2020
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December 23, 2025
Failed Summer Vacation (2025) is Paige Aniyah Morris's translation of 실패한 여름휴가 (2020) by 허희정 (Heuijung Hur).
It's published by the wonderful short-story dedicated small press Scratch Books, their sixth book (I've read 5 including this) and their first venture into translated literature, and it's a fascinating one. It is also their entry for 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize.
The stories with the equivalent Korean titles, and page counts are as follows (although the order differs in Korean so that e.g. 페이퍼 컷 [Paper Cut] comes first -the author said she was happy to take the English publisher's lead for this version):
Flying in the Rain (우중비행) - 24pp
Imperfect Pitch (인컴플리트 피치) - 31pp
Paper Cut (페이퍼 컷) - 15pp
Failed Summer Vacation (실패한 여름휴가) - 23pp
Loaf Cake (파운드케이크) - 24pp
Ruined Winter Holiday (망가진 겨울여행) - 19pp
Shard (Stained) - 23pp
The stories ranging from the real, through the surreal to sci-fi, but with a poignant air, the first person narrator / main characters typically alone, isolated, or even abandoned by a companion. Reaching for comparisons, there are elements of Vanessa Onwuezumi, 정보라 (Bora Chung) and Samanta Schweblin (the first two blurb the text) but this is distinctively 허희정의 own.
At a reading at the Korean cultural centre, the author herself cited (my non-verbatim recollection of her explanations), all three of whom have been translated into English:
Han Yujoo - for her experiments with language/form;
Gu Byeong-mo - for her defying of genre, her long sentences and her experimentation with words and language;
Han Kang - for her inspiring example.
In the stories, past and future can blur in present-day accounts - one narrator comments The present-me was somehow watching my future dreams give rise to past events. and another Because the past is made up of all the futures we have or haven’t chosen... (과거는 이미 선택된 미래들로 구성되어 있기 때문에...).
And a sense of dislocation and rupture haunts the text.
The stories:
Flying in the Rain (우중비행)
There was some literature about Earth. But most of it focused on life before the disaster. The old stories had been taken apart and re-assembled so many times over the generations that they has turned Earth into some folkloric homeland, alien and majestic, omitting from their accounts the cowards who had left the homeland and those left behind.
지구에 대한 문헌이 존재하지 않는 것은 아니었다. 그러나 그것들은 주로 대재난 이전의 세계를 다루고 있었다. 세대와 세기를 거듭하면서 지구와 지구를 둘러싼 이야기들은 분해되고 다시 조립되기를 반복했다. 그 과정 속에서 지구는 기이하고 아름다우며 평화로운 만인의 고향으로 둔갑했고, 지구 탈주의 과정에서 내려진 비겁한 결정들과 그 결정에 책임이 있는 사람들, 그로 인해 가장 먼저 버려진 이들의 이름은 깨끗하게 지워지고 말았다.
This is the only real sci-fi in the collection, a story set in a distant future, where a catastrophe has rendered Earth uninhabitable and humankind has scattered to distant planets, abadonding the planet, and evolving to cope with the different conditions there. An Interplanetary Union brings together the different groups, focusing on making each more habitable. But after an election, the Returnees faction gains some power, and an expedition is sent to test if Earth itself can be re-inhabited. Earth proves to be rich in plant life, the atmospheric concentration of oxygen higher than in our age - except humans have evolved to need less oxygen or even none at all.
The story centres around G, one of the expedition, and his memories of Q, who while on Earth, tendered plants in a greenhouse, and was left behind when the expedition was abandoned and everyone rescued - the story, which jumps in time, and between 1st and 3rd person, is essentially a record of Gs counselling sessions.
Imperfect Pitch (인컴플리트 피치)
More of a present-day story, and a poignant one. The main character Baek is a fan of a foreign rock band Imperfect Pitch, or rather was a fan given they are now disbanded, one of the band caught in a sex scandal. He spent - and still spends - much of his time on the Korean bulletin board for the band, mainly curated by a woman, O, a frequent poster of information on Imperfect Pitch, but who revealed little of her own life or identity.
O's sister comes on the board to post that O passed away, and Baek recalls the time that, through O, he got tickets for the band's final concert (the disgraced member replaced as a one-off by another guitarist), and his own performance of one of the band's signature songs as a student (which is how he came to be a fan). But O was equally elusive even on that trip, his tickets left in a locker to be retrieved.
Paper Cut (페이퍼 컷)
Except for my maths workbook and you, that's all the paper I can see, A said. Still shredding, he added, Differentiation is the infinite dividing up of the space under a curve and the adding up of all of these sections. I still don't understand it. I can solve differential equations, but can't do calculus to save my life. Look at all that paper dust. A lungful of that and we'd both die. But you want a statement from me, something true.
The paper man didn't answer. A's blade was slicing into his paper vocal cords.
One of the more surreal stories. The focal character, A, claims he wants to run away, but remains self-confined to a room where he possesses a Stanley knife, a maths workbook and a smartphone. He is visited by a literal Paper Man, who demands he writes a statement, a confession of sorts. But he resolutely refuses to do so: crossing out his writing; destroying the paper he is given; and when he does start to write scribing maths - graphs and calculus - rather than words, and then eventually shredding the Paper Man himself.
[Though he is no mathematician, as proven by the statement above, confusing Differentiation and Riemann Integration, which can only reveal to the careful reader that ... A is the exponential function 🙂 !!! (... only me then...!)]
Failed Summer Vacation (실패한 여름휴가)
I only ever try on feelings, slipping them over my skin, though they never seem to stick - it terrifies me, pretending to feel more than I do, and I wonder if perhaps I've never experienced any emotions of my own.
내가 흉내 내고 억지로 손에 넣으려 들고 피부 위에 걸치려 드는, 접착력이 떨어져가는 접착제로 덕지덕지 가져다 붙이려 하는 그 수많은 감정, 나는 언제나 내가 가진 것 이상의 감정을 가장하는 것을 두려워했으나 정작 나는 그 어떤 감정의 소유자인 적도 없었던 것만 같은 기분이 든다.
The title story, narrated by a someone (although more in his mind) to his companion on an unsuccessful summer vacation. A definite change of tone from some of the other stories, the narrator's at times violent thoughts nihilistic and disturbing.
This summer vacation is not a complete failure quite yet - there’s still a lot left we can ruin.
Loaf Cake (파운드케이크)
Sand was so angry he couldn't stand it.
모래는 화가나서 견딜 수가 없었다/.
A story both poignant and surreal.
The narrator was living with a man Sand (*), whose frustration is triggered by his clammy feet, lack of sleep, withered flowers and stale bread. But when she suggest buying a new bath mat, some flower pots and a sugary loaf cake from the local bakery, he refuses to countenance this and packs and leaves.
(* a name that by sound can have a double meaning in Korean as 모래 means sand but 모레 the day after tomorrow)
Sand's departure literally strikes her dumb, and she initially decides to stay in hs room, awaiting Sand's return, but eventually ventures out, going to the bakery-cafe where she buys first a slice, then a whole fruit loaf cake, befriending one of the servers, Snow, although she eventually realises he is friendly with everyone, not exclusively her. Nevertheless the two becomes close. But one night, brutally kills Snow's dog leading Snow to move away, some days later, the same day that a much diminshed, literally, Sand returns.
Ruined Winter Holiday (망가진 겨울여행)
Another poignant and offbeat, but in this case realistic story. The narrator is trying to write a letter to Sooyoung, a woman she met on a winter holiday to Hokkaido, which she took with her friend, who she addresses as 'you' while telling the story. Her friend had self-harming and suicidal tendencies, and we realise has finally died. Sooyoung has left Korea and she has no idea where, so the letter is more theoretical. And her recollection of the 'ruined' trip centres on an incident in Otaru, famed for its music box museum (小樽オルゴール堂) when in a shop, Sooyoung accidentally destroyed an expensive example, and was forced to buy it.
I have no happy memories, nothing like a souvenir I can take out and hold whenever I long for that chill winter air. And with no address, I'm left only with this letter I can never send, and the memory of a broken music box I can never hope to find.
Shard (Stained)
I wanted to sleep. Without nightmares or even auspicious dreams, without any sense of duty or guilt, as though sleep were my life's work, the only thing in the world I needed to do. But it was easier said than done and, once again, I found myself awake in the middle of the night.
잠을 자고 싶었다. 마치 그것만이 유일한 할 일인 것처럼, 죄책감도 의무감도 없이, 악몽도 길몽도 없이 본분처럼 잠들고 싶었다. 그러나 그것은 쉽지 않은 일이었고, 결국 나는 한밤중에 잠에서 깨고 말았다.
The narrator, unable to sleep, reflects on her relationship with P, and the dog they adopted together.
But this is set in an odd and unsettling future, where the ground is studded with other wordly objects, coloured triangles of a glass-like substance, around twice the size of an adult man, but with no weight, or thickness (seen from the exact side they literally vanish) which fall, once or twice a week from the sky, and emded themselves in the ground, The cause no harm And yet just the sight of one [... ] sailing straight down from the sky and implanting itself in the ground was menacing. People instinctively retreated from them, watchful in case they walked into one or it fell directly on them.
And in her dreams, she is playing with a red ball, which she has inflated, but one that keeps growing, becoming large and more transparent.
Author's afterword- not included in the book, ChatGPT augmented translation
언젠가부터, 온전히 도저히 영원히 이해할 수 없다는 점에서 소설 밖의 사람들과 소설 속의 사람들은 완전히 동일하다고 생각했다. 차이가 있다면, 소설 밖의 사람에게 칼을 들이밀었다가는 상당히 높은 확률로 범죄자가 된다는 점일 것이다.
그러나 그것이 범죄가 아니더라도, 소설 밖의 누군가를 다 쪼개어 분해해버린다고 해서 그를 이해할 수 있을 것 같지는 않다. 한편 종이를 전부 다 찢어버려도, 지면을 이루는 섬유의 방향과 모양을 찬찬히 세심하게 분석해보아도, 찢고 자르고 조각내는 대신 이 종이 위에 얹힌 잉크 방울을 활자의 모양과 그들이 남기는 흔적을 활자를 이루는 망점의 간격을 하나하나 살펴보아도 소설 속에 사는 그를 온전히 이해할 수 없는 것은 마찬가지일 것이다.
결국 소설 안이든 밖이든 내가 이해할 수 있는 것은 거의 없고, 소설을 쓸 때마다, 도무지 구조를 파악할 수 없는 미로를 빠져나가려고 시도하려는 것 같은 기분이 든다. 한 걸음이라도 더 내딛으면 이 미로에서 더 빨리 탈출할 수도 있을 것 같은데, 끝도 모르게 솟은 벽의 무늬가 그 벽 위를 흐르는 차가운 공기가 재미있어서 신선해서 마음을 끌어서 하지만 조금 무섭기도 해서 그냥 그대로 선 자리에서 빙빙 맴돌고 있는 것 같기도 하다.
그럼에도 단 한 걸음이라도 앞으로 내딛을 수 있었다면 그건 분명히 사랑하는 당신들 덕분일 것이다. 고맙다는 말을 전하고 싶다. 탈출할 수 없다고 해도 괜찮을 것만 같다.
At some point, I came to believe this: that the people outside a novel and those within it are, in the end, no different at all—if only in the sense that neither can ever be completely, eternally, or truly understood. The only real distinction, perhaps, is that if you point a knife at someone outside a book, you’re far more likely to become a criminal.
But even setting crime aside, taking someone apart—disassembling them down to the last detail—doesn’t mean you’ll come to understand them. And the same holds true in fiction. You could shred the page, examine every thread in the paper’s weave, study the grain, the fibers, the very texture of the surface. You could ignore all that and instead trace each droplet of ink, the contours of the letters, the tiny halftone dots that form the type. But none of it would bring you closer to truly knowing the one who lives within the story.
In the end, whether inside the novel or out, there is almost nothing I can say I fully understand. Each time I write, it feels like trying to find my way out of a maze whose shape I can’t quite grasp. It seems that if I could just take one more step, I might get closer to escaping. But then the walls rise again—endlessly high, patterned in unfamiliar ways, with a chill wind sliding over their surface. And the strangeness of it, the freshness of it, draws me in. It fascinates me. It frightens me. And so I stay where I am, circling the same spot.
Even so, if I’ve managed to take even a single step forward, it’s only because of you—those I love. I want to thank you. Even if there’s no way out, that no longer seems so terrible.
The publisher
We are Scratch Books.
We are named after a strange sensation - the feeling of stroking the soft fur of a cat, to discover later as you walk away, that it scratched you.
Which, for us, is what a short story is like...
It's published by the wonderful short-story dedicated small press Scratch Books, their sixth book (I've read 5 including this) and their first venture into translated literature, and it's a fascinating one. It is also their entry for 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize.
The stories with the equivalent Korean titles, and page counts are as follows (although the order differs in Korean so that e.g. 페이퍼 컷 [Paper Cut] comes first -the author said she was happy to take the English publisher's lead for this version):
Flying in the Rain (우중비행) - 24pp
Imperfect Pitch (인컴플리트 피치) - 31pp
Paper Cut (페이퍼 컷) - 15pp
Failed Summer Vacation (실패한 여름휴가) - 23pp
Loaf Cake (파운드케이크) - 24pp
Ruined Winter Holiday (망가진 겨울여행) - 19pp
Shard (Stained) - 23pp
The stories ranging from the real, through the surreal to sci-fi, but with a poignant air, the first person narrator / main characters typically alone, isolated, or even abandoned by a companion. Reaching for comparisons, there are elements of Vanessa Onwuezumi, 정보라 (Bora Chung) and Samanta Schweblin (the first two blurb the text) but this is distinctively 허희정의 own.
At a reading at the Korean cultural centre, the author herself cited (my non-verbatim recollection of her explanations), all three of whom have been translated into English:
Han Yujoo - for her experiments with language/form;
Gu Byeong-mo - for her defying of genre, her long sentences and her experimentation with words and language;
Han Kang - for her inspiring example.
In the stories, past and future can blur in present-day accounts - one narrator comments The present-me was somehow watching my future dreams give rise to past events. and another Because the past is made up of all the futures we have or haven’t chosen... (과거는 이미 선택된 미래들로 구성되어 있기 때문에...).
And a sense of dislocation and rupture haunts the text.
The stories:
Flying in the Rain (우중비행)
There was some literature about Earth. But most of it focused on life before the disaster. The old stories had been taken apart and re-assembled so many times over the generations that they has turned Earth into some folkloric homeland, alien and majestic, omitting from their accounts the cowards who had left the homeland and those left behind.
지구에 대한 문헌이 존재하지 않는 것은 아니었다. 그러나 그것들은 주로 대재난 이전의 세계를 다루고 있었다. 세대와 세기를 거듭하면서 지구와 지구를 둘러싼 이야기들은 분해되고 다시 조립되기를 반복했다. 그 과정 속에서 지구는 기이하고 아름다우며 평화로운 만인의 고향으로 둔갑했고, 지구 탈주의 과정에서 내려진 비겁한 결정들과 그 결정에 책임이 있는 사람들, 그로 인해 가장 먼저 버려진 이들의 이름은 깨끗하게 지워지고 말았다.
This is the only real sci-fi in the collection, a story set in a distant future, where a catastrophe has rendered Earth uninhabitable and humankind has scattered to distant planets, abadonding the planet, and evolving to cope with the different conditions there. An Interplanetary Union brings together the different groups, focusing on making each more habitable. But after an election, the Returnees faction gains some power, and an expedition is sent to test if Earth itself can be re-inhabited. Earth proves to be rich in plant life, the atmospheric concentration of oxygen higher than in our age - except humans have evolved to need less oxygen or even none at all.
The story centres around G, one of the expedition, and his memories of Q, who while on Earth, tendered plants in a greenhouse, and was left behind when the expedition was abandoned and everyone rescued - the story, which jumps in time, and between 1st and 3rd person, is essentially a record of Gs counselling sessions.
Imperfect Pitch (인컴플리트 피치)
More of a present-day story, and a poignant one. The main character Baek is a fan of a foreign rock band Imperfect Pitch, or rather was a fan given they are now disbanded, one of the band caught in a sex scandal. He spent - and still spends - much of his time on the Korean bulletin board for the band, mainly curated by a woman, O, a frequent poster of information on Imperfect Pitch, but who revealed little of her own life or identity.
O's sister comes on the board to post that O passed away, and Baek recalls the time that, through O, he got tickets for the band's final concert (the disgraced member replaced as a one-off by another guitarist), and his own performance of one of the band's signature songs as a student (which is how he came to be a fan). But O was equally elusive even on that trip, his tickets left in a locker to be retrieved.
Paper Cut (페이퍼 컷)
Except for my maths workbook and you, that's all the paper I can see, A said. Still shredding, he added, Differentiation is the infinite dividing up of the space under a curve and the adding up of all of these sections. I still don't understand it. I can solve differential equations, but can't do calculus to save my life. Look at all that paper dust. A lungful of that and we'd both die. But you want a statement from me, something true.
The paper man didn't answer. A's blade was slicing into his paper vocal cords.
One of the more surreal stories. The focal character, A, claims he wants to run away, but remains self-confined to a room where he possesses a Stanley knife, a maths workbook and a smartphone. He is visited by a literal Paper Man, who demands he writes a statement, a confession of sorts. But he resolutely refuses to do so: crossing out his writing; destroying the paper he is given; and when he does start to write scribing maths - graphs and calculus - rather than words, and then eventually shredding the Paper Man himself.
[Though he is no mathematician, as proven by the statement above, confusing Differentiation and Riemann Integration, which can only reveal to the careful reader that ... A is the exponential function 🙂 !!! (... only me then...!)]
Failed Summer Vacation (실패한 여름휴가)
I only ever try on feelings, slipping them over my skin, though they never seem to stick - it terrifies me, pretending to feel more than I do, and I wonder if perhaps I've never experienced any emotions of my own.
내가 흉내 내고 억지로 손에 넣으려 들고 피부 위에 걸치려 드는, 접착력이 떨어져가는 접착제로 덕지덕지 가져다 붙이려 하는 그 수많은 감정, 나는 언제나 내가 가진 것 이상의 감정을 가장하는 것을 두려워했으나 정작 나는 그 어떤 감정의 소유자인 적도 없었던 것만 같은 기분이 든다.
The title story, narrated by a someone (although more in his mind) to his companion on an unsuccessful summer vacation. A definite change of tone from some of the other stories, the narrator's at times violent thoughts nihilistic and disturbing.
This summer vacation is not a complete failure quite yet - there’s still a lot left we can ruin.
Loaf Cake (파운드케이크)
Sand was so angry he couldn't stand it.
모래는 화가나서 견딜 수가 없었다/.
A story both poignant and surreal.
The narrator was living with a man Sand (*), whose frustration is triggered by his clammy feet, lack of sleep, withered flowers and stale bread. But when she suggest buying a new bath mat, some flower pots and a sugary loaf cake from the local bakery, he refuses to countenance this and packs and leaves.
(* a name that by sound can have a double meaning in Korean as 모래 means sand but 모레 the day after tomorrow)
Sand's departure literally strikes her dumb, and she initially decides to stay in hs room, awaiting Sand's return, but eventually ventures out, going to the bakery-cafe where she buys first a slice, then a whole fruit loaf cake, befriending one of the servers, Snow, although she eventually realises he is friendly with everyone, not exclusively her. Nevertheless the two becomes close. But one night, brutally kills Snow's dog leading Snow to move away, some days later, the same day that a much diminshed, literally, Sand returns.
Ruined Winter Holiday (망가진 겨울여행)
Another poignant and offbeat, but in this case realistic story. The narrator is trying to write a letter to Sooyoung, a woman she met on a winter holiday to Hokkaido, which she took with her friend, who she addresses as 'you' while telling the story. Her friend had self-harming and suicidal tendencies, and we realise has finally died. Sooyoung has left Korea and she has no idea where, so the letter is more theoretical. And her recollection of the 'ruined' trip centres on an incident in Otaru, famed for its music box museum (小樽オルゴール堂) when in a shop, Sooyoung accidentally destroyed an expensive example, and was forced to buy it.
I have no happy memories, nothing like a souvenir I can take out and hold whenever I long for that chill winter air. And with no address, I'm left only with this letter I can never send, and the memory of a broken music box I can never hope to find.
Shard (Stained)
I wanted to sleep. Without nightmares or even auspicious dreams, without any sense of duty or guilt, as though sleep were my life's work, the only thing in the world I needed to do. But it was easier said than done and, once again, I found myself awake in the middle of the night.
잠을 자고 싶었다. 마치 그것만이 유일한 할 일인 것처럼, 죄책감도 의무감도 없이, 악몽도 길몽도 없이 본분처럼 잠들고 싶었다. 그러나 그것은 쉽지 않은 일이었고, 결국 나는 한밤중에 잠에서 깨고 말았다.
The narrator, unable to sleep, reflects on her relationship with P, and the dog they adopted together.
But this is set in an odd and unsettling future, where the ground is studded with other wordly objects, coloured triangles of a glass-like substance, around twice the size of an adult man, but with no weight, or thickness (seen from the exact side they literally vanish) which fall, once or twice a week from the sky, and emded themselves in the ground, The cause no harm And yet just the sight of one [... ] sailing straight down from the sky and implanting itself in the ground was menacing. People instinctively retreated from them, watchful in case they walked into one or it fell directly on them.
And in her dreams, she is playing with a red ball, which she has inflated, but one that keeps growing, becoming large and more transparent.
Author's afterword- not included in the book, ChatGPT augmented translation
언젠가부터, 온전히 도저히 영원히 이해할 수 없다는 점에서 소설 밖의 사람들과 소설 속의 사람들은 완전히 동일하다고 생각했다. 차이가 있다면, 소설 밖의 사람에게 칼을 들이밀었다가는 상당히 높은 확률로 범죄자가 된다는 점일 것이다.
그러나 그것이 범죄가 아니더라도, 소설 밖의 누군가를 다 쪼개어 분해해버린다고 해서 그를 이해할 수 있을 것 같지는 않다. 한편 종이를 전부 다 찢어버려도, 지면을 이루는 섬유의 방향과 모양을 찬찬히 세심하게 분석해보아도, 찢고 자르고 조각내는 대신 이 종이 위에 얹힌 잉크 방울을 활자의 모양과 그들이 남기는 흔적을 활자를 이루는 망점의 간격을 하나하나 살펴보아도 소설 속에 사는 그를 온전히 이해할 수 없는 것은 마찬가지일 것이다.
결국 소설 안이든 밖이든 내가 이해할 수 있는 것은 거의 없고, 소설을 쓸 때마다, 도무지 구조를 파악할 수 없는 미로를 빠져나가려고 시도하려는 것 같은 기분이 든다. 한 걸음이라도 더 내딛으면 이 미로에서 더 빨리 탈출할 수도 있을 것 같은데, 끝도 모르게 솟은 벽의 무늬가 그 벽 위를 흐르는 차가운 공기가 재미있어서 신선해서 마음을 끌어서 하지만 조금 무섭기도 해서 그냥 그대로 선 자리에서 빙빙 맴돌고 있는 것 같기도 하다.
그럼에도 단 한 걸음이라도 앞으로 내딛을 수 있었다면 그건 분명히 사랑하는 당신들 덕분일 것이다. 고맙다는 말을 전하고 싶다. 탈출할 수 없다고 해도 괜찮을 것만 같다.
At some point, I came to believe this: that the people outside a novel and those within it are, in the end, no different at all—if only in the sense that neither can ever be completely, eternally, or truly understood. The only real distinction, perhaps, is that if you point a knife at someone outside a book, you’re far more likely to become a criminal.
But even setting crime aside, taking someone apart—disassembling them down to the last detail—doesn’t mean you’ll come to understand them. And the same holds true in fiction. You could shred the page, examine every thread in the paper’s weave, study the grain, the fibers, the very texture of the surface. You could ignore all that and instead trace each droplet of ink, the contours of the letters, the tiny halftone dots that form the type. But none of it would bring you closer to truly knowing the one who lives within the story.
In the end, whether inside the novel or out, there is almost nothing I can say I fully understand. Each time I write, it feels like trying to find my way out of a maze whose shape I can’t quite grasp. It seems that if I could just take one more step, I might get closer to escaping. But then the walls rise again—endlessly high, patterned in unfamiliar ways, with a chill wind sliding over their surface. And the strangeness of it, the freshness of it, draws me in. It fascinates me. It frightens me. And so I stay where I am, circling the same spot.
Even so, if I’ve managed to take even a single step forward, it’s only because of you—those I love. I want to thank you. Even if there’s no way out, that no longer seems so terrible.
The publisher
We are Scratch Books.
We are named after a strange sensation - the feeling of stroking the soft fur of a cat, to discover later as you walk away, that it scratched you.
Which, for us, is what a short story is like...
July 15, 2025
More like failed summer read, amirite???
I dunno, this wasn't marketed accurately - I didn't find it to be that weird or bold or genre defying at all. The writing itself is technically good, but I felt nothing for most of these stories, and the themes being explored were done in a way that felt shallow to me. It's possibly a good place for people brand new to Asian or Korean literature, who want to dip their toes in slightly surreal territory for the first time, but that's about it for me.
I dunno, this wasn't marketed accurately - I didn't find it to be that weird or bold or genre defying at all. The writing itself is technically good, but I felt nothing for most of these stories, and the themes being explored were done in a way that felt shallow to me. It's possibly a good place for people brand new to Asian or Korean literature, who want to dip their toes in slightly surreal territory for the first time, but that's about it for me.
Read
June 21, 2025Failed Summer Vacation (2020, tr: Paige Aniyah Morris, 2025) is a curious collection of seven tales by Korean writer Heuijung Hur. From the outright speculative to the hauntingly personal, its range is interesting though the stories seem to resist interpretation. If its characters are named, we mostly know them by initials; except for one excursion to Hokkaido, the locations feel similarly elusive.
The opener, Flying in the Rain, is an outright science-fiction story that sees G tell his counsellor of a trip back to Earth. With all its talk of greenhouses, plants, and oxygen, it feels very in message, but with talk of returning to the home planet and with an Interplanetary Union, one wonders if it is also a veiled exploration of how those who escape North Korea can find themselves overwhelmed by the future shock of the South and yearn to return.
The following story, Imperfect Pitch, explores human connections over the internet. Baek hangs around on a site dedicated to the disbanded group named in the title, and finds himself drawn to the mysterious O, a superfan knowledgeable about all things related to the band. When he receives a message informing him about O’s death, he recalls the time she sold him a ticket to see them overseas and yet, even then, never got to meet her. Like Baek’s obsession with the band, his similar focus on this unknowable person stifles his real-world relationships.
Paper Cut is an absurd tale that imagines bureaucracy incarnate, and is my favourite story from the collection. A is regularly visited by a man made from paper, who swallows files and dishes out blank pages, regularly enquiring as to whether A has written his statement, whatever that is. Despite its energetic nonsense, it remains vague enough to allow for other interpretations, such as the paper man embodying writer’s block.
Two stories bear similar titles, Failed Summer Vacation and Ruined Winter Holiday. Both are less interested in the external world but take a psychological turn, heading into the minds of unnamed narrators. If the former tends to a bitter monologue, driven by claustrophobia and too much time to oneself, the latter is more concerned about addressing someone who can no longer be addressed. These stories were less engaging to me due to their self-absorbed delivery.
The remaining tales venture into the book’s more surreal moments. In Loaf Cake, the narrator’s partner, Sand, has left and while she waits, week after week, for him to return, she buys him a cake at a local cafe, which she devours slice after slice, necessitating the purchase of a new one each time. But her burgeoning relationship with the cake seller, Snow, is one thing to her and another to him. And when Sand finally returns, it just gets odd. Equally unusual is Shard, in which two-dimensional triangles fall upon the planet without explanation, in a story that also involves buying a dog and a past incident while the narrator worked as a stagehand, where watching from the sidelines, she saw the world in a different way from others.
Given how oblique these stories can be, I found myself reading them multiple times, trying to find my way in; pulling at suggested threads and chasing its phantoms. With many characters and places often out of reach, it feels like deliberately pushing away the reader with one hand yet beckoning them to read again in the hope of greater clarity. The alienation that emanates from these pages sometimes feels not just the theme but the book’s very aim. This summer vacation is an uneasy getaway, less reliant on relaxation than baggage.
The opener, Flying in the Rain, is an outright science-fiction story that sees G tell his counsellor of a trip back to Earth. With all its talk of greenhouses, plants, and oxygen, it feels very in message, but with talk of returning to the home planet and with an Interplanetary Union, one wonders if it is also a veiled exploration of how those who escape North Korea can find themselves overwhelmed by the future shock of the South and yearn to return.
The following story, Imperfect Pitch, explores human connections over the internet. Baek hangs around on a site dedicated to the disbanded group named in the title, and finds himself drawn to the mysterious O, a superfan knowledgeable about all things related to the band. When he receives a message informing him about O’s death, he recalls the time she sold him a ticket to see them overseas and yet, even then, never got to meet her. Like Baek’s obsession with the band, his similar focus on this unknowable person stifles his real-world relationships.
Paper Cut is an absurd tale that imagines bureaucracy incarnate, and is my favourite story from the collection. A is regularly visited by a man made from paper, who swallows files and dishes out blank pages, regularly enquiring as to whether A has written his statement, whatever that is. Despite its energetic nonsense, it remains vague enough to allow for other interpretations, such as the paper man embodying writer’s block.
Two stories bear similar titles, Failed Summer Vacation and Ruined Winter Holiday. Both are less interested in the external world but take a psychological turn, heading into the minds of unnamed narrators. If the former tends to a bitter monologue, driven by claustrophobia and too much time to oneself, the latter is more concerned about addressing someone who can no longer be addressed. These stories were less engaging to me due to their self-absorbed delivery.
The remaining tales venture into the book’s more surreal moments. In Loaf Cake, the narrator’s partner, Sand, has left and while she waits, week after week, for him to return, she buys him a cake at a local cafe, which she devours slice after slice, necessitating the purchase of a new one each time. But her burgeoning relationship with the cake seller, Snow, is one thing to her and another to him. And when Sand finally returns, it just gets odd. Equally unusual is Shard, in which two-dimensional triangles fall upon the planet without explanation, in a story that also involves buying a dog and a past incident while the narrator worked as a stagehand, where watching from the sidelines, she saw the world in a different way from others.
Given how oblique these stories can be, I found myself reading them multiple times, trying to find my way in; pulling at suggested threads and chasing its phantoms. With many characters and places often out of reach, it feels like deliberately pushing away the reader with one hand yet beckoning them to read again in the hope of greater clarity. The alienation that emanates from these pages sometimes feels not just the theme but the book’s very aim. This summer vacation is an uneasy getaway, less reliant on relaxation than baggage.
May 28, 2025
Failed Summer Vacation by Heuijung Hur is a collection of seven short stories, that quietly unsettles as much as it delights. I found myself completely drawn into Hur’s world, where the line between the real and the surreal is blurred with such subtlety and care.
I really appreciated how Hur plays with genre. These are not stories that sit neatly in any one category. Instead, she makes full use of the short story form, delving into the quiet oddities of everyday life and gently stretching the limits of how we see the world. There is something quite introspective in the way she reflects on how we live, and how we might live differently, through soft but striking shifts in narrative tone.
While deeply rooted in Korean culture, the stories speak in a voice that feels remarkably universal. Themes like alienation, longing, and transformation run through the collection, though always with a surprising twist or emotional depth I was not expecting.
My personal favourite was Flying in the Rain, a haunting, quietly strange story that really lingered with me. Ruined Winter Holiday and Loaf Cake were close contenders. As is often the case with short story collections, not every piece was a standout for me, but I still admired the way Hur crafts her narratives.
Her writing is gentle but vivid, giving even the smallest moments a kind of quiet significance.
Failed Summer Vacation is perfect for anyone who enjoys short fiction that plays with structure and feeling, and that reaches beyond the expected.
I really appreciated how Hur plays with genre. These are not stories that sit neatly in any one category. Instead, she makes full use of the short story form, delving into the quiet oddities of everyday life and gently stretching the limits of how we see the world. There is something quite introspective in the way she reflects on how we live, and how we might live differently, through soft but striking shifts in narrative tone.
While deeply rooted in Korean culture, the stories speak in a voice that feels remarkably universal. Themes like alienation, longing, and transformation run through the collection, though always with a surprising twist or emotional depth I was not expecting.
My personal favourite was Flying in the Rain, a haunting, quietly strange story that really lingered with me. Ruined Winter Holiday and Loaf Cake were close contenders. As is often the case with short story collections, not every piece was a standout for me, but I still admired the way Hur crafts her narratives.
Her writing is gentle but vivid, giving even the smallest moments a kind of quiet significance.
Failed Summer Vacation is perfect for anyone who enjoys short fiction that plays with structure and feeling, and that reaches beyond the expected.
August 7, 2025
I'm not thinking about the ticket I left on the desk. I'm not thinking about the books I haven't even opened yet.
Books with the most beautiful covers, filled with the ugliest stories. Some stories are best when you haven't read them, some movies most fascinating when all you've seen are their posters, the most terrifying curses the ones that hang over you forever, which is why I choose to wander through the days with books I'll never read and movies I'll never watch and—
(page 87)
*
oh, love this short story collection!! maybe more a four point something star rating, but really engaging & surreal & maybe sci-fi too & just wonderful!! my second book of August’s Women in Translation month, & I haven’t read much Korean Lit but need to keep an eye out for more! so grateful for this translation.
&, the cover design… I mean, it’s all heart eyes, amiright‽
Books with the most beautiful covers, filled with the ugliest stories. Some stories are best when you haven't read them, some movies most fascinating when all you've seen are their posters, the most terrifying curses the ones that hang over you forever, which is why I choose to wander through the days with books I'll never read and movies I'll never watch and—
(page 87)
*
oh, love this short story collection!! maybe more a four point something star rating, but really engaging & surreal & maybe sci-fi too & just wonderful!! my second book of August’s Women in Translation month, & I haven’t read much Korean Lit but need to keep an eye out for more! so grateful for this translation.
&, the cover design… I mean, it’s all heart eyes, amiright‽
June 3, 2025
Absurd, surreal, bleak, violent, unsettling.
A collection of short stories. They all deal with different levels of loneliness and anxieties. Most of them are told through unnamed protagonists and characters with only initials. They all take place in an unspecified location, apart from one where the characters went on a holiday in Hokkaido. The characters are all low-key obsessed with something.
If you want something a lil different for your summer read, this perfect for you.
Thank you to Scratch Books for sending me a copy.
A collection of short stories. They all deal with different levels of loneliness and anxieties. Most of them are told through unnamed protagonists and characters with only initials. They all take place in an unspecified location, apart from one where the characters went on a holiday in Hokkaido. The characters are all low-key obsessed with something.
If you want something a lil different for your summer read, this perfect for you.
Thank you to Scratch Books for sending me a copy.
July 27, 2025
“I don't really want to jump or drown. What I'd like instead is to fall without hitting the ground, to drown without taking on water. An odd curse to wish on yourself: to make it impossible to say if I've died or not.”
all these stories had this underlying feeling of loneliness, abandonment and isolation, which was the only thing that was somewhat interesting, other than that they were pretty boring and honestly just very shallow and foolish. don’t get me wrong, i love when books have a bit of a nonsensical vibe to them, but they need to have at least some degree of intelligibility and substance, this collection of short stories just felt really silly to me, like there was nothing there.
all these stories had this underlying feeling of loneliness, abandonment and isolation, which was the only thing that was somewhat interesting, other than that they were pretty boring and honestly just very shallow and foolish. don’t get me wrong, i love when books have a bit of a nonsensical vibe to them, but they need to have at least some degree of intelligibility and substance, this collection of short stories just felt really silly to me, like there was nothing there.
June 29, 2025
A bit too depressing for my liking
August 8, 2025
One fine summer day, there was a happy young woman at the book store. I was browsing the title and the man companying the young woman proudly said: It’s her book. The writer, she was very happy. I know that feeling, that happiness over your book being published.
Reader, I ended up bying the book as I want to support the young writer and the small publisher. And, I was going to my own summer vacation. Which, by the way, failed as I ended up working through it.
The stories themselves, for me, were somewhere out of my reach. It’s a personal thing but I cannot read myself into writing where characters have signifiers A, O, K, i.e no names. Even simply ”boy”, ”girl” are better. In a weird way I like the story of a paper man, Paper Cut. With it’s absurdity it reminds me of the absurd stories of the Soviet occupation time.
Waiting for the novel of Heuijung Hur. With names 😍😍😍
Reader, I ended up bying the book as I want to support the young writer and the small publisher. And, I was going to my own summer vacation. Which, by the way, failed as I ended up working through it.
The stories themselves, for me, were somewhere out of my reach. It’s a personal thing but I cannot read myself into writing where characters have signifiers A, O, K, i.e no names. Even simply ”boy”, ”girl” are better. In a weird way I like the story of a paper man, Paper Cut. With it’s absurdity it reminds me of the absurd stories of the Soviet occupation time.
Waiting for the novel of Heuijung Hur. With names 😍😍😍
August 18, 2025
really wasn’t the biggest fan of this but i guess it’s my fault for picking up a short collection of sci fi stories knowing that i hate them 🫠🫠
December 8, 2025
I enjoyed the paperman story the best. they were nice and sometimes funny stories and sometimes sad.
October 5, 2025
A varied collection with underlying themes about the difficulty of interpersonal relationships yet the loneliness which comes without them. All of the stories drip with disaffection whilst maintaining a dreamy feel. Some are definitely weaker but I took something from all of them. 'Failed Summer Vacation' showcases some of the best writing but in terms of enjoyability, my favourite story by far was 'Loaf Cake', it's the perfect blend of slice of life and sentimental (with an added sprinkle of surreal). I had to sit and reflect on it for around ten minutes after the ending!
July 17, 2025
'I'd long been obsessed with the idea that I was pretending to be something other than myself, until the day I came to the realisation I'd never entirely been "me" to begin with.'
A collection of short stories from Korean author Heuijung Hur, translated by Paige Aniyah Morris, that explores modern crises of alienation and isolation through realistic, surreal and sci-fi elements. Across the range of stories we see a future where Earth has been abandoned as it cannot sustain human life; a fan of a disbanded rock group recalls the enigmatic O who once got him tickets to a gig; the very surreal 'Paper Cut' where a man is repeatedly visited by a literal Paper Man and exhorted to write a confession; the title story in which violence and threats lie just beneath the surface of a summer vacation....
In its own way, each story explores the fragility of relationships, of existence, sometimes unsettling the reader with the strange and surreal that, somehow, are accepted as the norm in each story. I suspect that readers will take to the stories in different ways, some liking one, some liking another. That is the beauty of a collection like this, which introduces us to a new writer and I can't wait to see what they come up with next. As ever, for me, a collection like this means that I liked some more than others, but a very strong 4.5 stars overall.
A collection of short stories from Korean author Heuijung Hur, translated by Paige Aniyah Morris, that explores modern crises of alienation and isolation through realistic, surreal and sci-fi elements. Across the range of stories we see a future where Earth has been abandoned as it cannot sustain human life; a fan of a disbanded rock group recalls the enigmatic O who once got him tickets to a gig; the very surreal 'Paper Cut' where a man is repeatedly visited by a literal Paper Man and exhorted to write a confession; the title story in which violence and threats lie just beneath the surface of a summer vacation....
In its own way, each story explores the fragility of relationships, of existence, sometimes unsettling the reader with the strange and surreal that, somehow, are accepted as the norm in each story. I suspect that readers will take to the stories in different ways, some liking one, some liking another. That is the beauty of a collection like this, which introduces us to a new writer and I can't wait to see what they come up with next. As ever, for me, a collection like this means that I liked some more than others, but a very strong 4.5 stars overall.
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