What do you think?
Rate this book
At Night He Lifts Weights
A disquieting vision of ecological dystopia in a collection by a major Korean writer.
An artist is plagued by desire for her mysterious double as disease spreads through an uncanny suburban landscape. An elderly woman suspects the old man who lifts weights in her neighborhood playground of being responsible for a spate of murders. While elsewhere, a woman who believes she’s been exposed to radioactive radiation inherits a warehouse where those fleeing the city can store their possessions.
Beneath the calm surface of the stories collected here, Kang Young-sook offers a disquieting vision of a society grappling with ecological catastrophe and unplaceable forms of loss.
An artist is plagued by desire for her mysterious double as disease spreads through an uncanny suburban landscape. An elderly woman suspects the old man who lifts weights in her neighborhood playground of being responsible for a spate of murders. While elsewhere, a woman who believes she’s been exposed to radioactive radiation inherits a warehouse where those fleeing the city can store their possessions.
Beneath the calm surface of the stories collected here, Kang Young-sook offers a disquieting vision of a society grappling with ecological catastrophe and unplaceable forms of loss.
225 pages, Paperback
Published November 14, 2023
12 people are currently reading
813 people want to read
About the author
Kang Young-sook
6 books10 followersKang Young-sook (Hangul: 강영숙; born November 10, 1967) is a South Korean novelist.
Kang Young-sook was born in 1967 in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province in South Korea and spent most of her childhood there. She was student athlete for volleyball, long jump, and other sports, before she moved to Seoul when she was 14. She majored creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. She was the editor in chief of the Seoul Institute of the Arts journal and in 1998 made her literary debut with the short story "A Meal in August" through the annual spring literary competition sponsored by the Seoul Shinmun. Her published debut was the short story collection ['Shaken'] in (2002) and she has also published "Every Day is a Celebration" (2004) and "Black in Red" (2009). Her full-length novel Rina (2006) was serialized in the quarterly Literary Joongang. Kang participated in the Seoul Young Writers’ Festival and the East Asia Literature Forum in 2008. Since 1990, Kang has served as an advisory member of the Korea Dialogue Academy which is involved in various social campaigns including the Christian social movement, environmental activism, and encouraging discussions between different religions. Kang was a visiting researcher at Hosei University in Japan in 2007 and her main interest lies in environmental issues. In 2009. Kang did a guest residency at the International Writing Program of University of Iowa. She was selected for Daesan-Berkeley Writer-in-Residence program, funded by Daesan Foundation, she was in Berkeley, California in 2014.
(from Wikipedia)
Kang Young-sook was born in 1967 in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province in South Korea and spent most of her childhood there. She was student athlete for volleyball, long jump, and other sports, before she moved to Seoul when she was 14. She majored creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. She was the editor in chief of the Seoul Institute of the Arts journal and in 1998 made her literary debut with the short story "A Meal in August" through the annual spring literary competition sponsored by the Seoul Shinmun. Her published debut was the short story collection ['Shaken'] in (2002) and she has also published "Every Day is a Celebration" (2004) and "Black in Red" (2009). Her full-length novel Rina (2006) was serialized in the quarterly Literary Joongang. Kang participated in the Seoul Young Writers’ Festival and the East Asia Literature Forum in 2008. Since 1990, Kang has served as an advisory member of the Korea Dialogue Academy which is involved in various social campaigns including the Christian social movement, environmental activism, and encouraging discussions between different religions. Kang was a visiting researcher at Hosei University in Japan in 2007 and her main interest lies in environmental issues. In 2009. Kang did a guest residency at the International Writing Program of University of Iowa. She was selected for Daesan-Berkeley Writer-in-Residence program, funded by Daesan Foundation, she was in Berkeley, California in 2014.
(from Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 23, 2023
An arresting, unsettling collection of short stories by acclaimed Korean author Kang Young-soo. Kang skilfully blends slice-of-life settings with bursts of the surreal or the uncomfortably grotesque. Her work is a fascinating response to issues of social fragmentation, looming environmental disaster and creeping alienation. Although Kang’s vision isn’t confined to Korea: “Disaster Area Tour Bus” concerns a Korean photographer on holiday in New Orleans, where a disaster tour conjures memories of scenes of police brutality in Seoul; and “Road and River” follows a Korean man who relocated to America for work but finds himself grappling with an immense loss.
One of the highlights for me was the eerie “From Mullae” which has a domestic gothic flavour that reminded me of Shirley Jackson mingled with a cli-fi sensibility akin to Jeff VanderMeer’s. It’s centred on a Korean housewife forced to move from Seoul to a bleak, countryside apartment when her husband takes a new job. It’s filled with striking images from feral children to the corpses of dead birds that slowly surround the building, as the woman’s consumed by missed opportunities and the memory of a young artist who shared her name. “At Night He Lifts Weights” is a surreal, noir-ish piece narrated by an aging woman living alone in an area where multiple women have been violently raped and murdered, and taken-for-granted aspects of everyday life are on the verge of total breakdown.
Pollution, nuclear disaster, waste and consumerism are recurring preoccupations surfacing in the slightly absurd “Death Road”; in “Pripyat Story” an intriguing blend of the weird and the mundane; and again in the melancholy, beautifully-observed “Processions” a twist on the kind of encounter between a single man and woman commonly associated with budding romance. As with any collection, there were stories that impressed me more than others but there was more here that gripped than disappointed. Translated by Janet Hong.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Transit Books for an ARC
Rating: 3.5
One of the highlights for me was the eerie “From Mullae” which has a domestic gothic flavour that reminded me of Shirley Jackson mingled with a cli-fi sensibility akin to Jeff VanderMeer’s. It’s centred on a Korean housewife forced to move from Seoul to a bleak, countryside apartment when her husband takes a new job. It’s filled with striking images from feral children to the corpses of dead birds that slowly surround the building, as the woman’s consumed by missed opportunities and the memory of a young artist who shared her name. “At Night He Lifts Weights” is a surreal, noir-ish piece narrated by an aging woman living alone in an area where multiple women have been violently raped and murdered, and taken-for-granted aspects of everyday life are on the verge of total breakdown.
Pollution, nuclear disaster, waste and consumerism are recurring preoccupations surfacing in the slightly absurd “Death Road”; in “Pripyat Story” an intriguing blend of the weird and the mundane; and again in the melancholy, beautifully-observed “Processions” a twist on the kind of encounter between a single man and woman commonly associated with budding romance. As with any collection, there were stories that impressed me more than others but there was more here that gripped than disappointed. Translated by Janet Hong.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Transit Books for an ARC
Rating: 3.5
January 28, 2024
At Night He Lifts Weight (2024) is Janet Hong's translation of a collection of stories by 강영숙 (Kang Young-sook) originally published in 2011 as 아령 하는 밤.
I have previously read Rina (리나) in Kim Boram's translation, and which appears to be coming out in June 2024 in a revised translation from Kim Boram and Janet Hong published by Open Letter.
This is a collection of 9 stories all around 20 pages.
From Mullae (문래에서), which won a literary prize in its own right, begins the collection with an uncanny tone. It opens, arrestingly, "The car reeks of chocolate" as the narrator and her husband travel to the remote District Y, where his job has been transferred from Seoul, looking to secure accomodation. They take a flat in a 12 story building in a field rather in the middle of nowhere. The estate agent sells them the country dream that they will be drinking milk fresh from the cow every morning, but the only real evidence for this is a picture of a cow on a billboard, and it becomes clear that if anything the area is the source of intense factory farming and mass slaughter of animals, the narrator's husband warning her not to leave the house.
They previously lived in 문래동 (Mullae-dong) in Seoul, once home of small factories but more occupied by artists, the two communities coming together physically, if not spiritually, at one particular restaurant in the area, where the narrator becomes obsessed with a young woman, a waitress and artist, who shares her name. And when the woman does eventually go in search of her husband, and stumbles across what appears to be the mass incineration of diseased pigs, she is also convinced she the girl striding over the mounds of dead flesh.
And the chocolate from the striking opening line proves to be something of a red-herring, one of the "superfluity of narrative and ... seemingly unnecessary details and items" that marked Rina (from So Young Hyun's critical commentary to that book).
The title story At Night He Lifts Weights (아령 하는 밤) is a variation on a similar theme. A more urban setting, but a similar polluted and sinister area.
도시가 원인 모를 악추1에 휩싸였다． 알 수 없는 기름 냄새가 긍단 건너편의 주택가로 점 점 퍼져나갔다． 처음엔 단순하게 찌든 기름 냄새 정도였던 것이 점자 심해져서 두통을 유 발시켰다． 눈이 붓고 목이 따끔거 린다는 아이와 노인 들 덕분에 동네 안과와 이 빈후과만 미어터지는 특수를 보았다． 방역을 위해 긍무원들이 조사를 나오고 하수구란 하수구는 매일 두 번씩 소독을 했다.
A foul, inexplicable smell enveloped the city. The stench of noxious grease spread to the residential area across from the industrial complex. At first, people reported a stale odour, which grew more serious, causing headaches. Both young and old suffering from swollen eyes and sore throats packed the neighbourhood ophthalmologists' and ENT clinics to overflowing. To prevent the spread of infection, officials were sent to the city to investigate and sewers were disinfected twice a day.
There are also a series of murders of young women, and the narrator becomes convinved that the murderer is the elderly, but muscular, man she sees from time to time lifting weights in the recreational area near her house.
These two stories are atmospheric with an air of Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream and similar works.
Radio and River (라디오와 강) and Death Road (죽음의 도로) were less successful for me. The former has a man taking a vacation on his own - his family seem to prefer to stay home and watch TV- and travelling around rather aimlessly. The latter has a depressed woman driving along the most accident-prone section of road in Seoul - the 강변북로 between 동작대교 and 한강대교 - hoping to have an accident.
Disaster Area Tour Bus (재해지역투어버스) is set in (an unnamed) New Orleans. The narrator always takes a city tour in any new destination and this time takes a 3 hour tour based around the 2005 Hurricane Katrina floods (which would have been more recent at the time of the original story).
버스는 일정한 속도로 움직였다． 버스 안은 줄발할 때와 달리 이상하게 고요해졌다． 운전 기사의 덴트는 점점 더 딸라졌다． 몸으로 그때의 모든 시간을 매번 재현해야 하는 그는 얼 마나 고통스러울까． 나는 운전석 앞에 달린 거울에 비친 그의 얼굴을 쳐다봤다． 그러나 웬 걸， 그는 아주 신이 나 보였다．
보트가 지나다니 면서 지붕 위에 있는 사람들에게 물과 담 요를 주는 게 다였어요． 군용 혤리큽터는 시계와 물： 방수 쌘드택을 떨어뜨려주었죠． 그러 나 몹시 부즉했어요． 일부 물이 빠진 시내 거리에 전세계 미디어가 종집결해 있었다는 소 리를 듣긴 했지만 우리를 도와주러 오는 사람은 많지 않았어요.
The bus moved at a steady speed. A strange hush fell over the bus. The mood was very different from when the tour had first started. The driver spoke faster and faster. How painful it must be to re-enact those memories. I gazed at his reflection in the mirror above the driver's seat. But what was this? He seemed very excited.
All they did was to go around in boats, handing out water and blankets to folks stranded on rooftops. The military choppers came in, dropping watches, water and sandbags, but it wasn't enough. Reporters from around the world rolled up here, but ain't many folks come to lend a hand.
It's a dark tour, the guide bringing out how little the city was helped, and linking this to the legacy of slavery. The story ends by the narrator recalling the visit of one of the city's most famous citizens to Seoul in 1963, as part of an overseas tour and to perform at the opening of the Walker Hill resort, where he and his band performed his most famous hit, What a Wonderful World.
Greenland (그린란드) is a more conventional story set at the time of the 1997 financial crisis and the narrator's husband is one of a group of businessmen friends who all lend each other money when required, except when the crisis hits the debt spiral unravels and the men all disappear en masse, the story's title taken from one of the places their wives suspect they may have fled to.
City of Anxiety (불안한 도시) has a man walking the streets of Seoul in search of his ex-wife, at the request of her mother and brother, who suddenly vanished from their family home, catching what seem to be sighting of her through the yellow dust of April.
The 황사 (yellow dust) from China is a recurrent backdrop to many of the stories, a natural phenomenon that has impacted Korea since at least the 2nd century AD, but which has become far more problematic in the modern anthropocene age as it disperses not just sand but also industrial pollutants.
Pripyat Storage (프리퍄트 창고) begins in such a storm, on April 26, 2006 which the narrator notes is the 21st anniversary of Chernobyl, and comes to believe the dust is carrying the radiation from the disaster. She has inherited the family warehouse storage business from her mother and re-names is Pri Storage (프리 창고), a subtle nod to the abandoned Ukranian city of Pripyat, which is initially unsuccessful. But she comes to believe she was a former resident in the city herself, and now promotes her facility, re-renamed explicitly Pripyat Storage (프리퍄트 창고) on these grounds for people impacted by tragedy, those who believe you'll die from cancer one day, those who'll have to store the things that your dead friend leaves behind, those heading somewhere with no hope of return.
Processions (어떤 싸움) tells of a stilted relationship between two cinemaphiles, each otherwise on their own, he with a hiking fixation (a motif from another story, a subtle feature of the collection) and she who suffers from horrific visions. For their mutual outings - dates is too strong word - he chooses a favourite ramen restaurant, whereas she picks a trip out of the city to watch a traditional river-based funeral procession.
Overall, an uneven but atmospheric collection. The stronger stories for me were those with the more uncanny air, and premonitions of ecological disaster, such as the opening ones and I'd have preferred a more tightly focused selection. 3 stars overall (3.5-).
I have previously read Rina (리나) in Kim Boram's translation, and which appears to be coming out in June 2024 in a revised translation from Kim Boram and Janet Hong published by Open Letter.
This is a collection of 9 stories all around 20 pages.
From Mullae (문래에서), which won a literary prize in its own right, begins the collection with an uncanny tone. It opens, arrestingly, "The car reeks of chocolate" as the narrator and her husband travel to the remote District Y, where his job has been transferred from Seoul, looking to secure accomodation. They take a flat in a 12 story building in a field rather in the middle of nowhere. The estate agent sells them the country dream that they will be drinking milk fresh from the cow every morning, but the only real evidence for this is a picture of a cow on a billboard, and it becomes clear that if anything the area is the source of intense factory farming and mass slaughter of animals, the narrator's husband warning her not to leave the house.
They previously lived in 문래동 (Mullae-dong) in Seoul, once home of small factories but more occupied by artists, the two communities coming together physically, if not spiritually, at one particular restaurant in the area, where the narrator becomes obsessed with a young woman, a waitress and artist, who shares her name. And when the woman does eventually go in search of her husband, and stumbles across what appears to be the mass incineration of diseased pigs, she is also convinced she the girl striding over the mounds of dead flesh.
And the chocolate from the striking opening line proves to be something of a red-herring, one of the "superfluity of narrative and ... seemingly unnecessary details and items" that marked Rina (from So Young Hyun's critical commentary to that book).
The title story At Night He Lifts Weights (아령 하는 밤) is a variation on a similar theme. A more urban setting, but a similar polluted and sinister area.
도시가 원인 모를 악추1에 휩싸였다． 알 수 없는 기름 냄새가 긍단 건너편의 주택가로 점 점 퍼져나갔다． 처음엔 단순하게 찌든 기름 냄새 정도였던 것이 점자 심해져서 두통을 유 발시켰다． 눈이 붓고 목이 따끔거 린다는 아이와 노인 들 덕분에 동네 안과와 이 빈후과만 미어터지는 특수를 보았다． 방역을 위해 긍무원들이 조사를 나오고 하수구란 하수구는 매일 두 번씩 소독을 했다.
A foul, inexplicable smell enveloped the city. The stench of noxious grease spread to the residential area across from the industrial complex. At first, people reported a stale odour, which grew more serious, causing headaches. Both young and old suffering from swollen eyes and sore throats packed the neighbourhood ophthalmologists' and ENT clinics to overflowing. To prevent the spread of infection, officials were sent to the city to investigate and sewers were disinfected twice a day.
There are also a series of murders of young women, and the narrator becomes convinved that the murderer is the elderly, but muscular, man she sees from time to time lifting weights in the recreational area near her house.
These two stories are atmospheric with an air of Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream and similar works.
Radio and River (라디오와 강) and Death Road (죽음의 도로) were less successful for me. The former has a man taking a vacation on his own - his family seem to prefer to stay home and watch TV- and travelling around rather aimlessly. The latter has a depressed woman driving along the most accident-prone section of road in Seoul - the 강변북로 between 동작대교 and 한강대교 - hoping to have an accident.
Disaster Area Tour Bus (재해지역투어버스) is set in (an unnamed) New Orleans. The narrator always takes a city tour in any new destination and this time takes a 3 hour tour based around the 2005 Hurricane Katrina floods (which would have been more recent at the time of the original story).
버스는 일정한 속도로 움직였다． 버스 안은 줄발할 때와 달리 이상하게 고요해졌다． 운전 기사의 덴트는 점점 더 딸라졌다． 몸으로 그때의 모든 시간을 매번 재현해야 하는 그는 얼 마나 고통스러울까． 나는 운전석 앞에 달린 거울에 비친 그의 얼굴을 쳐다봤다． 그러나 웬 걸， 그는 아주 신이 나 보였다．
보트가 지나다니 면서 지붕 위에 있는 사람들에게 물과 담 요를 주는 게 다였어요． 군용 혤리큽터는 시계와 물： 방수 쌘드택을 떨어뜨려주었죠． 그러 나 몹시 부즉했어요． 일부 물이 빠진 시내 거리에 전세계 미디어가 종집결해 있었다는 소 리를 듣긴 했지만 우리를 도와주러 오는 사람은 많지 않았어요.
The bus moved at a steady speed. A strange hush fell over the bus. The mood was very different from when the tour had first started. The driver spoke faster and faster. How painful it must be to re-enact those memories. I gazed at his reflection in the mirror above the driver's seat. But what was this? He seemed very excited.
All they did was to go around in boats, handing out water and blankets to folks stranded on rooftops. The military choppers came in, dropping watches, water and sandbags, but it wasn't enough. Reporters from around the world rolled up here, but ain't many folks come to lend a hand.
It's a dark tour, the guide bringing out how little the city was helped, and linking this to the legacy of slavery. The story ends by the narrator recalling the visit of one of the city's most famous citizens to Seoul in 1963, as part of an overseas tour and to perform at the opening of the Walker Hill resort, where he and his band performed his most famous hit, What a Wonderful World.
Greenland (그린란드) is a more conventional story set at the time of the 1997 financial crisis and the narrator's husband is one of a group of businessmen friends who all lend each other money when required, except when the crisis hits the debt spiral unravels and the men all disappear en masse, the story's title taken from one of the places their wives suspect they may have fled to.
City of Anxiety (불안한 도시) has a man walking the streets of Seoul in search of his ex-wife, at the request of her mother and brother, who suddenly vanished from their family home, catching what seem to be sighting of her through the yellow dust of April.
The 황사 (yellow dust) from China is a recurrent backdrop to many of the stories, a natural phenomenon that has impacted Korea since at least the 2nd century AD, but which has become far more problematic in the modern anthropocene age as it disperses not just sand but also industrial pollutants.
Pripyat Storage (프리퍄트 창고) begins in such a storm, on April 26, 2006 which the narrator notes is the 21st anniversary of Chernobyl, and comes to believe the dust is carrying the radiation from the disaster. She has inherited the family warehouse storage business from her mother and re-names is Pri Storage (프리 창고), a subtle nod to the abandoned Ukranian city of Pripyat, which is initially unsuccessful. But she comes to believe she was a former resident in the city herself, and now promotes her facility, re-renamed explicitly Pripyat Storage (프리퍄트 창고) on these grounds for people impacted by tragedy, those who believe you'll die from cancer one day, those who'll have to store the things that your dead friend leaves behind, those heading somewhere with no hope of return.
Processions (어떤 싸움) tells of a stilted relationship between two cinemaphiles, each otherwise on their own, he with a hiking fixation (a motif from another story, a subtle feature of the collection) and she who suffers from horrific visions. For their mutual outings - dates is too strong word - he chooses a favourite ramen restaurant, whereas she picks a trip out of the city to watch a traditional river-based funeral procession.
Overall, an uneven but atmospheric collection. The stronger stories for me were those with the more uncanny air, and premonitions of ecological disaster, such as the opening ones and I'd have preferred a more tightly focused selection. 3 stars overall (3.5-).
October 19, 2024
Is there a term Seoul gothic? If not, consider it invented (and trademarked) here to describe the mix of environmental decay, body horror and post-industrial malaise found in this collection. Can't wait to get to her novel, Rina.
January 1, 2024
Bardzo duże rozczarowanie, poza może dwoma opowiadaniami nic nie było dla mnie warte zapamiętania
December 24, 2025
I picked this collection up because my brain concocted an idea of what the title story was about (I was very wrong, lol). This wasn’t a mixed bag, as short story collections usually are for me, it was just unpleasant to read. I found the writing dense and dull, and the supposed “point” of the stories was muddled by an amalgam of mundane details. I had to sit down and actively digest each one just to guess what it was about, but overall they felt very unfocused, and whatever message they were meant to carry didn’t come through as clearly as I wish it had. Which is frustrating, because I do think the ideas and unsettling contexts behind each story were solid, the writing just didn’t make them effective, in my opinion.
From Mullae - An artist and her husband leave Mullae for the countryside and move into an apartment. They’re promised milk from real cows every morning, but it turns out the “farms” around them only slaughter the cows. 2 stars. Very dull.
At Night He Lifts Weights - This story (or, rather, the title) is the reason I picked up this collection, because I like lifting weights. This one was a hard read, honestly. It’s set in an unsafe area where women are being raped and killed. The main character, a grandmother, believes the suspect is an elderly man who lifts weights. 2.5 stars because some of the shock value was effective, but once again the writing felt very dull, and there was more emphasis on the grandma’s toilet habits than on anything else.
Radio and River - A guy drives around without his family while listening to the radio in the background. I didn’t get the point of this one. Again, very dull. 1 star.
Death Road - A suicidal woman drives around areas with lots of car accidents in and near Seoul. The story jumps between her thoughts about a dangerous road in Bolivia, a trip to China, and having to return a Japanese movie. I just didn’t care. It was extremely mundane and dull. This pretty much sums up the tone of the collection: dull and forgettable. 1.5 stars.
Disaster Area Tour Bus - You guessed it: more dull driving. This one features a bus tour around an area affected by the Hurricane Katrina floods. My brain immediately linked it to the Korean novel Disaster Tourist, which I was also disenchanted with. The story mostly consists of the main character listening to the tour and thinking thoughts I no longer remember. 3 stars, because the disaster-tourism aspect kept my morbid curiosity engaged.
Greenland - This story follows a married woman with a child living through an economic crisis that leaves most families in debt. Men go missing, and wives search for their husbands. Whatever. This one had one of the more interesting concepts in the collection, but it still bored me to death. 3 stars.
City of Anxiety - I am a permanent resident of this city, y’all. Anyway. This is vaguely similar to the previous story. A husband walks around (this time the character isn’t driving, very innovative of the author) looking for his wife. Two words: bo ring. 1.5 stars.
Pripyat Storage - We follow a narrator who renames the family’s storage business from Pri Storage to Pripyat Storage. Thrilling. 1 star.
Processions - I skimmed this one because I simply couldn’t deal with this collection anymore. There’s a couple who like watching movies. She’s not a morning person, and he likes hiking, I guess. No rating because I don’t care. The story makes the brilliant observation that a sad cup of coffee is a 'depresso,' and I think this collection made me feel like I had five depressos.
From Mullae - An artist and her husband leave Mullae for the countryside and move into an apartment. They’re promised milk from real cows every morning, but it turns out the “farms” around them only slaughter the cows. 2 stars. Very dull.
At Night He Lifts Weights - This story (or, rather, the title) is the reason I picked up this collection, because I like lifting weights. This one was a hard read, honestly. It’s set in an unsafe area where women are being raped and killed. The main character, a grandmother, believes the suspect is an elderly man who lifts weights. 2.5 stars because some of the shock value was effective, but once again the writing felt very dull, and there was more emphasis on the grandma’s toilet habits than on anything else.
Radio and River - A guy drives around without his family while listening to the radio in the background. I didn’t get the point of this one. Again, very dull. 1 star.
Death Road - A suicidal woman drives around areas with lots of car accidents in and near Seoul. The story jumps between her thoughts about a dangerous road in Bolivia, a trip to China, and having to return a Japanese movie. I just didn’t care. It was extremely mundane and dull. This pretty much sums up the tone of the collection: dull and forgettable. 1.5 stars.
Disaster Area Tour Bus - You guessed it: more dull driving. This one features a bus tour around an area affected by the Hurricane Katrina floods. My brain immediately linked it to the Korean novel Disaster Tourist, which I was also disenchanted with. The story mostly consists of the main character listening to the tour and thinking thoughts I no longer remember. 3 stars, because the disaster-tourism aspect kept my morbid curiosity engaged.
Greenland - This story follows a married woman with a child living through an economic crisis that leaves most families in debt. Men go missing, and wives search for their husbands. Whatever. This one had one of the more interesting concepts in the collection, but it still bored me to death. 3 stars.
City of Anxiety - I am a permanent resident of this city, y’all. Anyway. This is vaguely similar to the previous story. A husband walks around (this time the character isn’t driving, very innovative of the author) looking for his wife. Two words: bo ring. 1.5 stars.
Pripyat Storage - We follow a narrator who renames the family’s storage business from Pri Storage to Pripyat Storage. Thrilling. 1 star.
Processions - I skimmed this one because I simply couldn’t deal with this collection anymore. There’s a couple who like watching movies. She’s not a morning person, and he likes hiking, I guess. No rating because I don’t care. The story makes the brilliant observation that a sad cup of coffee is a 'depresso,' and I think this collection made me feel like I had five depressos.
August 2, 2023
At Night He Lifts Weights by Kang Young-sook offered an eclectic collection of stories many of which centred around a dystopian future, but without belabouring the message. Some stories I enjoyed more than others, but all were interesting to read. A lot was packed into each short tale, giving the reader plenty to ruminate on post-reading. I would be happy to read more works by this author and I am giving this collection four stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
September 3, 2023
I really like this. A mixed collection of stories ranging from sort of dystopian gothic, to modernism, romance, and noir thriller. Sonething about this book packed with diverse stories that are both interesting yet simple really made me invested. My favourites would be Procession, Pripyat Storage, At night he lifts weights and Death Road. Will review in details soon
March 16, 2024
Kangin novelleissa kulman takana piilee yleensä jokin onnettomuus. Ihmiset ovat varautuneita ja omituisia, myrkkyhöyryjä nousee kaupunkien reunoilta, tunnelma on painostava, häiritseväkin. Onko öisin painoja nosteleva mies sekaantunut murhaan? Saako lainoja ottamalla pidettyä kulissit kunnossa? Mitä tulee vastaan New Orleansin Disaster Area Tour Bussissa? Lukemisen jälkeen jäi kaksijakoiset fiilikset: Toisaalta tykkäsin novellien painostavasta tunnelmasta, mutta toisaalta tarinat tuntuivat kylmiltä kiviltä, joiden sisään en päässyt kunnolla kaivautumaan.
May 5, 2025
Real Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: A disquieting vision of ecological dystopia in a collection by a major Korean writer.
An artist is plagued by desire for her mysterious double as disease spreads through an uncanny suburban landscape. An elderly woman suspects the old man who lifts weights in her neighborhood playground of being responsible for a spate of murders. While elsewhere, a woman who believes she’s been exposed to radioactive radiation inherits a warehouse where those fleeing the city can store their possessions.
Beneath the calm surface of the stories collected here, Kang Young-sook offers a disquieting vision of a society grappling with ecological catastrophe and unplaceable forms of loss.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: It's not hard to see how this one stayed a bestseller in Korea, a country where they ousted their wannabe-dictator sitting president, yet failed to get much traction here, where the hoi polloi wished a stupid old man with a loud, grating voice and a Nixonesque "enemies list" into office. This kind of behavior used to shock us, like it did the South Koreans; when did that stop?
Nonetheless, the stories are individually crafted to keep one reading. I found it was easy to put the collection down between stories, but was always glad to pick it back up so I could reimmerse myself in a world worse than mine.
For now, anyway.
By long-established custom, we're going into the whole collection via the Bryce Method. Bless his cotton socks, this method of escaping the dead hand of shoulda-gotta on my creative juices is right up there with 'Nathan Burgoine's three-sentence review, and Nancy Pearl's Rule of Fifty.
From Mullae unsettles and disorients us, along with our psychologically fragile narrator, as the natural world undergoes a series of unexplored, barely explained disasters. Blood is the recurring visual...blood on the ground, blood on the newspapers set out to protect the floor of an apartment the narrator and her husband move into, blood permeating the air as countless pig corpses are dumped at his unspecified, but clearly horrible, workplace as the narrator peers down at it from a mound of earth that might be more pig carcasses. Women accost the narrator outside her building, forcing pamphlets on her urging resistance...to what? why? is this related to the unfolding disaster her husband begs her to remain indoors to escape? Unexplained. To say this story made me uneasy is to observe that the sun is a small, round spot in the sky. After the pandemic that killed so many people in my building, being trapped indoors while awful things happened and happened and happened...yeah, this one's sharp indeed. 4*
At Night He Lifts Weights gives us an elderly lady without family or purpose, living in an industrially destroyed environment, who suspects an elderly man of committing a series of horrible murders across the city. It's brutally honest about how lonely and useless people become in old age, though this silly, fluttering soul was always useless; the elderly man she suspects of crimes is, by contrast, vital, vigorous, and—ready for this?—lifts weights to stay in shape! Weird, right?
It must Mean Something, unlike the environmentally destroyed, stinking lake, the chronically backed-up toilet in her apartment (though this is handy because the plumber, a stripling of forty, is good to look at), or any of her other real problems. Like the other story I just read, it doesn't really end per se, it just has a natural place to stop. Resolution there is none. 4*
Radio and River Korean war survivor Oh emigrates to the US, a bleak now-ish California most likely, with a family he doesn't care about who heartily return his indifference. He starts work in some factory or another and makes a Korean friend, Kim. His inner silence is only broken with Kim, but like so many silent-cored people he surrounds himself with noise...dance music, hip hop: "Every time he heard this kind of shrieking, he felt like his corners had been filed down, so much so that he'd become a smooth lump of metal."
When a huge flood ravages the town, Oh loses his friend Kim. It snaps his last tenuous bond to his life. The road trip (and results of same) he goes on are...Lynchian, Twin Peaksy. 4*
Death Road features a suicidal woman whose childhood best buddy...a boy, against even mire powerful norms than in the US...all unknowingly and with opposite intent tells her about a Bolivian Andean road that she thinks will do nicely. That's not somewhere she can just...go, from Seoul anyway, so next up is Seoul's "Death Highway" as it's become called, an expressway interconnecting bridges, neighborhoods, etc etc. Unable to do the deed, flatten her foot on the accelerator and cause lethal havoc, she calls people from the car picking fights to work up the resolve, ending with her childhood bestie.
What a selfish and narcissistic person. Her inner and outer personas are not in harmony, which made this an effective rumination on the immense cost of misogyny, and the powerful rage of entrapped women...but nothing changes in the story (definitely the point) so it feels weak, weakening, draining without refilling. 4* for accurate reflection of womens' reality, but I never wanna read it again
Disaster Area Tour Bus follows a young Korean woman as she tours post-Katrina New Orleans. The tour bus driver's Black, and speaks in a really racist kind of dialect-Southern speech...author or translator or, most probably, both has never been to New Orleans...and, while I approve the anticapitalist disaster tourism messaging, and appreciate seeing how we look to outsiders, I couldn't get past the itchy icky sense that even your friends get it wrong sometimes. 3*
Greenland follows the life trajectory of ordinary people, no better or worse than they need to be, as they stagger unwittingly through traps, honey- and tiger-, as capitalism has its brutal way with them. Greed and selfishness and narcissism all play a role in the unraveling and redistribution of burdens...onto the women...and benefits...onto the men. Indexed to the modern history of Korea as it developed into a finance economy from a manufacturing one, the constant is that it's always a woman's thankless, unthanked job to do the work and clean up the messes. 4*
City of Anxiety is just that: full-on anxiety attacks, one after another, close third-person PoV that relentlessly charts a man's disintegration when his ex-wife disappears.
Searching for her entails a long litany of place names that mean nothing to me, innocent of all but the broadest sweeps of Korean geographical reality; it does not stop me from my apprehensive apprehension of this nameless man's unending fearful descent into a self-curated hellscape of obsessive regret. Nothing breaks him out of his narrow, bony, confining morass of unproductive, blindingly painful need.
Untrustworthy PoV, methinks, I reflected as his self-absorption drags him around without surcease. Was he the one who left the ex-wife? Did she, suffocating in his mire of inabilities, just...run? Did he kill her in a fit of emotional insanity as she tried to? It is a supremely evocative piece of writing. 4.5*
Pripyat Storage is named for the city nearest Chernobyl, of the 1986 nuclear disaster. A business the young woman narrator, turned thirty as 2006 marks her assuming of ownership and control from her newly-widowed mother, soon becomes engrossed in the minutiae of owning and running a business. It leaves her less time for obsessing over how her Chernobyl-blighted generation fails and fails and fails.
As her mother retreats into well-outfitted trips to distant mountains, she tries to reshape the storage business. As much as the indifference of her mother to the fate of the storage business annoys her, it also frees her to carve a new way to shed the unwanted garbage her father had piled up. It makes room for new people to fill this extra space, sparklingly clean from her mop and bucket, with the things they need to keep but can't bear to see in their faces.
Generational trauma making its way through the stages of grief. Deeply, sadly relatable. 4.5*
Processions proceeds from the knocking together of two empty vessels, a man and a woman who possess nothing, take nothing, give nothing, and thus find themselves attracted to the other's vacuum.
Quotidian things occur in the time they decide they will spend together; none important, none memorable, and since neither of them are those things, it is fitting they occur this way. No revelation, no great awareness shift, just two lonelinesses touching then parting. 3.5*
***
As a gestalt, this collection is less than the sum of its parts; as you'd expect from someone who has published four novels and five other collections before this one, nothing is wrong on a craft level nor is the translation somehow lacking in that hard-to-pin-down way. I'm just not full of anything now it's over. It's just...over. No fourth star for you, book.
The Publisher Says: A disquieting vision of ecological dystopia in a collection by a major Korean writer.
An artist is plagued by desire for her mysterious double as disease spreads through an uncanny suburban landscape. An elderly woman suspects the old man who lifts weights in her neighborhood playground of being responsible for a spate of murders. While elsewhere, a woman who believes she’s been exposed to radioactive radiation inherits a warehouse where those fleeing the city can store their possessions.
Beneath the calm surface of the stories collected here, Kang Young-sook offers a disquieting vision of a society grappling with ecological catastrophe and unplaceable forms of loss.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: It's not hard to see how this one stayed a bestseller in Korea, a country where they ousted their wannabe-dictator sitting president, yet failed to get much traction here, where the hoi polloi wished a stupid old man with a loud, grating voice and a Nixonesque "enemies list" into office. This kind of behavior used to shock us, like it did the South Koreans; when did that stop?
Nonetheless, the stories are individually crafted to keep one reading. I found it was easy to put the collection down between stories, but was always glad to pick it back up so I could reimmerse myself in a world worse than mine.
For now, anyway.
By long-established custom, we're going into the whole collection via the Bryce Method. Bless his cotton socks, this method of escaping the dead hand of shoulda-gotta on my creative juices is right up there with 'Nathan Burgoine's three-sentence review, and Nancy Pearl's Rule of Fifty.
From Mullae unsettles and disorients us, along with our psychologically fragile narrator, as the natural world undergoes a series of unexplored, barely explained disasters. Blood is the recurring visual...blood on the ground, blood on the newspapers set out to protect the floor of an apartment the narrator and her husband move into, blood permeating the air as countless pig corpses are dumped at his unspecified, but clearly horrible, workplace as the narrator peers down at it from a mound of earth that might be more pig carcasses. Women accost the narrator outside her building, forcing pamphlets on her urging resistance...to what? why? is this related to the unfolding disaster her husband begs her to remain indoors to escape? Unexplained. To say this story made me uneasy is to observe that the sun is a small, round spot in the sky. After the pandemic that killed so many people in my building, being trapped indoors while awful things happened and happened and happened...yeah, this one's sharp indeed. 4*
At Night He Lifts Weights gives us an elderly lady without family or purpose, living in an industrially destroyed environment, who suspects an elderly man of committing a series of horrible murders across the city. It's brutally honest about how lonely and useless people become in old age, though this silly, fluttering soul was always useless; the elderly man she suspects of crimes is, by contrast, vital, vigorous, and—ready for this?—lifts weights to stay in shape! Weird, right?
It must Mean Something, unlike the environmentally destroyed, stinking lake, the chronically backed-up toilet in her apartment (though this is handy because the plumber, a stripling of forty, is good to look at), or any of her other real problems. Like the other story I just read, it doesn't really end per se, it just has a natural place to stop. Resolution there is none. 4*
Radio and River Korean war survivor Oh emigrates to the US, a bleak now-ish California most likely, with a family he doesn't care about who heartily return his indifference. He starts work in some factory or another and makes a Korean friend, Kim. His inner silence is only broken with Kim, but like so many silent-cored people he surrounds himself with noise...dance music, hip hop: "Every time he heard this kind of shrieking, he felt like his corners had been filed down, so much so that he'd become a smooth lump of metal."
When a huge flood ravages the town, Oh loses his friend Kim. It snaps his last tenuous bond to his life. The road trip (and results of same) he goes on are...Lynchian, Twin Peaksy. 4*
Death Road features a suicidal woman whose childhood best buddy...a boy, against even mire powerful norms than in the US...all unknowingly and with opposite intent tells her about a Bolivian Andean road that she thinks will do nicely. That's not somewhere she can just...go, from Seoul anyway, so next up is Seoul's "Death Highway" as it's become called, an expressway interconnecting bridges, neighborhoods, etc etc. Unable to do the deed, flatten her foot on the accelerator and cause lethal havoc, she calls people from the car picking fights to work up the resolve, ending with her childhood bestie.
What a selfish and narcissistic person. Her inner and outer personas are not in harmony, which made this an effective rumination on the immense cost of misogyny, and the powerful rage of entrapped women...but nothing changes in the story (definitely the point) so it feels weak, weakening, draining without refilling. 4* for accurate reflection of womens' reality, but I never wanna read it again
Disaster Area Tour Bus follows a young Korean woman as she tours post-Katrina New Orleans. The tour bus driver's Black, and speaks in a really racist kind of dialect-Southern speech...author or translator or, most probably, both has never been to New Orleans...and, while I approve the anticapitalist disaster tourism messaging, and appreciate seeing how we look to outsiders, I couldn't get past the itchy icky sense that even your friends get it wrong sometimes. 3*
Greenland follows the life trajectory of ordinary people, no better or worse than they need to be, as they stagger unwittingly through traps, honey- and tiger-, as capitalism has its brutal way with them. Greed and selfishness and narcissism all play a role in the unraveling and redistribution of burdens...onto the women...and benefits...onto the men. Indexed to the modern history of Korea as it developed into a finance economy from a manufacturing one, the constant is that it's always a woman's thankless, unthanked job to do the work and clean up the messes. 4*
City of Anxiety is just that: full-on anxiety attacks, one after another, close third-person PoV that relentlessly charts a man's disintegration when his ex-wife disappears.
Searching for her entails a long litany of place names that mean nothing to me, innocent of all but the broadest sweeps of Korean geographical reality; it does not stop me from my apprehensive apprehension of this nameless man's unending fearful descent into a self-curated hellscape of obsessive regret. Nothing breaks him out of his narrow, bony, confining morass of unproductive, blindingly painful need.
Untrustworthy PoV, methinks, I reflected as his self-absorption drags him around without surcease. Was he the one who left the ex-wife? Did she, suffocating in his mire of inabilities, just...run? Did he kill her in a fit of emotional insanity as she tried to? It is a supremely evocative piece of writing. 4.5*
Pripyat Storage is named for the city nearest Chernobyl, of the 1986 nuclear disaster. A business the young woman narrator, turned thirty as 2006 marks her assuming of ownership and control from her newly-widowed mother, soon becomes engrossed in the minutiae of owning and running a business. It leaves her less time for obsessing over how her Chernobyl-blighted generation fails and fails and fails.
As her mother retreats into well-outfitted trips to distant mountains, she tries to reshape the storage business. As much as the indifference of her mother to the fate of the storage business annoys her, it also frees her to carve a new way to shed the unwanted garbage her father had piled up. It makes room for new people to fill this extra space, sparklingly clean from her mop and bucket, with the things they need to keep but can't bear to see in their faces.
Generational trauma making its way through the stages of grief. Deeply, sadly relatable. 4.5*
Processions proceeds from the knocking together of two empty vessels, a man and a woman who possess nothing, take nothing, give nothing, and thus find themselves attracted to the other's vacuum.
Quotidian things occur in the time they decide they will spend together; none important, none memorable, and since neither of them are those things, it is fitting they occur this way. No revelation, no great awareness shift, just two lonelinesses touching then parting. 3.5*
***
As a gestalt, this collection is less than the sum of its parts; as you'd expect from someone who has published four novels and five other collections before this one, nothing is wrong on a craft level nor is the translation somehow lacking in that hard-to-pin-down way. I'm just not full of anything now it's over. It's just...over. No fourth star for you, book.
October 9, 2024
My favorites were "From Mullae", "At Night He Lifts Weights" and "Processions." The first two stories (as well as "Radio and River," and "City of Anxiety") feature factories, the destruction and mundane horror of urban/suburban life/construction at their core. Death, disease, blood, and violence seem to emanate from the factories in Young-sook's stories. In "From Mullae," the narrator lives in a strange town, where birds are dying, women are protesting outside, there is messaging all around for her to leave, and her husband goes to work in a factory, coming home exhausted late at night, covered in blood. At the end, the factory seems to consume even him; the narrator escapes the scene of the condemned factory, being blasted by disinfectant as she goes. "At Night He Lifts Weights" also has a strong bit of ecological critique: the narrator, an old woman living by herself, a poisonous smell of noxious grease and oil has smothered the city, making breathing difficult. The smell is from decaying garbage at the bottom of a nearby lake. The old woman becomes fixated on an old man who lifts weights on certain nights. In the background, young women are being raped and murdered across the city. Her toilet gets periodically so clogged that she has to dispose of her waste outside in a plastic bag. There are surely a lot of different elements to these stories, and it takes the reader putting in a good amount of effort to make meaningful connections. But for these stories, it feels worth it.
The last of my favorite stories, "Processions," takes a different tone. This one feels like a silent movie, like an old, sad romance from the 20s, filmed in black and white. A woman goes to the Cinematheque often, making a ritual out of her lonesome trips. One day, she sees a man there, wearing hiking clothes, and the two end up talking. They realize that they both go often to the cinema in case the film showing there never comes to their city again. There are funerals in the background, the feeling of death nearby. The woman remembers the funeral processions she saw as a child: "When a procession would pass by, she would let out a deep breath, perhaps because she couldn't help feeling anew that she was alive, or because the dead had been properly set off" (181). At the end, it seems the two have found some sort of quiet, quirky companionship together. It was sweet.
Then there are two stories ("Radio and River" and "Disaster Area Tour Bus") that are set in the US, in post-hurricane Katrina New Orleans. These two were interesting in terms of seeing how Young-sook perceives US culture, but the stories rested a bit too much on the oh-wow-the-US-is-so-depressing line of argument. "Radio and River" felt a bit Schweblin-esque to me, the anonymity of the city described, the endless passing trains as the main character stays stuck in place. The narrator is a sad man. His friend Kim has committed suicide, and he is floating around town/the state in his car, in grief and mourning silently, absently. One day, he is wandering aimlessly around a town, and he sees an adorable girl in headphones, riding a bike. "Without thinking, he waved at her, but she ignored him and passed him by. "I guess no one likes me," he mumbled" (56). Aw. "Disaster Area Tour Bus" seems uncomfortably fascinated with Black southern US "dialect," (91). The focus on hurricane Katrina makes sense, given the overarching environmental concern of the stories, but it just didn't hit right in either case.
"Greenland" is the story of a marriage, of nuclear family aspirations gone sour, of financial precarity. The narrator on thinking of going through childbirth a second time: "I hated to turn into a beast again" (109).
"Pripyat Storage" goes into climate anxiety (the Seoul-based narrator believes herself to have cancer, caused by the Chernobyl explosion). "I believed that some of us, like the children from Chernobyl, would end up with thyroid cancer and die a miserable death. If I didn't mentally prepare myself this way, my anxiety only grew, because I wouldn't be able to cope with the unhappiness heading my way. It was much better to think of myself as a potential cancer patient" (147).
"Death Road" is about a narrator who is determined to kill themselves (the ideal spot, it seems, is a road). "I bit into a cookie, and as it slowly dissolved on my tongue, something swept through me. It was from this point that I became gripped with depression at all hours of the day" (72). That story also features a fair bit of travel, esp. to China.
Hot button themes here: the decaying/polluted environment, femicide/violence against women, suicide, aging, not-ideal motherhood, and loneliness, some of the stories stronger than others.
The last of my favorite stories, "Processions," takes a different tone. This one feels like a silent movie, like an old, sad romance from the 20s, filmed in black and white. A woman goes to the Cinematheque often, making a ritual out of her lonesome trips. One day, she sees a man there, wearing hiking clothes, and the two end up talking. They realize that they both go often to the cinema in case the film showing there never comes to their city again. There are funerals in the background, the feeling of death nearby. The woman remembers the funeral processions she saw as a child: "When a procession would pass by, she would let out a deep breath, perhaps because she couldn't help feeling anew that she was alive, or because the dead had been properly set off" (181). At the end, it seems the two have found some sort of quiet, quirky companionship together. It was sweet.
Then there are two stories ("Radio and River" and "Disaster Area Tour Bus") that are set in the US, in post-hurricane Katrina New Orleans. These two were interesting in terms of seeing how Young-sook perceives US culture, but the stories rested a bit too much on the oh-wow-the-US-is-so-depressing line of argument. "Radio and River" felt a bit Schweblin-esque to me, the anonymity of the city described, the endless passing trains as the main character stays stuck in place. The narrator is a sad man. His friend Kim has committed suicide, and he is floating around town/the state in his car, in grief and mourning silently, absently. One day, he is wandering aimlessly around a town, and he sees an adorable girl in headphones, riding a bike. "Without thinking, he waved at her, but she ignored him and passed him by. "I guess no one likes me," he mumbled" (56). Aw. "Disaster Area Tour Bus" seems uncomfortably fascinated with Black southern US "dialect," (91). The focus on hurricane Katrina makes sense, given the overarching environmental concern of the stories, but it just didn't hit right in either case.
"Greenland" is the story of a marriage, of nuclear family aspirations gone sour, of financial precarity. The narrator on thinking of going through childbirth a second time: "I hated to turn into a beast again" (109).
"Pripyat Storage" goes into climate anxiety (the Seoul-based narrator believes herself to have cancer, caused by the Chernobyl explosion). "I believed that some of us, like the children from Chernobyl, would end up with thyroid cancer and die a miserable death. If I didn't mentally prepare myself this way, my anxiety only grew, because I wouldn't be able to cope with the unhappiness heading my way. It was much better to think of myself as a potential cancer patient" (147).
"Death Road" is about a narrator who is determined to kill themselves (the ideal spot, it seems, is a road). "I bit into a cookie, and as it slowly dissolved on my tongue, something swept through me. It was from this point that I became gripped with depression at all hours of the day" (72). That story also features a fair bit of travel, esp. to China.
Hot button themes here: the decaying/polluted environment, femicide/violence against women, suicide, aging, not-ideal motherhood, and loneliness, some of the stories stronger than others.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 12, 2024
'At Night He Lifts Weights' felt like an ode to the apocalyptic Korean drama genre. It's an interesting take on loss and (ecological) catastrophe but was sometimes confusing when the topic at hand isn't clear. Found myself wondering about what the chapter was meant to be about... but maybe it's just not really my personal cup of tea. Intriguing read nonetheless.
May 21, 2024
Full of enveloping, evocative imagery and haunting prose, each of these stories is a little gem (though frequently of horror). It took me forever to read because these are *intense* - the sense of foreboding and misery is thick throughout, and a little too of-the-present-moment for an easy run through.
That said, a truly excellent collection - very high 4 stars.
That said, a truly excellent collection - very high 4 stars.
November 2, 2024
A collection of atmospheric, surreal, gothic short stories with some interesting motifs (ecological disaster, isolation, foul smells, obsessions with hiking, etc). While all encompassing a very specific mood some worked more than others for me, and the collection was a bit uneven. Particular favorites were City of Anxiety and Greenland.
January 26, 2025
Eccentric set of Korean short stories--"Death Road" and "Greenland" are great, full of specificity and oddity. Other times some of the ambiguity overwhelms, but the care of the translation is always otherwise precise.
May 4, 2024
weird for sure! enjoyed it though. disaster area tour bus was my favorite story.
January 9, 2024
I'm not much into short stories or translations but it came well-recommended so I tried it.
October 3, 2025
Its hard to engage with these stories, knowing after the first few none have a resolution. How can you get invested in the foreboding and slow build, when you already know your imagination will have to finish the job?
It's a shame because I love the ideas on display as springboards with heaps of potential- the titular story especially engrossed me so much, just to end on a totally flat note. There isn't really any narrative structure, engaging characters, twists and turns or particular depth to the stories (without the reader adding depth in by overthinking beyond what the autthor provides). I was also dissapointed to find that a few stories (e.g. 'City of Anxiety' and 'Radio and River') were very similar yet didn't evoke very new or different afterthoughts.
'At Night He Lifts Weights' and 'Death Road' were my two favourites. It pains me to rate this so low but I'm incredibly underwhelmed. Great ideas, dull execution.
It's a shame because I love the ideas on display as springboards with heaps of potential- the titular story especially engrossed me so much, just to end on a totally flat note. There isn't really any narrative structure, engaging characters, twists and turns or particular depth to the stories (without the reader adding depth in by overthinking beyond what the autthor provides). I was also dissapointed to find that a few stories (e.g. 'City of Anxiety' and 'Radio and River') were very similar yet didn't evoke very new or different afterthoughts.
'At Night He Lifts Weights' and 'Death Road' were my two favourites. It pains me to rate this so low but I'm incredibly underwhelmed. Great ideas, dull execution.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 3, 2025
Going to start with the fact that I read it in two days, which is a very good thing, because it means it was interesting.
But why I gave it only three stars?
Well I don't know, I might have missed it somewhere, but I didn't know that it was going to be short stories. I though it will be one book, one story. So when I started reading it and a new story begun, I was a little bit confused, because I didn't understand what was happening, I thought the story just changed somehow.
But when I understood that its short stories the book got very interesting. So I did like it at the end. But I still give it 3 stars, because it was not like the stories were super interesting.
I really like the writing style though!
But why I gave it only three stars?
Well I don't know, I might have missed it somewhere, but I didn't know that it was going to be short stories. I though it will be one book, one story. So when I started reading it and a new story begun, I was a little bit confused, because I didn't understand what was happening, I thought the story just changed somehow.
But when I understood that its short stories the book got very interesting. So I did like it at the end. But I still give it 3 stars, because it was not like the stories were super interesting.
I really like the writing style though!
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews