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Oooo Haushofer's writing is deliciously gritty. So far this is really interesting

Dizzying, meandering, chaotic mess. But what a hypnotizing mess; I can't seem to keep my eyes off it. Jackson, Jerin, Ibuki, X: four queer mixed black men, all different and distinct but interchangeable in the homogeneous Japanese society they live in. It's honestly way different than I expected it to be, but I'm enjoying the ride. Jose Ando's writing is electric, decisive: all momentum, every direction.

My only problem with this story is that it felt a little too optimistic for me! I feel like people who died while they're still searching for the meaning of life or chasing their ambitions would be filled with way more regrets and sadness. But at the same time, I like that it's not depressing, that dying is just the next part of life. It's a very welcoming tale of death and of fulfilling your last wishes.

I like that Lim chose to make her characters in here to try one last time, to put in one last performance, instead of stewing in their regrets and not doing anything. To these characters, this is their last opportunity, and they shouldn't throw it away. I like that the characters still have a strong love of the world and community they live in, it felt heartwarming in a way.

This story moved me. Our main character used to live a life of diligence before applying for hundreds of jobs and failing miserably, which made her lose hope with living. She died in a freak accident, and upon her death, she reflects on the 100 hours she had left as the titular "curtain call, extra inning, last pang".

Curtain Call, Extra Inning, Last Pang — 3.75 stars
When we die, what happens to us? In this story, Lim imagines a world where pigeons work as messengers of death, giving us an extra five days as spectres/ghosts before going to the "next life", whatever the next life is. You're dead, and you only have 100 hours left. What do you do with that leftover time? Lim's characters chose to die with a last hurrah.

Disregarding the redundant theme, this story was still a decent read. It's probably the zaniest story in this collection, which I appreciate. Lim's stories are still a fun time, just that I wish we had more fresh, interesting material.

The themes of most of the stories here are the same, and even the approach is too similar. I think exploring one theme and one theme only in a collection of short stories can definitely be executed well, but the lack of diversity in its execution is what makes me feel a bit disappointed with this collection. It's like that one TikTok sound: "Create something else, come up with a new storyline!!"

I like my stories varied, and Lim's stories are all about alienation and isolation and heartbreak that I'm like...write something different please. It doesn't help that the stories nearing the end of this collection are becoming more and more bland for me, even with the bizarre characters and stories Lim deploys in them.

Don't get me wrong, I love stories about friendship and finding someone to connect with. But Lim' characters now almost looks the same, blending into one single person. A lonely person meets another lonely person, creating an unlikely bond. And I would be fine with that, but it gets to a point where every single story is about the same thing. This was my complaint with Pyun Hye-young's Evening Proposal too.

One day, a hole started opening up on the floor of her apartment — a hole caused by her neighbor, who claimed that she unintentionally did so with the power of her stare. This story is a tale of two isolated, lonely misfits, relying on each other for a semblance of companionship. Lim loves to write about alienated people coming together as friends, which at this point, feels a bit too redundant for me.

Even Though It's Not Alaska — 3.5 stars
This is a weird short story too, and this one is one of the more heartbreaking ones in the collection. An unemployed woman, who was let go from her abusive and toxic company, started training to catch and kill the dogs that killed the two stray cats that she saw herself in.

I think the ending really is just the woman realizing the reality of the relationship, that her partner has become someone she doesn't want to be with, someone who is so consumed by hatred and jealousy that he himself became spiteful. I found the ending bittersweet: she achieved independence from her ex, but also the loneliness weighs on her. Why is this collection lowkey depressing

It's also a breakup story, which now I'm like...Lim is strangely interested in writing stories of romantic relationships failing for some reason. Like most of the stories in this collection is literally either about breakups or exes. There's also a discussion on broken dreams and the deep-seated, enraging envy that overwhelms you when we see people doing what we love. I thought that was real as fuuuuuuuck.

The Hibernating Guy – 3.75 stars
An odd little story. A supporting actress for a run-down theater started running acting cons to make ends meet, when she encountered a strange task from an elderly man: to bury him in the mountains in the middle of the winter to induce his hibernation. Something Lim is good at doing is letting the subtle tensions and emotions of the characters speak for themselves.

Go Sleep at Home is successful in making distinctive and unique characters, but something about it made me feel ambivalent towards it. It could probably be because its slow-paced and has minimal plot, or maybe I just was expecting more from it. Either way, this was a decent story for me. I'm into short stories where nothing's really happening in them for some reason.

For these men, a solitary life is too sad and suffocating, and they would happily jump to lying to avoid abandonment. I found that the characters are similar to each other in certain ways, but completely different in other aspects, which is something that I think is hard to nail when writing a short story, so props to Lim for creating distinct characters even with the rather dull narration.

It's a strangely wholesome portrait of lonely men, men who are dealing with the grief of separation and abandonment, chasing connection in other people. The pain of loneliness, explored through the short, subtle, and kind of random snippets scattered throughout the story, was a kind of vulnerability that paralyzes, that causes you to be stationary.

Go Sleep at Home – 3.5 stars
This one's a pretty interesting one. A full-time apartment security guard got roped into helping his ex find his pet lizard, which ran away in the middle of the night. While attempting to find it, they ended up in an unlikely friendship with a tenant who claimed to have seen the lizard in his room.

But yes to gay, I love how so many contemporary Korean novels incorporate LGBTQ+ characters in a way that isn't trying to garner diversity points. I like how so many of them are queernormative nowadays without necessarily making a huge deal out of it (e.g. Counterweight by Djuna, most Hwang Jungeun's books). I'd love seeing queer characters living their lives without having the story focusing on their queerness

I like how smooth the story revealed that Jo and "I" are a couple, and how it reveals the gender of "I". I don't know if the author purposefully made it vague though, would love to ask them about this stylistic choice if I ever had the chance to ask.

GAY COUPLE ALERT. They're exes but whatever. At first I thought that the "I" was a woman (simply by default), but then I was like...wait. I sense that the narrator was a man. Like pure instinct, and maybe some (slightly discriminatory) guesses about the narrative and story choices based on gender roles, and also the way the characters communicated. But it was confirmed and I'm literally happy as hell hehe

OKAYYYYY NAKAMURA DID IT AGAIN. It's better than The Thief, but not as good as the other books I've read by him. My favorite has got to still be The Boy in the Earth, followed closely by Evil and the Mask. This was still a fun read tho!

Ngl the tension between Tooru and the detective is so intense...I'm thinking of a suspect x detective story as we speak

Having said all that, I wished the other stories were of the same caliber if not better than "You're Not Glowing", which was my favorite story by far in the collection. The other stories felt a little forgettable, though Lim's writing still made them a solid read. Current ranking of the stories so far:
1. You're Not Glowing
2. With the Heart of a Ghost
3. That Unfamiliar Night
4. Summer, Like the Color of Water

The concept itself was simple, and this is definitely the least surreal story in the book so far, but Lim's writing made it worth the read. The emotions and thoughts of the characters are written between the lines. Lim's choice to sparingly state the characters' emotions made the story even more impactful through the actions and words of the characters. A truly heartfelt story.

Our main character was trying for a child, going to the doctor's frequently for fertility treatments, when she bumped into her friend proselytizing in the streets for the cult she was currently in. After receiving bad news at one of her fertility consultation with the doctor, the two women slowly patched up the years of lost friendship through having delicious meals together.

That Unfamiliar Night – 3.75 stars
A story about food, companionship, and finding someone to listen to your thoughts. Two women, who used to be friends in junior high before a tragic accident caused one of them to be a social pariah, reconnected after a chance meeting in the middle of the city.

They both are stationary in their own ways. Lim writes grief as boredom, as tedium, as sadness weighing the two characters down — the woman pinned down to a dead-end job and an immobile present, the man literally pinned down to the house. Lim's writing in this story specifically reminds me of Banana Yoshimoto, gloomy yet hopeful. However, this story didn't manage to charm me like the others did. Still a decent read.

The woman, still heartbroken over the loss of a woman named Sujin (it hasn't made clear whether Sujin is a friend or lover), only realizes that time passes if she checks the flowing canal near the movie theater she worked at. The man-tree, saddened over the breakup with his ex, tries to move on and leave the house, but the roots that grew from him are too deep inside the floor.