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Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Review: CURSED BUNNY by Bora Chung

 

Cursed BunnyCursed Bunny by Bora Chung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.

Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.

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Recommended

I picked up this book because of the cover, and quite simply, it is stunning. This is a tricky collection to write about because it contains so much. Each story is so different and the collection spans multiple genres. The darker, more disturbing stories are at the start—mostly—and I have to say these were my favourites. I definitely enjoyed the first two-thirds of the stories, where we’ve got the absurd, dark, weird, creepy stories. I found the ones at the end to be much slower and more contemporary, not really what I’d been looking for as I’m drawn to horror.

Out of all the stories, the first one was probably my favourite. Just the first sentence is amazing, and I still find myself thinking about the monster made from body matter that rises out of the toilet and forces its maker to swap places with it.

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