...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Here are my latest shorties, enjoy!

Ghost Music by An Yu

This must be one of the oddest books I have read.

Song Yan leads an unfulfilled life in her Beijing apartment; having given up her dream of becoming a concert pianist she gives piano lessons to young students, she wants a child but her husband doesn't and her daily life is marked by the oppressive presence of her mother in law, who came to live with them from the Yunnan region. When she starts receiving mystery packages with mushrooms in them but have no known sender, she also starts dreaming and talking in her dreams to a strange orange mushroom.

A short novel which had a somewhat lonely feeling to it. A very quiet, little, unassuming, unadorned story which juxtaposes some very worldly issues like given up dreams and hopes, marriage, appearances versus inner life or grief with supernatural elements like talking mushrooms and a very dreamy, hazy atmosphere, blurring the lines between the two worlds. I did enjoy the eerie tone dominating the story from the very first page and the beautiful writing.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

A historical horror about the infamous Donner Party (a group of pioneers who got lost on their way West, landed in the midst of bad weather conditions and without food, ended up resorting to cannibalism) but with a supernatural twist, as is usual with Katsu's books. Of course, any travel group ending up eating each other is a godsend for any horror author looking for a topic to write about, but...

There's this thing that I can't really get one hundred percent invested in Katsu's historical horrors. I can't find any fault here – it is all perfectly normal, even well written, but I neither felt attached to characters or was interested in what happened to them, nor was I moved or scared or shocked by the plot. A solid meh, I guess.

Last Days by Brian Evenson

We're following Klein who, through an unfortunate series of events sensationally amputates his own hand which attracts media attention and as a result ends up entangled within a cult, the so-called Brotherhood of Mutilation. He is being held captive and is asked to solve a mystery, though the problem is that things work differently in this brotherhood. While trying to figure out how or even if the crime in question is committed, he is confronted with a really odd hierarchy and also loses a limb or two during his quest. Even though he rejects all this in the beginning, the more he delves into the workings of the cult, the more the cult demands of him and it costs him literally an arm and a leg.

The book then introduces an antithesis to the Brotherhood of Mutilation, the Pauls. This association consists of men renouncing their own individuality by collectively taking the identity of Paul (the Christian one from the Bible) and plot the ruin of the former society with the help of Klein, in whom they see a sort of destroyer prophet. Things go crazy from here on if they were not deranged enough to begin with.

In its core, you could say that Evenson's Last Days is The Trial of horror literature, a Kafkaesque nightmare of being trapped within an elusive and surreal hierarchic machinery. That this machinery belongs to a cult which focuses and fetishizes amputations, doesn't really constitute the real meat of the story, please forgive my pun, but opens up a different layer, an additional disturbing platform for Evenson to playfully and metaphorically explore further social constructs such as religion – maybe even political or philosophical tendencies? My knowledge in both fields is highly limited, so, although I wouldn't be able to distinguish which, I'll trust my instincts on this one.

It isn't a very casually readable book, it is not a conventional book at all, although the ever present dark humor (and it's very dark), the induced revulsion (just think of a strip show within a mutilation cult and guess what the dancer takes off) and the very absurd road the plot goes made it a read worthwhile for me.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

The nameless protagonist of Natural Beauty used to be a very special, very gifted piano player who was classically trained at a conservatory on a stipend after her parents escaped the Cultural Revolution. Being bullied throughout her school life and made to feel she has no right to be as good as she is in an area of culture that “is not her own”, she does her best to adapt to other girls and survive. After an accident she finds herself in need of earning money and earning it fast, so she accepts a job at the spa Holistik, where you can get the latest “self-care” treatments to look your best, as long as you can afford it. It doesn't last long until she also takes on a side gig as a sex worker at Apothecare, which provides hygienic and safe sexual services. And that's where things get really freaky.

Natural Beauty gives a lot to think about. The wish and efforts to look beautiful or good is probably both a source of longing as well as a source of horror for most, especially combined with medical procedures. In this sense, the conversations between our protagonist and her crush, Holistik's owner's niece Helen, and her coworker Lilith were really insightful as it contemplated the concept of beauty from as many different angles as possible; socioeconomic, racial, social... Although Huang explores the limits to this kind of striving for good looks by ridiculously stretching the lengths at which companies and people will go to provide this service, sometimes in ridiculously comedic ways, there never was any judgment for people's desires (maybe a little critically eyeing, but no judgment) since the source of such desire, or such power, and the exploitation thereof, was explored in-depth.

This was a smashing read for me.