Author: Un-su Kim
Title: The Cabinet
Format: E-book
Pages: 400
Series:-
Among my recent reads this novel turned out to be the strangest one; for me, it resembles mostly an early attempt at a Frankenstein’s monster: sewn together from disparate parts it ends up having three arms, one leg, and an off-color head tacked on back to front. The first 60% were highly enjoyable, but afterwards, an inexorable downward spiral got me in the end to a disheartening feeling of “wtf did I just read?”
It’s a pity, really, because the premise of Kim’s novel is quite promising, with a lot of potential: the life in modern cities became so unbearable for humans that their evolution accelerated rapidly, creating first cases of a post-homo sapiens species. The mutations don’t seem to be adaptive, at the moment, but as evolution works through trial and error, we might see some that would become highly effective.
For now, we meet “symptomers” with a range of strange skills or traits. It’s a Korean novel, so be prepared for what would usually fall into the category of body horror: a ginkgo tree growing from a man’s finger, slowly leeching him to death; a woman relieving a soul-body separation, in which her body remains in a factory, engaged in a mind-numbingly repetitive work, while her materialized soul can roam free and far, but inevitably must soon die and be buried by the body left behind. There is a man who wants to become a cat, though it seems to me that it’s the woman whom he loves who is the real symptomer here: she feels no emotions toward humans, only toward cats, so in order to form a meaningful relationship with her he feels he needs to turn into one. Another woman has a lizard instead of a tongue: she allowed the lizard to live in the cavity of her mouth, and the lizard slowly ate her tongue away, nesting in the hole it made.
Yup, body horror is about right.
Whatever you may feel about body horror, those early pages of the book make for a fascinating read; there is a clear direction, a clear goal, and the parabolic character of the story interspersed with lightly philosophical musings about the nature of our modern life makes it all the more engaging. There are the torporers, who sleep for months on end, and time-skippers, who, in especially stressful situations can suddenly miss chunks of time – from minutes to years. Doesn’t this feel like a natural continuation of the strangely meaningless and yet horribly stressful lives? 😉
Our narrator is a corporate (well, research, really, but no difference there ;)) drone with a safe, utterly unimportant and useless job, who one day, bored out of his mind, discovers the infamous Cabinet 13, filled with files on various “symptomers.” Blackmailed into working with the author of this research, Professor Kwon, our protagonist slowly reveals to the readers the tidbits of information about the symptomers, about himself, and about his world, uncannily similar to ours. The various forms of escape from reality that the symptomers exhibit are somehow touching even despite – or because – of their alienness. The sense of being lost, alone, directionless, grieving, and depressed is conveyed artfully and precisely, and the unforgiving nature of big city life makes a very realistic backdrop to those outlandish stories. In that sense, The Cabinet is an unusual meditation on modern life, quirky and intriguing, and quite unlike anything I’ve read.
But after the 60% mark the book develops worrisome symptoms (forgive the pun), which are certainly not adaptive – on the contrary. Changing into a plot-driven novel it introduces an arc of corporate espionage, torture (LOTS of digits cut off there, so beware), valuable files and safe houses, and loses all its soul in the process. Some of the “symptomers” cases, the “chimera” cases like the ginkgo man or the lizard-tongued girl turn out to be valuable to a shady “syndicate” willing to experiment on people, and our protagonist is drawn into a dangerous search for them. But, I’m sorry to say, at this point the novel becomes a caricature of itself, its previous direction completely lost and no new direction introduced, its plot derivative and soulless, its protagonist undeveloped and uninteresting. And in a way, it’s inevitable, because the novel started as something completely different. To suddenly try to make a 180 degrees turn in the middle of a book is always a very risky, if not an outright doomed move. It almost seems as if the author had been pressed to write some kind of “making sense” conclusion to his work, because it has this forced, rushed, unloved feel. And because the beginning is so different, the disparate parts are never seamlessly joined; the stitches are skewed and ugly and oozing, and the final monster fails to elicit compassion or comprehension.
So, in the end, despite some utterly fascinating ideas, The Cabinet turned out to be a rather disappointing read for me. I believe it might have been also, at least partly, a problem of editing, as my ARC copy was full of errors. And yet, I’ll be on the lookout for whatever Un-su Kim writes next – his imagination is a captivating, bewildering, bizarre place.
Score: 5.5/10
Actually, after some exchange of comments, I decided to alter the score a bit: 8/10 for the first half (more like 60%) of the book, and 3/10 for the second.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher Angry Robot through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.
Re-enchantment Of The World 
Very entertaining review😁 I will be reading this in the next couple of weeks and I’m even more curious than ever to see what you’re talking about!
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Thanks!! 😀
I’ll be looking forward to your review, Tammy! I’m very curious what you’ll think about it! 🙂
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Nope, nopity nope!
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Heh, I somehow expected it from you 😉 I think you made a good choice here, this book would frustrate you and then you’d probably have to DNF it anyway 😉
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I guess that body horror and torture would discourage me enough, but the fact that the story ends so messily might be the deal breaker here – which is a pity because the core concept could have proved to be intriguing…
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
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Thanks for reading, Maddalena! 😊
Yes, it started out really well and while the ending does make a loop of sorts to the beginning, it feels so forced and artificial it actually makes the entire reading experience worse. But I don’t regret reading it, so there is that. Can you recommend half a book? 🧐😂
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I guess so… With half a recommendation? 😉 😀
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Heh, with a first-half recommendation! 😀
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The body horror sounds great, has a new-weird vibe to it. But it sounds like the writer had no plan from the get go. No greater vision for what the story was going to be. Only isolated ideas.
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Yes, but I would’ve been fine with it, had he kept it through to the end. The 180 he did about the 60% mark was detrimental to both parts, really, burning down my expectations and not delivering anything in return. Still, the isolated ideas were quite fascinating. If I could recommend half a book, I’d tell you to try out the first half of this one 😉
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On a different note, had you seen today’s Google doodle? https://www.google.com/doodles/helena-modrzejewskas-181st-birthday
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Yay for Modrzejewska, the most famous Polish thespian ever! 🎉🎊
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Great review, I really enjoyed reading it. One of my favourite stories is Kafka’s Metamorphosis, so body horror is right up my alley. The premise sounds interesting, human “evolution accelerated rapidly” and the range of symptoms you describe is so intriguing. I also dislike when books take this “180 degree” turns. I read a number of those and I so wished those authors then wrote another three books if they wanted to include so many different directions and story-lines rather than spoiling that one story or theme that I got so interested in 🙂
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Thanks, Diana!
Yes, it did remind me of Kafka; I generally see a lot of Kafkian or Kafka-like inspiration in Asian lit lately – have you seen the manga Kaiju no 8? The main character’s name is Kafka Hibino, and he changes into a monster in kaiju-infested Tokyo 😉
The premise of The Cabinet was really fascinating, and well executed, and I guess I need to rework my rating into 8/10 for the first half and 3/10 for the second – in other words, I recommend the first half, it’s really interesting 😉
Yes, totally agree – why try to join disparate parts if you could just write separate books/short stories?
Thanks for reading! 😀
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I’ve read Ito’s Uzumaki manga which had a lot of body horror, but not Kaiju. I also have one book on my TBR Inhabitation by Miyamoto, which I’ve heard was inspired by Kafka too, though it is not that clear to me from the synopsis. And yes, there are so many books that start well, reach their mediocre middle and just turn bad right at the end. I guess it is much easier to imagine and start a scenario, a bit hard to maintain the interest and extremely difficult to then finish the book cohesively and well.
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Very true! I guess that’s why I like short stories so much 😉 There, the idea is key, and nobody needs to write 300+ pages on it, diluting it in the process.
As a side note, novels used to be 200 pages long not so long ago – maybe we should just return to this more manageable length, and simply focus more on quality vs quantity? 😀
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I love the cover of this one. I imagine in hard copy that the different segments would have different textures beneath your fingertips. (But they probably wouldn’t!)
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Yeah, I forgot to add that the cover is superb; very modern and apt for the content, with that psychedelic chameleon 😀
I’d love some doodles in this one, too – you know, creepy images of the ginkgo tree growing from a man’s fingertip, the lizard’s eyes shining in the dark cave of the girl’s mouth… The first half of this book is great at creating disturbing images in your mind! 😅
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Wow, those examples of body horror are so fascinating and if the author did half a good example as you to describe those scenes, they must’ve been quite impressive! But man, that last 40% sounds too sudden and unwarranted… And if that change of direction is as clear as you say it is, it does sound like a book-killer to me. Great honest thoughts as always, Ola! 😀
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Thanks as always, Lashaan! 😀
Yeah, this book started out so well! It’s actually worth reading for the first 60%; or rather – read the first 60% and leave the rest alone, and you’ll be quite happy! Or maybe inspired, who knows 😉
That reminds me, you were supposed to show me your drawings of Trunks! 😀
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I don’t even know how you drew parallels to that hahahah It’s nothing impressive at all and was completed by a 10-year-old me. There’s no need to torture ourselves with that. I’d rather be bombarded by your gorgeous watercolours. When’s the next one due????? 😀
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It had nothing to do with the theme of body horror… 🤣🤣🤣
Hmm, a good question! Haven’t posted anything in a while, but the Etsy shop is growing! I did a Grogu a while back, and some Middle-earth watercolors, too. You can check them out at artandjoynz.etsy.com or artandjoynz.redbubble.com! I’m planning to make some videos of the painting process, too, so a Youtube channel might appear at some point 😉
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Ohhhh, that’s such a lovely idea! I’m sure people would be mesmerized by the process too. I’m glad to hear that the Esty shop has been doing though! I still remember when you first announced it. 😀
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Thanks, Lashaan! Your kind words are really much appreciated! 😀
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I am sorry that the second half of the book was so different and so disappointing! The start sounded fascinating. True, it sounds not like my cup of tea but it was fascinating reading about the first part! I hope the next books by this author would be more satisfying!
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I’ll be on a lookout for his other books, that’s for sure 😉 It was certainly a somewhat different experience, and if he writes a book where the second half is as strong as the first, it could be something really worth reading 😉
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