‘Hunger’ by Choi Jin-young, translated from Korean by Soje
As soon as I saw the cover for ‘Hunger’ I knew I needed to read it. I hunted down the summary and my conviction was cemented: this book was going to be a bit of me. While I had a few issues with it, I was pretty much spot on.
A woman finds her man murdered on the street - and time stands still.
Until she cradles his corpse to her chest and carries it home, where she disinfects every inch of skin before seating herself to begin. What follows reverberates from this realm into the next, where the man is witnessing his own funeral.
Together, the lovers lament a lifetime of working themselves to the bone in a country sucking everyone dry - but time's up. The woman is already eating and beating them at their own barbaric game as she entombs the body in her own, where her soulmate will live again.
‘Hunger’ throws you right in at the deep end with Dam dealing with the death of Gu and beginning to eat bits of him. I have to admit that there were some moments that made me feel a bit sick (mostly eating his hair and nails shudder), but it wasn’t as present of an element in the novella as I was expecting. We spend a lot of time watching Dam and Gu getting to this point: meeting as children, becoming friends and growing into lovers. There’s also their time apart and glimpses at other reltionahips, but always the pull that draws them back together time and time again.
In that journey back to the past, the perspective melds back and forth between Gu and Dam and I have to admit that I sometimes got a little lost in who I was reading about as there’s not a distinct shift or a significant change in the voice of the two characters. For such a short novella, I spent an unexpected amount of time a little confused and grasping to figure out who’s memory I was in. It did distance me a little from them and from the story as I wasn’t able to fully settle into it.
There’s something very compulsive about ‘Hunger’, even with my confusion. Gu’s death is a mystery for most of the novel, though it doesn’t read like a mystery and there are no real twists or revelations, just a slow unfurling of what led up to the opening moment of the novel.
For such a short book, ‘Hunger’ comments on a lot. We trace the trappings of growing up in an area with little room for growth and possibility, the all-consuming legacy of terrible parents, of inherited debt, of grief and loss, and of love. There were moments where I wish there was more time for some points to be explored in more depth, but there was something quite poetic about the fleeting glimpse of them as they wove into Gu and Dam’s lives and deaths.
‘Hunger’s is a dark and thought-provoking read perfect for fans of ‘Hunchback’ and ‘Natural Beauty’.
Thank you to NetGalley and Brazen for the review copy.
Written by Sophie
