I love the short stories throughout this book, it was so well done and I loved how Un-Su Kim created such wild and vicarious characters in every single one. I need to get my hands on a physical copy of this because it was truly amazing and I definitely want to revisit it.

The Cabinet – Un-Su Kim (Translated by Sean Lin Halbert)



I was given a copy of this book by the publisher in order to provide a review.



Un-Su Kim is a Korean author residing in South Korea who has written several acclaimed novels (“The Plotters” and “Sang chaud”) and won Korea’s most esteemed literary prize – Munhakdongne Novel Prize.



“The Cabinet” is not an ordinary cabinet, I mean yes, it’s a cabinet that holds documents and such, but the documents this cabinet contains – well let me say that what's in these documents is definitely far from ordinary.

This cabinet is filled with documents that contain extraordinary stories about humans, humans with not so ordinary abilities, just strange and unexplained behaviours and for lack of a better word, powers.

So, when the person in charge of looking after the office, Mr Kong, discovers what's really in the cabinet – everything changes for him.

“The Cabinet” is a very different fiction novel to the ones that I normally read. There was a bit of back and forth between past and present and then a lot of one-off stories about some of these seemingly ordinary human beings and their strange abilities. It wasn’t a bad read but I think the format that the story was set out in just made it hard for me to really get into the story – the book really wasn’t my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean there are other readers out there who wouldn’t really enjoy it.

The Cabinet is the story of Kong, a deadbeat college graduate who manages to secure a pointless administrative job at a research institute and ends up breaking into a mysterious filing cabinet (Cabinet 13) out of sheer boredom. The files inside introduce him to the 'symptomers' (people with strange mutant/supernatural abilities and physical characteristics, like trees growing out of their fingers or the ability to sleep for years) and land him an unofficial job as the cabinet's caretaker and as a researcher/provider of emotional support to symptomers.

The narrative switches between Kong's life (how he got involved with Cabinet 13 and his work with its subjects) and digressions about the symptomers themselves and their various conditions. As such, the book is episodic and not particularly plot-driven, which might be a deal-breaker for some people. Personally, I found it hard to get invested in the story, though the weirdness of the symptomers and dashes of black comedy kept me reading. That said, I would have liked more detail about the real world impact of some of their 'symptoms'. How do torporers (who sleep for years at a time) live, for example, if they can't hold down or get jobs? Kong's outsider perspective kind of limited how much the book delved into issues like that. Some of the body horror (especially the lizard tongue woman and the Ginkgo tree man, not to mention the torture scene in the third act), was a bit much for me, personally, but your mileage may vary. The tonal shift at the end came a little out of nowhere and I didn't find the ending particularly satisfying, though that might just be me. The banality of it all (Kong starts and ends the book bored and frustrated) makes a neat point about the arbitrariness of contemporary measures of success and unfulfilling (work)lives, after all. There was also some disturbing, off-hand misogyny littered throughout the text, especially directed towards one of Kong's co-workers, though women generally don't do much in the story and mostly seem to exist as adjuncts to men.

Still, The Cabinet had some pretty interesting commentary on capitalism, conformity, corporate culture and toxic work environments. It may not have been my cup of tea, but readers who enjoy a little (a lot of) weirdness will probably get a kick out of The Cabinet.

(Also, special thanks to Angry Robot for kindly re-sending me an e-copy of the book when the one I was originally sent expired. Thank you very much!)

Translation seemed kinda weird. (No.i'm not in a position of complaining about sentence structure and all. I, myself am not a native English speaker. I learned English as my third language. ) but the flow wasn’t fully there. Starting was magical realistic way then it was something else altogether. I'm quite a way to pin point what didn’t work out for me. It's just weird. That's all.. Given better timing or translation i guess I'd have enjoyed it better.. I believe Original one has more nuance in it

A greatly weird novel of stories of quirky people with different abilities. Loved the quirkiness and the message it transmits.

This is a well written book. It has some fine lines, a few well-conceived set pieces, a fair share of perceptive and insightful observations, and lean dialogue. That said, try as I might I found neither the characters nor the overall narrative engaging enough to arouse or hold my curiosity and attention. As a consequence, it doesn't seem fair to write much more of a review, apart from encouraging interested readers to give the book a try.

I loved Kim's previous book, The Plotters, and was delighted by The Cabinet. It is the most delightful shade of strange and unexpected and broadened my brain in all the right ways. I love the clever uniqueness of the folks in the book who are known as the symptomers. The humor in the book is unlike a lot being written right now and feels fresh and interesting to me. This is a book for a certain group and I'm not sure everyone will like it. Those who do like it though, will love it, like I did. Can't wait to read more from this author and hope we can get more of his work made available soon.

DNF

It's probably more me than the book going by the awards and good reviews, but I just couldn't get into this. The various surreal stories didn't feel like they fit together and I wasn't invested in the characters so far. Perhaps something lost in translation?

Thank you to Netgalley the author and publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is, frankly, a mess. At first, it appears to be a collection of short stories strung together by the narrator like beads on a string. In between stories about the "symptomers," or next steps in the evolution of humanity, we follow a sort of nothingburger guy who stumbles into record keeping. As he goes through the files, we learn more about the symptomers, what they might want from the narrator, and how their bodily differences enhance or hinder their lives.

However, the structure becomes monotonous. It feels like we are going nowhere, circling back to characters and ideas without apparent purpose. If it were just a book of short stories, I would have expected it to be about half as long.

However, around the 2/3 mark, the narrator drops the string of beads entirely, and it becomes a much more plot-focused novel that abandons much of the first part of the novel.

It is also sprinkled with fatphobia and misogyny that were impossible to ignore, and I would perhaps had more patience for if I felt like this book ever had a clear sense of direction. A big not for me, but did have some interesting ideas at the beginning that I found imaginative and thought provoking. Hopes of more of that is what really kept me going.

I expected this book to be more engrossing and interesting. Maybe I missed the point? The stories were weird, but not exciting. The characters were not fleshed out enough for me to become invested. And I never really got the point of why they were tracking these people and what they were doing with the information. DNF.

This book imagines unusual, and sometimes disturbing, ways in which people adapt (or mutate?) in response to the anxieties of modern urban capitalist life. Unfortunately the ending descends into senseless gore, but as the narrator says, "That there is no moral of the story--that's the moral of the story." Recommended for all libraries.

This book had a very dramatic switch from the first section, which starts to bring up some of the articles in the cabinet about unusual people to the last section which ends on quite a dark and bleak note. The first section has chapters about people who had a lizard for a tongue, who was growing a tree on their arm and someone wanting to be a cat, it was told quite light-heartedly and made me chuckle couple of times. The second section then starts to build on this about the actual cabinet and where the main character works, before the last part turning into some black mirror episode. It was written well, but felt really long and the stories start to lose their interest the more there is.

I saw one of my favorite YouTubers review this book and new that I had to read it as well, especially given my rather recent interest in Korean literature which never fails to amaze me. I loved the band of misfits, and the surreal scenes that kept surprising me. Loved it and would recommend it to my friends. Thank you Netgalley for the advance copy.

Walking that fine line between surrealist and literary, The Cabinet takes the reader on an engaging examination into the different aspects of life that bring people joy. Mr Kong stumbled upon a cabinet that won't open, and ends up becoming hired as the administrator of symptomers - individuals who have developed certain attributes that make them 'more than'. A bit like mutants.

This felt a lot like a series of short stories, as we see several symptomers exploring their abilities and what it means for them and their lives, coupled with Mr Kong overseeing everything. I liked the range of stories that were included, with their range of tones from the sad to the almost endearing. I think I actually would have just preferred a series of actual short stories that described the various symptomers. I will say that surrealist stories aren't usually my cup of tea, and sometimes the stories did verge in the absurd. You have to suspend all levels of disbelief to enjoy this. However, overall I liked it for what it was but I'm not sure it will stay with me for very long, regardless of how original it felt on the surface.

TW: Mention of rape and bestiality, Fatphobia, Acephobia/Arophobia

I liked: This is undoubtedly the most bizzare book I've ever read. There's a man who has a gingko tree growing from his pinkie finger. There's a woman who has a lizard instead of tongue in her mouth. There's a man who wants to turn himself into a cat. It was giving me X-men vibes but also had some unique ideas which were very interesting. The book also has some profound quotes about what it means to be human, and about being lonely.

I didn't like: I was sure I was going to give this book 5 stars but there are some Fatphobic elements (and the book has no trigger warning). There's also acephobic and arophobic content about a character. This character doesn't not feel romantic and sexual attraction and is described as emotionless multiple times, even though she's shown to have emotions towards her pet cats. Plus, it felt like the narrative that if you're aro/ace, it's probably due to some defect in your brain and you are something to be treated.

I absolutely love an odd story, and "The Cabinet" by Un-su Kim certainly meets that very simple description. The title comes from Cabinet 13, which holds the files on "symptomers," people who have such curious abilities that they are verging on a new species. The plot was a bit hard to follow at times, but I stayed hooked. It almost read like a Hitchhiker's Guide novel!

The cover art of The Cabinet is the best I've seen out of the 130+ books I've read this year. Unfortunately, the eARC I have doesn't list the artist (I will add it to my review when I find out) but whoever it is deserves a prize. The black cat peeking cheekily from above the title, the chameleon with a filing cabinet print on its body, the entire aesthetic is just fabulous.

I have previously read Kim Un-Su's crime novel, The Plotters, which I disliked for its brutal senseless violence and macho writing.

The Cabinet is translated from Korean by Sean Lin Halbert and opens with the story of Ludger Sylbaris, one of the survivors of a 1903 volcanic eruption which annihilated the city of St Pierre on the island of Martinique and its inhabitants. Sylbaris survives due to a quirk of fate of being incarcerated in a stone prison, which turns out to be protective against the pyroclastic flow. Kim has exercised some artistic license in the telling of this real life story. Then we turn to modern day South Korea where a young bored salaryman Kong Deok-geun stumbles upon a locked filing cabinet at the research center where he works and unwittingly becomes an assistant to Dr Kwon, who researches 'symptomers.' Symptomers are presented as humans in the next stage of evolutionary biology. Some are 'chimeras,' a human in a symbiotic/parasitic relationship with another living being, such as a woman with a lizard growing at the base of her tongue or a man who has a miniature gingko tree growing from his finger. There's those who lose enormous chunks of time in their life against their will - the 'torporers' who slumber for inordinately long periods as well as 'time skippers.' 'Memory mosaicers' modify and erase their unpleasant memories. There's case studies of people who ingest glass, steel, roof tiles etc as regular sustenance. A man wants to turn into a cat in order to be with his crush. A group of antisocial people who believe they are offspring of aliens stranded on earth spend their paychecks broadcasting signals to outer space. A woman who works at a conveyer belt can split her consciousness and body into two, another has a doppelganger. These are individually given a chapter of their own, giving the impression of episodic vignettes.

The common thread to these cases is Kong, who is given the task of organizing the files and talking to the people under study when they call. The narrative voice of Kong rubs me the wrong way, not only because he is presented as an apathetic nihilistic young man but he lacks the training and compassion to counsel these scared lonely people. The Cabinet attempts to bugle the message of why we can't just let people be and accept people who are different. In a conformist society like South Korea where appearance, social status and hierarchy are paramount, the pervasiveness of loneliness and existential angst (what is the meaning of life?) ropes through every story. I was quite put off by how Kong's friend Hwang Bong-gon and colleague Son Jeong-eun were continually fat-shamed in the text. The office bullying of the pathologically shy Ms Son was particularly disturbing as well as a subsequent scene of her eating disorder. There are some common elements I recognize from reading Kim's previous work, like Kong shutting himself in his apartment for half a year after his mother's death subsisting on twelve thousand cans of beer and peanuts. The assassin from The Plotters did the same after a job, I gather this is Kim's way of having his characters express trauma. Kong is afraid of insignificance, as his experience in mandatory military service shows. The author also continues an obsession with the cremation process, shadowy criminal syndicates and bombs, with Kong telling us his theory of life being full of bomb booby traps. There is no point, like there is no moral to the story, Kim intones to us after a shocking bout of gratuitous medical violence.

Thanks to Angry Robots and Netgalley for providing an eARC.

“The Cabinet” is a sly, whimsical satire of life in late-stage capitalism, slippery and surreal... a kind of echoing chamber in which the comic, heartbreaking and terrifying bounce against, amplify and distort one another.

This was probably the most peculiar surreal book I've read this year. I don't even know how to describe it.
Mr. Kong is a regular office worker who discovers a cabinet with files on symptomers- people with peculiar traits. He is then tasked with keeping track and eventually trying to help these desperate people which he finds an annoyance.

The strange stories of these people interspersed with Mr. Kong's life experiences itself at the research facility overlooked by a strict boss as well as his somber observations about humanity were really interesting to read.

The format doesn't allow for a dull moment. The anecdotes and observations made in the book are quirky and clever and filled with dark humor. I also love it when writers play on words and stories without making it a cliche. Also, this book puts into focus the question that plagues all humans. What is the point of our existence? Mr. Kong himself who lacks direction in life finds meaning, even though he claims it's a pain, in keeping track of these symptomers.

It also shows how judgemental human beings can be. It doesn't matter how absurd someone's truth is it's their truth and we may never understand it and that's okay.

Mr. Kong many times even looks at these symptomers judgementally but eventually realizes that somehow some part of himself could actually relate to them; to these people who have been marginalized and yet do not wish to conform or cannot conform to society's demands. The book is chock full of instances where people who for the sake of society conform to it versus symptomers who choose to rebel and break the rules and even fight against injustices. It's a book critiquing human nature that lures you in with absurd stories of quirky people which turn out to have a much deeper impact than when you initially read them.

Felt slightly longer than it maybe needed to be but this is one of the most fun and unexpected books I've read in quite a while. The fantasy side for me was a bit unexpected and this was so much fun!!! Mr Kong is a great lead. However, as always with most Korean writers, this happy exterior gives way to a dark undercurrent which in places is hard to read but gives the plot an added richness.