The Cabinet is a quirky and subtle social commentary. Told mainly through vignettes that slowly coalesce into the story of Deok-Geun, a bored worker who discovers the contents of the locked cabinet in his care at a research lab. We read accounts directly from the files of strange humans known as symptomers, who each have different types of very odd situations. These all seem to have context in some way that comments on labor culture and societal pressures - such as a man who is overworked and miserable, till a tree begins growing from his finger, pushing him to move his work closer to a window, be less focused on his work, eventually leave behind the job he hates. These elements feel quite fable-like.
On the other hand we have Deok-Geun, who feels guilt that his unusual job leaves him with nothing to do but sit in boredom while everyone he knows is overworked. That is till he breaks into the cabinet and begins to read the accounts of the strange symptomers and answering their calls. This seems to re-invigorate his life, build empathy, but also puts him in a precarious position.

I really enjoyed this and feel like it is interesting to compare with similar commentary in works like the recent film Parasite as a reflection of a culture of worker exploitation, the social and work hierarchy, and the false care & control toward those in low status. As well in a similar way, the tension goes from basically none for most of the novel, then ramps up suddenly at the end. Even being relatively unfamiliar with South Korea, there is a lot in here that is so incredibly relatable especially for people just entering the work force, the themes of exploitative capitalism throughout left me thinking of how much the corporate world has moved to considering people as "head count" in the workforce, though the book never specifically brings that up.

The Cabinet starts with an overly bored office worker that stumbles upon a cabinet full of odd files. The people in which the files discuss in detail are called "symptomers". From here, there are a handful of quirky and weird tales of people that exhibit special abilities or traits. Growing a tree from a finger, eating a glass-only diet, time skippers: people who lose hours, days, weeks, years from their life, a man trying to turn into a cat for love, and so on.

The first 50% of the book is the perfect blend of body horror and strangeness. It read like a series of short stories that connected in certain parts. It was fun, light, and thoroughly entertaining. There are some interesting takes on capitalism and the ticking clock of life. I highlighted several passages, and it's clear that Un-su Kim is a very talented writer. The last half of the book took a turn and brought up a very sudden plot. It felt disjointed, and the pacing changed dramatically. The light and fun writing took on a bleak tone, and I found myself skipping over passages more often than not. I wish that the second half of the book had been distributed throughout the first half. Short story. Plot. Short Story. Plot. I think it would have helped significantly with pacing.

I am not entirely sure how to feel about this book. I really enjoyed the first third of the novel that encompassed differing tales of people with different "abilities". It is more when the novel became less of a short story collection and more into a novel about Mr. Kong and the repercussions of him dealing with the cabinet (which I did not care about). He is not an interesting character. The quirky charm of the first part of the book was lost when we started to focus on him. The strange stories about the "symptomers" were interesting and I just wished the book focused more on that aspect. The body horror in this book was gruesome and I really enjoyed that aspect. It made me cringe and I thought it added a nice twist to the monotonous feel that the book sometimes had. Overall, I feel okay the book.

This book felt like a fever dream in the best way possible. What seems like a collection of short stories about people with unique anomalies and abilities or “symptomers” turns into much more than that. I had a blast while reading this. It is a contemporary novel with urban fantasy and magical realism aspects to it.

I think it is so worth it to read this book. Anybody who likes the “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” type of read where the characters have strange abilities will like this read. I’m looking forward to reading more of the author’s works because I found his writing style very interesting and compelling. I really enjoyed this.

The Cabinet is a surreal tale of a government worker who manages symptomers, who may be the next evolution of mankind. Each of the symptomer’s tales are told separately giving this book the feel of short stories with an overarching narrative loosely tying them together.

My favorite surreal book is Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I was fully down in the well with that book’s narrator. I didn’t feel anywhere near as connected with the characters in The Cabinet. In fact, the Mad Hatter feels more real to me than these characters. For this reason, the book gets 3 stars from me.

Thanks to Angry Robot and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

“The most lasting legacy of capitalism will be angst”

Would you believe that there are gingko trees that can grow out one of your fingers?
Read this amazing novel and see for yourself. Kong, a quiet, unassuming employee with a job that is the opposite of demanding, is in charge of the mysterious cabinet 13. As he opens it out of sheer boredom, the cabinet turns out to contain classified information on symptomers, human beings that have undergone mutations of different kinds. Are they natural evolutions or are they lab experiments? Knowledge comes at a risk.

The storyline is simple and alternates discoveries from the files, which are microstories on symptomers (going from new weird to social criticism), with scenes from Kong’s work life. The plot picks up and becomes more propulsive toward the end, but I ended up being totally swept away and engrossed in the reading - and this is because Un-Su Kim’s voice is engaging, spirited, unique and sagacious, and his observations thought-provoking, learned, brilliantly acute, and infused with an incredible irony.

Symptomers allow the author to explore a whole range of 21-st century issues and debates, from posthumanism to entanglement and hybridity, feminism, body horror, modern angst, alienation, dehumanising hypercapitalism and exploitation in an extraordinary mix of new weird, social criticism, surrealism, magical realism, satire and speculative fiction.

The translation by Sean Lin Halbert is excellent. The author has been the recipient of Korea’s foremost literary prize, the Munhakdongne Novel Award, and this is a novel that I would like to see in the International Booker Shortlist or similar. My first read and certainly not the last from Angry Robot. Highly recommended. 4.5

My thanks to Angry Robot for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review via Netgalley.

I found this book thought-provoking and very reminiscent of Murakami, in many ways, with the magical realism and the somewhat stone-faced narrator just trying to get through his day. It was profound in some ways, and filled with wry humor in others. I am absolutely eager to read Kim's other books, because I thought this one was a whole lot of fun.

This was an interesting book to read. This felt at times like it was a short story connection with a narrative theme bookending each one connecting them. I enjoyed the translation of this and i liked how the wording helped make certain specifications clearer. The story was interesting and i liked how it switched between the case files and Mr Kong's narrative. The writing was good and i liked what it was exploring, it gave me several moments of thought with what it was saying.

I love genre fiction that deals with people who have developed superpowers; X-Men, The 4400, The Boys. All of them have ordinary people gaining extraordinary powers. Some become superheroes, other supervillains. However, what about those mutations that are a little naff? Do you deserve to be sent to a mutant concentration camp because you have very dry crocodile-like skin on your calves? Do you deserve to be saved by Magneto because you happen to have two extra toes on your right foot? The Cabinet by Un-su Lim and translated by Sean Lin Halbert, rightly explores these lesser mutations known as Symptomers and some are mundane as any dry day job.

What is Cabinet 13? It is a plain looking cabinet that is housed in a random South Korean research facility. Its only security is a 4 number padlock and the general apathy of the staff. There is no real work to do, so the extremely bored Mr Kong decides to work through every number on the padlock and opens the cabinet. Inside is a pile of folders all about known Symptomers, people with strange stories and bizarre anomalies. Mr Kong does not realise it yet, but he has just become the custodian of these files and all the oddness that this brings.

Science Fiction can take itself too seriously, so it is great to read an offbeat genre novel and they don’t come much more leftfield than The Cabinet. It stands on similar ground as A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, filtered through the macabre gaze of Chuck Palahniuk, whilst remaining uniquely the voice of Lim. The book has a very dry sense of humour as the narrator Mr Kong does not have a huge amount of enthusiasm for anything, including helping the poor people who find themselves chronicled in Cabinet 13.

The narrative is split between Mr Kong’s own life and those of the Symptomers. The Symptomers chapters are akin to short stories. Lim explores these strange characters and uses them to muse on odd speculative fiction. What would happen if a person grew a tree on their thumb, or lost months at time in a flash? There are some highly intelligent and fun ideas discussed and I loved where Lim’s logical writing takes the reader. If someone could alter their own memories, why would they always be depressed? Because the present could never live up to the perceived wonderful past, they have altered in their mind.

Cabinet 13 has many stories like this of people trapped with powers that are borderline useless or self-harming. The book is a wry science fiction novel, but also an exploration of self. What may seem amusing at first turns into a sense of melancholy. What have these people done to deserve this fate?

Mr Kong increasingly becomes a key component of the book as we witness his life. He is thrust into the world of Cabinet 13, and he is ill equipped. It is not that he is bad at the job, just very mediocre and uninterested. The book starts to take some dark twists and turns. The humour steps aside to be replaced by humanity, or lack of it. The book is funny, but in a darkly comedic way that Terry Gilliam would enjoy.

A mention to translator Halbert must be given as you feel the authentic voice of Lim has been captured and put on the page. With its strange tone, this is not a book that would have been a straightforward conversion from one language to another. Halbert captures all of Lim’s eccentricities and whimsey and is also able to ensure that the book remains firmly set in South Korea.

The Cabinet is a riveting, surreal and deeply prescient novel as well as a brilliant award-winning literary sci-fi/literary social commentary that doesn't fit neatly into any genre boxes as it very much does its own thing. It is a political social commentary of our world today swaddled in the mist of allegory. The Cabinet is a story about the documents that record people known as symptomers - those who display strange symptoms that are the harbinger of a new era in humanity - and the man who manages the documents in Cabinet 13. This seemingly ordinary, old cabinet is filled with stories that are peculiar, strange, eye-popping, disgusting, enraging and touching. However, the fast-changing world is also full of all sorts of unbelievable things. Perhaps symptomers exist not only in the novel but also in the real world. Perhaps some of us do not accept our past and instead, erase our memories and create new ones.

Some of us might want to become a wooden doll or a cat rather than live in pain as a human. And if you look around, you can find those who can love no one but themselves or their alter egos. The narrator is an office worker in his 30s, as ordinary as the cabinet. But he once spent 178 days drinking nothing but cans of beer. And his colleague Son Jeong-eun is a quiet, chubby girl who draws nobody’s attention. But she also has a strange habit of devouring more than 100 pieces of sushi at once. In this novel, the cabinet is a container that holds all the truths of the world. Kim Un-su puts truth into the cabinet “as it is” and keeps it fresh under proper temperature and moisture, utilising his precise prose and rich style. Each episode, preposterous and weird, is intricately interwoven with the narrator’s own story and constructed like Lego blocks that form a perfectly assembled structure.

Unfolding peculiar and heart-freezing episodes, the author tells us that this is an ‘ordinary’ story and at the same time, the truth “as it is,” as natural as the wind blowing, flowers blossoming and snow falling. The moment you turn the last page of the book, you will come to think about which strange stories are inside your own cabinet. And you will be also curious about what story the author will pull out of his cabinet next time. This is an utterly engrossing read. Ever since I fell head over heels in love with Murakami years ago, original and slightly unusual Asian stories make me extremely excited more so than almost any other fiction, so I was hoping to be scintillated and captivated by this, and it certainly didn't disappoint; it even features some pulse-pounding moments that give it the feel of a thriller at times. It's imaginative and wholly original through and through yet behind its incredible and absurd appearance, the author paints a bittersweet, heartrending portrait of Korean society.

It's a bitter critique of our so-called post-modern society delivered in a caustic tone, so much so that the novel is reminiscent of Chaplin's Modern Times. The symptomatic are the lost puppets who face the reality of our society. Chaplin, but also Cervantes or Flaubert, The Cabinet is a gothic and crazy novel, devoid of rules, free. And the truths of the symptomatic come to life through the author's writing. Funny and spicy, Kim Un-su gives the narrator a special distance. It evokes a gamut of emotions including sorrow, joy and amusement as it is reflective of the changing emotions of real life and is both moving and humorously witty. Against a backdrop of a secret society and hidden files, deliciously fantastic and cleverly paranoid, this is a one-of-a-kind noir novel, pure Kim Un-su from beginning to denouement. Highly recommended.

My full review on my blog (link attached).

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 somewhat 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? 😉

[...]

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.

[...]

I received a copy of this book from the publisher Angry Robot through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.

Strange, fun, irreverent, a bit disjointed. The Cabinet is a collection of short stories / vignettes / parabels revolving around a strange "Cabinet" which contains files on "Symptomers", or humans who have evolved mysterious abilities. Full of lovely and incisive commentary on Korean society.

Written by Un-su Kim and originally published 15 years ago in South Korea, it wasn't until this year that The Cabinet (캐비닛) got its masterful translation into English by Sean Lin Halbert.

The Cabinet is mostly told from the perspective of Mr Kong, a bored office worker who becomes an assistant to Professor Kwon by sticking his nose where it doesn't belong - into cabinet 13. After trying 7500 combinations over a few weeks, Mr Kong manages to unlock the mysterious cabinet only to find it full of documents about symptomers, a bizarre group of people believed to be the next step in our evolution. Not homo sapiens, but not not homo sapiens either. Think X-Men but a lot weirder.

The story is a mix of Mr Kong's life experiences - his ambitions and dreams, his relationship with the other people at the company, his ways of dealing with the ennui and loneliness of city life - and the various symptomers' anecdotes. There's a woman whose tongue has been replaced by a small lizard, a man who has a ginkgo tree growing from a finger, the time skippers and the torporers, a man who wants to become a cat and the memory mosaicers. The Cabinet is not exactly character-driven as we don't really get to know any of the characters too well, and because it's so choppy, I wouldn't say it's story-driven either. It just is. And you keep reading it because the weirdness and unpredictability of it is addictive.

One of the reasons I enjoy Far East Asian literature as much as I do is because it's so completely bonkers. I love a bizarre novel about nothing. And The Cabinet is more or less that. You might catch a glimpse of some meaning here and there, like that life is for living and you shouldn't waste it busting your butt at work where you're unhappy and unappreciated, but most of the novel is just beautiful, arbitrary craziness.

This was a highly enjoyable piece for me and I recommend it to readers who need a sort of a palate cleanser in between something like a complex sci-fi work and a depressing contemporary novel.

The Cabinet comes out on October 12. Huge thank you to NetGalley, Angry Robot Books, Un-su Kim and Sean Lin Halbert for the advanced reader copy.

After reading The Plotters, I was excited to get my hands on a copy of this one. Kim returns with the same humor from his last novel, but with a wildly different premise: Our protagonist is the guardian of a special cabinet containing files on ‘symptomers’- humans with strange symptoms who may be the next evolution of humanity.

Kim weaves together the plot for the protagonist through his recollection of the symptomers’ stories, chaining them together until we're brought to our conclusion. That surely sounds intriguing, but with how loosely everything is connected together and how little emphasis is put on the protagonist himself- the end result left something to be desired.

The stories of the symptomers are fun and bizarre, but I would say it is better to read this as a collection of stories rather than one narrative with a steady plotline.

Come for the weird stuff, stay for the weird stuff. Certainly curious what Un-Su Kim will cook up next.

I found this too jokey and irreverent. I'm sure it will appeal to other readers but I wasn't particularly engaged or intrigued by the puzzle-like narrative.

This was delightfully weird and quirky. I love odd stories like this that carry a much deeper message, but is told through such a surprising and interesting narrative.

To me, it felt like one of those story collections that have a bigger message, but are also inexplicably pointless. I wish I could explain what kind of a weird this is, but it's just one of those books where you have to read the synopsis and give it a shot to truly understand. Maybe saying that someone grows a Gingko treat out of their finger, and others eat things like glass helps to paint the picture. I mean, how can you understand or know how you feel about a book, if you don't experience it for yourself? Who knows what your experience will be like and what you will get from this book.

I did love the message that we should be more kind and more understanding of all those who are different to us. Or different to what some deem to be normal.

I am generally a person who loves weird stories that sometimes don't have a clear point to them. I love reading a story and being like...okay, that was weird. What?

And if you are someone who appreciates that, and loves to read stories like that from time to time, you might like it. If you've read things like Moutfhul of Birds for example, you will probably enjoy this one.

There exists a cabinet filled with stories of different human oddities. A man with a ginkgo tree growing out of his finger, a woman with a lizard as a tongue and people who hibernate for months at a time are just a few of the files that Mr. Kong has read during his time as Professor Kwon’s assistant. Mr. Kong’s days are spent organizing files, answering phone calls of potential “symptomers” and also documenting their experiences. His life becomes more complicated when a powerful organization becomes interested in what the cabinet holds.

The Cabinet was such an original, creative and witty story that sucked me in from the very beginning! To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this one but I’m so glad that I decided to branch out and try something new. Mr. Kong is the narrator of this story and he tells the reader about the various files in the cabinet while also sharing anecdotes from his personal life. While the stories are completely bizarre, there are underlying themes of sadness, loneliness and the exhaustion of living in Capitalistic society which I think we can all relate to. Sometimes I wish I could hibernate for months on end and not worry about the stresses of life! There was an overarching storyline which ties everything together that became apparent in the later half of the book. I do wish that it was introduced a little sooner but the individual stories were so interesting that they kept my attention.

Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot Books for this eARC in exchange for my honest review. The Cabinet by Un-su Kim is available October 12th!

An utterly wonderful and unique novel, that is more like a serious of short stories with an overarching narrative that takes the forefront in some stories at first until dominating the last few chapters. Part sci-fi, part conspiracy thriller, and part poignant look at the human condition. My only complain was the ending felt a little too abrupt. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

4.5 rounded to 5.

Truly an unexpected surprise packed into this enjoyable novel that accompanied me on my flights to and from Arizona.

Mr. Kong is unsatisfied with his life. Growing up, he never had plans for his future (and truly was confused how other children knew what they wanted to do so young). So he ends up working random jobs to get a paycheck, never being satisfied. His current job is no different, he sits bored at his desk and is surrounded by others who occupy their time with different hobbies. With no interest in office gossip and lack of imagination, Mr. Kong start exploring the research facility in which he works.

He stumbles into an office with cabinets. Cabinet 13 is locked and Mr. Kong spends endless days trying combinations in sequential order to see what is inside. I don't blame him, what else does he have to do?

Inside are written accounts of symptomers, humans that have evolved peculiar characteristics such as growing a lizard in their tongue, a tree on their fingertip, hopping through time, and encounters of doppelgangers - you know the usual stuff...

Approached by the head researcher, Mr. Kong is unofficially hired as the administrator in charge of the files and answering phone calls of potential symptomers or those looking to become ones.

Thus, we embark on this wonderful piece of work that almost reads like a collection of short stories. We learn of various symptomers and glimpse into what they believe it means to feel alive. There are sad stories and ones that make you laugh, but with each you feel an odd sense of comfort. Despite having nothing in common with there symptomers (can they really be considered human?) their stories resonate with you after you finish the final page.

This book is one I cannot shut up about and have been recommending to those around me since I put it down. This is exactly what I expected from South Korean literature and it's my hope to read more of this author's work in the future.

Unusual short story book translated from Korean. A cabinet holds files about Symptomers who are people showing symptoms of an accelerated evolution or who break away slightly from Homo sapiens.

Our main character, a bored office worker, discovers the cabinet and reads the files.
Thanks to Netgalley and Angry Robot publishers for allowing me to read this book.