Review: 'The Cabinet' by Un-Su Kim (김언수), trans. by Sean Lin Halbert
Pub. Date: Angry Robot
Publisher: 12/10/2021
Cabinet 13 looks exactly like any normal filing cabinet. Except this cabinet is filled with files on the ‘symptomers’, people whose weird abilities and bizarre experiences might just mark the emergence of a new species.
But to Mr Kong, the harried office worker who spends his days looking after the cabinet, the symptomers are just a headache; from the woman whose doppelganger broke up with her boyfriend, to the man with a ginkgo tree growing from his fingertip. And then there’s that guy who won’t stop calling, asking to be turned into a cat…
A richly funny and fantastical novel about the strangeness at the heart of even the most ordinary lives, from one of South Korea’s most acclaimed novelists.
The Cabinet begins with an author's note that nothing within the book should be confused for fact. Usually that is just a fun little note to the reader of somewhat surreal books to know we're going to get some fun speculating. Un-Su Kim puts it there for a reason, however, because The Cabinet does weave reality with fiction. The first story we get related to the Cabinet is about the real Ludger Sylbaris, who was a survivor of a volcano eruption on Martinique in 1902. In The Cabinet he is still a survivor but he and his town are also something else. Admittedly, I didn't know about Sylbaris before this and some of Un-Su Kim's play here is lost when you can't recognise the traces of fact in the fiction. However, this kind of confusion is what I enjoy about surrealist or speculative fiction because it encourages me to look at the world with new eyes. It allows you to think more deeply about who and what we are, how we move through the world and what kind of effect we have. I had loads of these kinds of thoughts throughout the first two parts of
The Cabinet is split into three parts. The first part, 'The Cabinet', sees us introduced to the protagonist and narrator, Kong Deok-Geun, who introduces us to the various contents of Cabinet 13, which he stumbled over out of boredom. It seems that in our frantic modern world, some people are changing, evolving, developing, mutating. These people are "symptomers" and they take all forms and shapes, from surviving on guzzling gasoline to growing trees from fingers and blipping out of time for random periods. Deok-Geun finds himself somehow involved in monitoring and helping these people, all while caught somewhere between admiration and revulsion. The second part, 'City of Heaven', thickens the plot somewhat, introducing us to a grim syndicate that wants to gain access to these files for nefarious reasons and a female colleague who also becomes entangled in the cabinet. The final part, 'Boobytrap', sees the syndicate come for Deok-Geun and the novel takes both a more grim and even more fantastical turn. This is where the novel slightly lost me. Not that I lost interest, but it turns out I was more interested in the symptomers and what they might be than in Deok-Geun's struggles.
The Cabinet sways somewhat between telling the story of its protagonist, Deok-Geun, and the stories of those contained within the Cabinet. The connections between the two are not always immediately apparent and it is easy to wonder what this book is meant to be about. As I mentioned above, I think this kind of wondering and searching for meaning is in large part the novel's aim. We live in a ridiculous world but we do our very best, day in day out, to create meaning out of its absurdity. Novels such as The Cabinet do the opposite, increasing the absurdity and thereby circling back to the question of meaning. I am not entirely sure, still, if Un-Su Kim's take on this works for me. It is worth noting that this was Un-Su Kim's debut and for that he demonstrates a masterful grip over tone and storytelling. Especially the first two parts are full of brilliant imagery and intriguing suggestions, funny turns of phrases, and remarkable insights into humanity. The overall plot, however, concerning Deok-Geun, the Cabinet, and the syndicate, does not fully come alive for me. Deok-Geun feels less real to me than the people whose stories are contained in the Cabinet, he seems more detached from his life and the world than they are. Perhaps this too is intended. Overall, The Cabinet is the kind of book that will leave you with unanswered questions but also, if you let yourself fully sink into it, a new appreciation for our weird world.
Sean Lin Halbert's translation worked well for me, although I cannot read Korean and so don't know how it works in the original. From my experience reading Korean and Japanese literature, the writing style needs some getting used to when you've mainly read English works up until now. There is a brevity and directness to it which sometimes lands as deeply humorous and sometimes as bland, but once you get used to it it works very well. There were some issues with my ARC. Sometimes words and verbs seemed to be missing or there were incorrect near-homonyms ('when' instead of 'went' for example). I assume all of these have been corrected for the published book however.
I give this novel...
3 Universes!
I had fun with The Cabinet but must also admit that it didn't entirely come together for me. This might very much be a me thing, so if you're into weird fiction, absolutely give this book a go!
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