Review: 3 stars
It certainly has been a while - almost 3 years since my last post. Given how hectic it is having 2 young kids and a demanding job, it has been difficult to steal away time to archive my reading. Given a relative lull in the chaos for the next few months, I recommitted to sharing my favourite (and not so favourite) reads.
I have been rediscovering the public library with my family, and visits to the Central Branch just minutes from our house have been nostalgic. I remember going with my sisters and my mom when I was younger, hungry for the endless possibilities and underrated gems found in the library stacks. I truly aspired to be a librarian when I “grew up”, mostly in hopes of unilaterally waiving all my overdue book fees. I came across ‘Your Utopia’ on the “New Books” shelf at my library. I was delighted because I have been wanting to read Bora Chung’s work since I saw her books featured in a display at Foyles in London. I also have been very intrigued by Asian translated literature and short stories as of late, so this was the perfect choice.
‘Your Utopia’ is a selection of futuristic vignettes that explore the relationship between technology and humans, and essentially where one ends and the other begins. The opener - “The Center for Immortality Research” - stylistically reminds me of the author’s voice in ‘The Sympathizer’. Our matter-of-fact narrator is a senior manager deep down the food chain at a pharma conglomerate’s immortality research centre. She finds herself in increasingly ludicrous situations ranging from fending off a National Assembly candidate (an immortality zealot), to aiding and abetting the theft of commemorative DVDs amidst a knife attack. I found myself laughing aloud in the coffee shop at the dry humour permeating the story, and lamenting how corporate life can feel like a life sentence - even for those who are not immortal.
My favourite stories were “An Ordinary Marriage” and “The End of the Voyage.” In the latter, a COVID-inspired Zombie affliction - ‘The Disease’ - sweeps Earth, and humanity’s last hope is to send into space a pod of scientists, engineers and military personnel to avoid infection. What ensues is an onslaught of dark, bloody fiction, culminating in spontaneous cannibalism, hyperspace travel and mutiny. While the plot itself is not novel (imagine The Walking Dead meets Star Trek), it is the confidence with which Chung propels the reader to evermore fantastical and disgusting corners. For me, it drew real parallels with the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we secretly asked ourselves questions like" “Is it just easier to be part of the infected masses, instead of perpetually looking over your shoulder?” and “How much isolation can we get used to? Is our human tendency to adapt and survive a good thing?”.
While this read is not for everyone, I found the stories very entertaining, creative and thought provoking. I finished the book within a day. From a reader’s perspective, not every story was uniformly polished and the afterword from the author felt overly explanatory. However, on the whole, it left me curious to read Chung’s ‘Cursed Bunny’ - the more critically acclaimed sister to ‘Your Utopia’.