3.5
Flowers of Mold & Other Stories
By Ha Seong-nan & Janet HongPublisher Description
Ha Seong-Nan was born in Seoul in 1967 and made her literary debut in 1996, after her graduation from the Seoul Institute of the Arts. She is the author of five short story collections—including Bluebeard's First Wife and The Woman Next Door—and three novels. Over her career, she's received a number of prestigious awards, such as the Dongin Literature Award in 1999, Hankook Ilbo Literature Prize in 2000, the Isu Literature Prize in 2004, the Oh Yeong-su Literary Award in 2008, and the
Contemporary Literature (Hyundae Munhak) Award in 2009.
Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in Brick: A Literary Journal, Lit Hub, Asia Literary Review, Words Without Borders, and the Korea Times. She has received PEN American Center’s PEN/Heim Translation Fund, the Modern Korean Literature Translation Award, and grants from English PEN, LTI Korea, and the Daesan Foundation. Her translations include Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale, Ancco’s Bad Friends, and Ha Seong-nan’s The Woman Next Door. She also translates works by Bae Suah and Kim Soom, among others.
Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in Brick: A Literary Journal, Lit Hub, Asia Literary Review, Words Without Borders, and the Korea Times. She has received PEN American Center’s PEN/Heim Translation Fund, the Modern Korean Literature Translation Award, and grants from English PEN, LTI Korea, and the Daesan Foundation. Her translations include Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale, Ancco’s Bad Friends, and Ha Seong-nan’s The Woman Next Door. She also translates works by Bae Suah and Kim Soom, among others.
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3.5
Queralt
Created 3 months agoShare
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“Who adds genres to books on Goodreads? I know I shouldn’t base my expectations on them, but as usual, I saw this tagged as horror and I’m yet another clown who falls for it.
Anyways, this isn’t a horror short story collection. The 10 short stories are contemporary/general fiction with a touch of strangeness/darkness into it. You could stretch it and say that the stories are dark, but I would have to be very drunk to say these are horror.
I don’t have much to say about this one, it’s a 2.5 stars. The stories are just right to be entertaining but not good enough to make a point or linger. I sadly think I’ll forget them very quickly, and the one I’ll remember it’ll be more because of how weirded out I was than anything (and I’m talking about the story “The Woman Next Door” where a woman was obsessed with a spatula lol).
I felt the ideas behind the stories were really cool, but the execution didn’t really stick the landing for me. For example, there’s a retelling of Icarus that had a very flat narration so the ending just had me shrugging. Or “The Retreat” is about the owner of a building taking his tenants on a trip, but he’s planning to fuck them over and sell the building, and they’re also planning something on their end - this would have been really cool as an action-y thing with a horror twist, but again, it was sort of quiet/flat.
Can’t say I recommend it, but if you have access to it for free and you’re curious about it, it’s okay.”
LiteraryPenguin
Created about 1 year agoShare
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“Flowers Of Mold took me on a ride that I was not expecting, while some stories were good others weren't as great. One of my favorites was 'The Woman Next Door' that was a tale about a woman who let's her new neighbor borrow a couple of things. That lead to the neighbor borrowing more than just material things from the woman, leading to her whole life being borrowed from her driving her into mental instability. The other stories weren't as memorable to me and I found myself quickly forgetting them after I read them. I wished that more of the stories had the same level as The Woman Next Door did, I did like how the author showed both sides of South Korea. The bright and appealing glamour that hide a dark and unsavory middle class life. I would love to read more horror stories from other countries and more from South Korea. This has encouraged me to read more stories like this and I hope I can find more!”
Brianna
Created over 1 year agoShare
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Believable charactersOriginal writingComplexMind-bendingDescriptiveInsightful
MichFlook
Created over 5 years agoShare
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“An unsettling collection of stories! Very detailed descriptions made each story come to life.”
About Ha Seong-nan
Ha Seong-nan has published five collections of short stories, four novels, and a number of serialized novels and essay collections. She has also won numerous prestigious awards, such as the Dong-in Literary Award, Yisu Literary Award, Hyundae Literary Award, and Hwang Sun-won Literature Prize, among others.
Janet Hong
Janet Hong is an award-winning translator and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in Brick: A Literary Journal, Lit Hub, Asia Literary Review, Words Without Borders, and the Korea Times. She was shortlisted for the 2018 PEN Translation Prize for her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale. Her other translations include Ancco’s Bad Friends and Ha Seong-nan’s The Woman Next Door.
Other books by Janet Hong
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