REVIEW OF THE HOLE (2017) BY PYUN HYE-YOUNG, TRANSLATED BY SORA KIM-RUSSELL

 

                A man left paralyzed after a car crash that killed his wife, a zealous and vengeful mother-in-law, a dark house covered in vines, secrets from that past he can no longer keep hidden, and the laborious automaton digging a hole in the back yard. Pyun Hye-young's The Hole is a claustrophobic story about loss and longing, husbands and wives, ambition, and the way all the illusory successes of society can be taken in the blink of an eye.

                When Oghi wakes up from the sudden, catastrophic car accident that took his wife’s life, he is completely paralyzed except for his eyelids. Intubated in a hospital bed, he finds himself only able to communicate via blinks and is at the mercy of the doctors and his mother-in-law. Once Oghi gets home his mother-in-law becomes his main character and she starts acting stranger and stranger. She begins defacing the garden his wife worked so hard to build to dig a great hole in the backyard. Told in a non-linear fashion, we dive through the depths of Oghi’s memories to see what his life was really like dissecting his marriage and his successes. He loses control over his life little by little to his mother-in-law, and events begin to culminate into something more sinister than Oghi imagined. But I won’t ruin that for you. 

    Pyun Hye-young’s The Hole was the winner of the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award and is part of the massive boom of Korean literature hitting English-speaking bookshelves. The Hole was a dark book, leaving me feeling both stressed out and helpless which is exactly what I ask for from this genre of literary horror. As a fan of Stephen King’s Misery, I was tuned into this book for a while before finally buying it. Pyun evokes ever-rising terror by trapping our main character not only within his body but also in a web of his own design woven from the threads of his formerly perfect life. For literary horror, and any fans of foreign horror, this is a must-read. 

                The Hole reads as allegorically as Kafka's work. There are a lot of physical and metaphorical holes in this story. The hole through which Oghi must digest his food in his throat. The hole he and his mother in law are left in in the wake of the death of Oghi’s wife. The hole Oghi feels now that his life as a celebrated academic is over. The holes caused by soaring success, and the hunger for more, leading to a need to fill holes sometimes with possessions, sometimes with alcohol, sometimes with sex. The hole that his mother-in-law digs tirelessly in the back yard. The holes are a way of talking about not only loss but dissatisfaction.

                Success and the breakdown of relationships also figure heavily as a factor in The Hole. Oghi’s wife never found success when she was alive in any of her ventures, often flitting from one interest to the next. Oghi however had devoted his life to his work and his passions in cartography, becoming a star in his field and a high-ranking professor, marking the differences starkly between husband and wife. There is a tension here, Oghi not taking his wife seriously, his wife feeling left behind and forgotten by him. If we believe Oghi, she becomes more and more desperate to force his attentions to her, often by combative and possessive behaviors.

     Stark loneliness, shifting relationships, helplessness, loss, grief, and betrayal all haunt the pages of The Hole and Pyun does a masterful job in portraying each one. I actually have no complaints about this book. I think The Hole is as terrifying as it is sad. It's the kind of book where I’d like to see it turned into a film, full of symmetrical aesthetics and a spare and creeping score. It’s much more than a horror novel though. It definitely reads like literary fiction so those looking for quick and dirty scary thrills won’t be fans of this. It was a nail-biter for me in parts though, between long periods of quiet and nostalgic recollections of Ohgi's past. I devoured this book in one sitting. It’s not very long and it’s a beautiful translation (thanks to translator Sora Kim-Russell). From start to finish I felt a gross sensation in my stomach, knowing something bad was going to happen the same way I knew something bad was going to happen with Annie Wilkes in Misery. I was constantly waiting for the drop. I was left with heavy feelings and the ending was one where I immediately began googling to see if there was any discussion as to what really happened. Abrupt as the ending was, I was still transfixed with this book long after closing it. For fans of literary fiction, foreign fiction, Bong Joon-Ho, or Korean cinema in general, The Hole is a must.

RATING:  💛💛💛💛💔

 

LINKS: 

 

“Caring for Plants” Short Story by Pyun Hye-Young, New Yorker (July 3, 2017): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/caring-for-plants

 World Literature Today Review (2017): https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2017/november/hole-pye-young-pyun

 Korean Literature Now Review (2017): https://koreanliteraturenow.com/fiction/reviews/pyun-hye-young-psychic-wounds-and-body%E2%80%99s-rebellion-hole-pyun-hye-young

A-LIKES: 

 

The Law of Lines Pyun Hye-young

 The Vegetarian Han Kang

 Parasite dir. by Bong Joon-ho (2019)

 Misery by Stephen King

 Misery dir. By Rob Reiner (1990)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby