REVIEW OF KITCHEN CURSE (2020) BY EKA KURNIAWAN, TRANSLATED BY ANNIE TUCKER AND OTHERS
“Humans had never learned how to listen to stones, let alone understand stone language. All they knew about stones was that they could be used to sink a corpse in a river or some other body of water.” - “The Stone’s Story” Eka Kurniawan
Kitchen Curse is a whimsical, disgusting, crass, hilarious, carnivalesque, beautiful little book by one of Indonesia’s most notorious writers, Eka Kurniawan. It’s less than 150 pages long and 16 stories wide, but jammed with so many fart jokes and fables that you can easily find yourself lost. I was distracted by the deceptive simplicity of the stories to find myself delighted by the turns they took. It's no wonder Kurniawan is hailed as Indonesia’s answer to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Certain stories in this collection drip with the same brand of revolutionary magical realism, reading both as fairy-tales and subversive political pamphlets. I am happy with this stinky taste of Kurniawan’s writing and look forward to picking up one of his novels as soon as I can get my hands on one.
It’s hard to critique translated writing as things get lost between languages, and I am no polyglot. However, I liked Kurniawan’s quick and dirty way of telling a story. He does not get bogged down in so many details but highlights what’s necessary and throws out what’s not. That being said, some of these stories just were not at all compelling to me. Perhaps the necessary details were not ones that I found myself drawn to, and some of them were so outlandish, so fantastical, so carnivalesque that I hadn’t the time for them. It’s not that there was a language gap, but simply that the humor didn’t reach me. I wasn’t thrilled, is what I’m saying.
With short stories, I do like to give a little list of what my favorites were. Sometimes the first story in the book is not the one to start with. Sometimes the seventh or eighth is the one that hooks me and then the rest fall into place behind it. Some get a reread. Here’s a small list of the ones I liked best, with the tiniest blurbs in the world.
"Graffiti in the Toilet"
The first story in Kurniawan’s book is about a public conversation in a dirty toilet stall, arguing for and against revolution before ultimately being erased by the janitor, only to start again.
Don’t Piss Here
In response to vagrants who urinate on her shopfront overnight, a woman retaliates by putting up a sign that says, “Don’t Piss Here,” only to discover how good it feels to let loose.
"Rotten Stench"
The bodies of revolutionaries and their families litter the streets of a city eighteen years after a massacre. Only the visitors notice the stench, the city dwellers have become complacent.
"No Crazies in This Town"
In this carnivalesque fable, Kurniawan describes how one vacation town rounds up its homeless and mentally ill during peak tourist season, then forces them to perform in sexual theatre for the tourists.
"Auntie"
A woman finds out the truth behind the life of her beloved auntie only after her death.
"Dimples"
In this story which reads more like a feminist folktale, a young woman outwits the witch doctor she’s been promised to marry.
"The Stone’s Story"
A stone narrates the story of its life after having been an unwilling accomplice to a murder and seeking revenge on the killer.
"Peter Pan"
Peter Pan is the story of a student activist who enterprises to start a war with the government, selling books from his personal library to fund it and selling flowers on the street to print his pamphlets. This one has some of my favorite imagery out of all of them and feels the most Garcia Marquez-Like.
As with a lot of magical realism, many of the themes in Kitchen Curse are political. Kurniawan’s stories address the impacts of colonialism and the strength of revolutions. It’s no wonder, Kurniawan was a student during the end of the thirty-year Suharto presidency, which ushered in a more liberal political landscape in Indonesia. Indonesia itself is an archipelago that suffered under Dutch colonialism in the seventeenth century. Indonesian history is rife with revolution and Dutch control over the islands was only tenuous at best. Dutch rule ended once the Japanese moved in, and then after another bloody revolution, Indonesia declared itself independent. The Suharto presidency ended in 1998 after a massacre of student protestors by the government, and three days of violence. You can feel the echoes of this in Kurniawan's writing.
“Blabbermouth, I don’t have faith in our members of parliament. I have more trust in the walls of toilets.”
Sex and repression are definite themes in a book that is rife with scatological detail. In “Don’t Piss Here!” a woman finally orgasms after holding in her pee for long periods of time, after years of loveless sex with her husband and fighting with the strangers who piss on her shop after she’s closed for the evening. In “Dimples” a woman is promised to marry a witch doctor after he cures her father’s sickness, only to be thrown out when he discovers she is no longer a virgin. “Red Lipstick” is the story of an ill-fated romance between a sex worker and one of her clientele, when she is accidentally taken in a police raid outside of her old place of employment and subsequently divorced. Her husband is convinced she wears her red lipstick to allure clients, but the case truly is that she only wears it to impress him.
"'Better I'm a
whore,' she said to herself two nights later, not long after that man
proclaimed his three talaq, one after another. She left the room carrying a
bundle of clothes, not saying goodbye to the man who was pacing back and forth,
infuriated, nor to the woman and her two snot-nosed kids, who were gloating in
victory."
I gave this book three stars. It’s a solid collection. Each story packs a punch like sour candy. You’re not sure if you really like it but you can’t stop reading it. I had my favorites, as with all short story collections, and the favorites I had I really suggest. Kurniawan is not a writer to read if you are easily offended, or grossed out. His work elicits a physical response, sometimes squirming, sometimes full-on nausea, sometimes raucous laughter. I felt like each story pissed on me a little bit. That’s how reading this collection was. I suggest this for anyone who is a fan of magical realism, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, foreign fiction (because I mean, this was my first Indonesian author), and fart jokes.
RATING: 💛💛💛💔💔
LINKS:
Kirkus Reviews, October 2019:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/eka-kurniawan/kitchen-curse/
The Nation Review, January 7th, 2020:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/eka-kurniawan-kitchen-curse-revivew/
Sydney Morning Herald’s Account of the Fall of Suharto from a Journalist in Indonesia, May 2018:
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