Review of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu

*Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century* by Kim Fu (2022). Published by Tin House.

One of the concepts I am very good at is pretending that books I want to read don’t exist in my TBR pile. I stopped buying physical books, unless they’re harder to find or I cannot find them eventually at my local thrift store, a while back, but because of that, it means I wander my local library like a ghost until something catches my eye at the right time.

Sometimes it even takes me years to get to a book I really wanted to read. Like this is an actual problem as someone who has almost 2000 books in my Goodreads to-read section, and my goal in life is to read as many books as possible before I’m somehow unable to do so anymore.

Lesser Known Monsters was one of these books. I’ve known about it since it was released all of those years ago, and have seen it so many times at my local library and even bookstores. But because I never encountered it at the right time, I never ended up picking a copy of the book up to actually read.

Until one day it was the right time, and I was at the library. It was a dire time when it came to reading, as my brain was rotting from writing my master’s thesis, and I felt like I needed something outside the realm of dense academic texts or wasn’t written by a female Korean writer from the 1920s. I’d read enough New Woman works by now.

And that was how I finally read this book! Enough rambling though, let’s get into the review.

A collection of short stories mixing fantasy, the surreal, and reality in compelling ways.

So in this collection of short stories, there are twelve in total. Kim Fu really incorporates magic and fantasy throughout the course of these stories, so if you’re not into more surreal kinds of work, then you’re probably not going to be into these stories.

The first story I found really sets the tone for the collection overall. It’s about a girl who has a bunch of friends at her elementary school, and they all gather around eventually to see how she’s growing wings out of her ankles. As she tries to learn how to fly, it will lead to potentially catastrophic or even fatal consequences for her, leading to heartbreak.

Another story that really stood out to me in general was about the family next door that died of what I believe was carbon monoxide poisoning. It was the parents, a daughter, and a son. The father technically survived, but when he came to realize his entire family was gone, he killed himself too.

So what the kids in the house next door do is they break into the home of the deceased family. There, they go into the daughter’s room, who was around the same age as them, and then they take a doll from the home. Turns out this doll is pretty cursed and haunted, and removing it from its home is going to lead into something a bit more terrifying for these kids.

A lot of these stories take on similar tones—overall, they have a kind of sad undertone to them. There’s one about social media and the death of a friendship because it, and a death, which leads people to fracture relationships in rather unfortunate ways.

Another one is about a woman who runs away from a terrible relationship in attempt to rediscover herself. What it originally an act of bravery and trying to get out of a terrible situation turns wacky, as the home she starts residing in is then occupied by a ton of beetles. An infestation to start out this new life certainly isn’t the way to go in the long run.

This is only a small sample of the 12 stories found throughout this collection, as I won’t be going through every single one of them individually. These do capture the spirit of the collection and its essence though.

Overall Thoughts

There is some brilliant writing found throughout this collection. As someone who could probably never write horror and fantasy in such ways, I have to give major credit to Kim Fu. It’s hard to capture these kinds of ambiance in writing.

I would say I enjoyed this collection quite a bit, and would recommend it to those who find its synopsis or this summary to be right up their alley. I don’t think though I loved it enough to add to my personal library, but I’m picky about what books I bring into that.

So go pick this one up if you’re interested! You might find it very worth it.

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