Review of To the Kennels: And Other Stories by Pyun Hye-young

*To the Kennels: And Other Stories* by Hye-young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Heinz Insu Fenkl (2024). Published by Arcade.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

As a book blogger, something I’ve always been super clear about and dedicated towards promoting are local libraries. I know having access to a good library is a privilege, and there are countries where people don’t really have access to books at all. I am so grateful every day that I have access to a decent library system, especially in today’s world.

It has been because of my library I haven’t gone insane during this time of unemployment, as I can’t imagine just sitting around and doing nothing. I absolutely need to feel like I have a purpose, and even with my writing career, I want to be out in the field learning about people and the world rather than sitting at home and dreaming about what I could be doing with my time.

So I often ended up wandering the halls of my library in search of a new read, or a DVD to pick up and watch. I always find something new and exciting to read in the fiction section, which, in this blog post, came in the form of To the Kennels. Korean and Asian literature has been a heavy focus of this blog, although they’re a bit harder to get sometimes with some releases, so I picked the book up and cleared through it in two sittings.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to keep going on and on in the introduction, as I know these can get quite long.

Eight short stories with a searing glimpse of humanity—and the lack of it in certain situations.

There are eight short stories in this collection, as I wrote before, and something I think is important to note is that while this translation is hitting the American markets in 2024, this collection was actually published in 2007. So that context can be important while you’re reading through these stories, as this was a Korea still rapidly developing and trying to find its place on the world stage.

All of these stories have some common threads throughout them though: animals, often depicted in moments of fierceness or escape, are a reoccurring motif throughout the collection. Whether they’re elephants that are trying to escape the circus they’ve been brought into or a pack of dogs attacking the main character’s sons, the conflict between the natural world and humans is an underlying theme throughout the collection.

This becomes even more apparent to me when we get to the story about the man and his wife trying to renovate in their backyard, but there’s a marsh. The local people often find artifacts from Korean history scattered throughout the town, as it was built on ancient burial tombs, and they try to sell it for money.

When he starts digging in his own backyard while trying to fix a broken wall, he thinks he might find treasure, but what’s actually to come is so much worse for this family.

Then the stories pivot, but follow similar tracks for their narratives. In one story, a crew of workers are hired to portray a classic Korean story, but in order to put on this performance, they have to keep smiling even when it becomes extremely difficult to do so. In another, a writer projects onto her students for their beliefs, then reflects on her own life and failures throughout the story.

These were some of the highlights in the short stories for me—but there’s more, as you’ll see when you’re reading this. I have actually not read The Hole, which is another famous work by Pyun, so I unfortunately cannot compare the two, but I do want to read that book sometime after this work.

I think the writing style in this book is one I can get with, as I found it structurally sound. Is this collection one that I think people are going to love? Maybe not—the opinions might be a little more mixed than expected, but because I’m used to Korean literature and its history, I found this collection to be really interesting in depicting a specific moment of time in Korea.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned above, I found this collection to be interesting for my own interests and research, but I could easily see how others might not like it. It reminded me of the commentary that was packed into a collection like Cursed Bunny, although Pyun took it in a completely different direction than Pyun did.

I don’t know if I’m going to be returning to these stories any time soon outside of academic work and maybe an article I could write for a publication. I didn’t love the collection personally myself, but I can appreciate the work it does and what these stories are trying to tell. It felt like a snapshot of Korea in the 2000s, which was compelling enough for me to keep reading.

I say if you’re interested in what this book has to say, go check it out from your local library or purchase a copy from an indie bookstore. You may find it worth it in the end to go pick it up, as taste is incredibly subjective.

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