Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Lapin Maudit

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Lapin Maudit by Bora Chung

15 reviews

murmurations_x's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.0

Where to start with this collection of short stories? It seems like everyone either loves this collection or isn't a fan and then there is me, in the middle and I enjoyed it. I can see myself returning to re-read some stories but probably not the entire collection and that on reflection is because some are just too gross for me. Cursed Bunny is a mixing pot of horror, science fiction, magical realism, jumping from disgusting and grotesque to emotional to eerie it really does have a little bit of it all. Each of them being a nice length that you can finish a story(or two) in a sitting and not feel burnt out.

Where I think the difference between me enjoying it and loving it is really what I look for in a book, I picked this up because I love horror and I've really been enjoying translated fiction particularly from Asia and that's it. Those who love it seem to heavily discuss how these tales are used to address the greed/capitalism and the patriarchy in society and that's just not what I was looking for when I picked it up.

The body horror in this book is intense. I barely made it through the first two stories and I like to think I can handle my gore and body horror but this is the first book I've read where my stomach actually turned while reading so be sure to check the trigger warning before reading this book.

My favourite stories are Snare, Home Sweet Home, Goodbye My Lover and The Frozen Finger.

I just want to note the translation here from Anton Hur is excellent. At no point did any of this writing feel clunky or misplaced like it didn't transfer well into English, he did a fantastic job and reading other reviews of this book there seems to be a lot of praise for Anton which I'm delighted to see as a lot of time the work of the translator goes unnoticed by the reader.

Content Warnings

year23's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Weird, uncomfortable stories - in the best kind of way. Relied maybe a little too much on a twist sort of format (which were sort of easy to guess and that took away a little of the startling surprise I think the author was going for). Apart from that though, incisive examination of themes like motherhood, responsibility, and exploitation. Highly recommend if you are okay with gore in your stories.

Content Warnings