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

It’s been quite a while since my last dedicated review post but I loved this weird collection of short stories so much that I just had to talk about it. Sometimes it takes me forever to read collections but I flew through Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century in less than a week.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu

Target Audience: Adult
Genre: speculative, sci-fi, magical realism, short story collection
Mood: dark, reflective, weird

Representation: Asian-Canadian author, some Asian and queer characters

Published: 2022 by Tin House Books
Length: 220 pages

Content warnings are listed for individual stories below

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Synopsis

In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.

Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.

description from StoryGraph

Overall Impressions

The 12 stories in this collection are very distinct from one another, and yet they are all incredible in their own way. Kim Fu is a master of descriptive writing in a way that activates all the senses while still driving the plot forward. Two prime examples of writing that evoke different senses are “Do You Remember Candy?” and “Scissors.” I was also struck with how skillfully character dynamics and interactions were written, even in stories told entirely in dialogue (“Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867”) or stories that focus on group dynamics (“Liddy, First to Fly” and “The Doll”). There were also recurring themes of the struggles of finding connection (“#ClimbingNation”) and morbid curiosity about death (“Time Cubes”, and “Twenty Hours”). She also uses and blends genres of fantasy, sci-fi, magical realism, and horror, with moments of (somewhat dark) humor.

Personal Favorites:

• Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867
• Time Cubes
• Twenty Hours
• Do You Remember Candy?

Individual Stories

I found myself writing a lot of notes and wanted to share my thoughts on each story. Some of my thoughts or summaries for certain stories are longer than others, though that doesn’t necessarily correlate to my enjoyment of the story itself or my appreciation of the craft. Although there were some that appealed to me more as far as personal enjoyment, I found something to appreciate in all of the stories and was blown away by the level of technique and creativity in every story.

1. Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867

cw: death of parent (referenced)

Set in a world where simulations can be used to play out (almost) any fantasy in detail, this story is told in the form of a transcript of a conversation between a person who hopes to see their dead mother one last time and the simulation operator who is bound by certain regulations. This was such a great start to the collection. I loved the distinct voices of the main character and the simulation operator and enjoyed their back and forth about the moral gray areas and addictive nature of imagined fantasies as they discussed the ethics of imagination and virtual reality.

Favorite quote: “I can f*ck a dragon, but I can’t see my mom?”

My rating: 😍 New Favorite

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2. Liddy, First to Fly

cw: body horror

A pre-teen girl sprouts wings from her ankles and is convinced that she can learn to fly. I liked the parallels between this mysterious growth and the changes girls go through at puberty and the societal pressure to hide these changes from view. The descriptions are so juicy and vivid and I really appreciated the dynamic between the girls in Liddy’s friend group. Their interactions showed each of their personalities as individuals as well as how they functioned as a group. There was also the underlying theme of being at an age when you are starting to grow up but can still believe in magic and other things adults reject as impossible.

My rating: ❤️ Loved it

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3. Time Cubes

cw: depression, possible suicidality

This weird but fascinating story contains: The ability to rewind time, a morbid curiosity about death, and the sense of perspective that comes with the knowledge of mortality.

Favorite quote: “She hadn’t anticipated a lifetime of joy and sorrow, beauty and mundanity and horror, all compressed into seconds. Entire arcs of romance and friendship with people she hadn’t met yet, feeling the thrill of first connection at the same instant as their final betrayal.”

My rating: 😍 New Favorite

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4. #ClimbingNation

cw: death (off-page)

A woman crashes the wake of a long-lost acquaintance who was a famous climber. This was an interesting look at how social media makes us think we’re closer to people than we actually are. The main character is an outside observer to the dead climber’s story but her perspective allows the reader to more fully appreciate the plot unfolding and helps to convey the themes of fake connections, desire for belonging, and competing desires and needs of the people who are left behind when a loved one dies.

My rating: ❤️ Loved it

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5. Sandman

My initial note after reading this story was “not me reading a story about insomnia and weird sleep-related visions at 1:00 am. lol. The imagery and descriptions in this were so good! (I should sleep now.)”

I could elaborate on the masterful contrast between the eerie dreamlike landscape with the appearance of the sandman and the sleep-deprived waking hours with the main character’s well-meaning sleep-hygiene-obsessed colleague but honestly, that initial note truly encompasses everything important.

This imagery was just so good: ” A trickle of sand touched her lower lip. Sand poured out from within his hood, in a thin, continuous stream. She parted her lips, opened her throat as if to sing. She still couldn’t see his face, but she sensed that the sand was traveling from his mouth and into hers, the matte-gold dust glowing dully, catching the faint light that leaked around her drawn curtains.

My rating: ❤️ Loved it

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6. Twenty Hours

cw: (non-permanent) death by poison, gunshot, and various other causes, (is it suicide if you know you’ll come back to life?)

This story has one of the most captivating first lines I’ve read: “After I killed my wife, I had twenty hours before her new body started printing downstairs”. I’m not going to say more about the story because it’s one of those that is just a great experience to read without knowing anything but I really enjoyed the premise of this story and the way it looks at the idea of mortality and curiosity about death.

My rating: 😍 New Favorite

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7. The Doll

cw: death, suicide, creepy doll

This story features: childhood dares and creepy dolls

After a tragic death of a family down the street, the neighborhood children have a morbid fascination with their abandoned house and, as the result of a dare, end up in an unsettling game of pass the parcel with a doll found in the dead family’s yard. Despite the dark and unsettling things this story touched on, it had a sense of nostalgia with the way children process events and talk about things that scare them, and the memories that tie us to our childhood friends even as we drift apart later in life.

My rating: 👍 Good (but creepy as hell)

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8. In This Fantasy

cw: domestic violence (referenced), death

I’m not really sure what was going on in the narrative itself with this one, though I enjoyed it. This story seemed like a fragmented series of various dreams that the narrator experienced. The prose was beautiful and captivating but as soon as I immersed myself in the scene we moved onto another, which underlined the feeling of being inside of a dream.

My rating: 👍 Good

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9. Scissors

cw: 18+ mild erotica, bondage, exhibitionism (all consensual)

Representation: f/f relationship

As part of a stage performance, a woman is blindfolded by her partner then undressed and caressed with a pair of scissors. Okay, it sounds weird when I try to describe it but it was really good. This is not really my sort of story but by the time I got to this point in the book I was entirely on board with wherever the author wanted to take me. There was no actual sex and the use of senses was just so juicy and visceral. The mindset of the POV character while blindfolded stood out the most and was so fascinating, adding to the inherent tension of the scene.

My rating: 👍 Good

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10. June Bugs

cw: toxic relationship, abuse, swarming bugs

The main character, Martha, leaves her abusive partner and ends up renting a creepy old house that is overrun by bugs. It was creepy but I was interested the whole time. I have some other notes but they’re mostly spoilers or wouldn’t make sense out of context.

My rating: 👍 Good

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11. Bridezilla

The opening sentence is pretty intriguing. Once things got going, the ending was somewhat predictable, given the title but it was interesting to see how we got there. I was less interested in this story than the others but that was just my preference.

Opening line: “The first reports of the sea monster were broadcast the day Arthur proposed to Leah.”

My rating: 👍 Good

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12. Do You Remember Candy

In this hypothetical future we explore a world where the sense of taste has disappeared. Some, particularly the younger generation, have no interest in dwelling on meaningless concepts that they barely remember. However, there are some people like Allie and others in her generation who cannot let go of their memories of their favorite foods and search for a way to preserve the emotions that they associate with a particular taste. Allie finds her own way to recreate the impression of particular tastes first through words, then through conceptual art installations that she builds for others to bring to life the sensation of things like a soft-poached egg or an underripe pear.

The descriptive writing in this was delicious in so many ways and I loved the creative approach to show how memories linger and how humans find ways to preserve and re-experience the things they have lost. I also appreciated reading about Allie’s universal struggle of trying to find connection with her daughter across a generational divide with this added layer of disconnect between their generations, though I wish we had gotten a bit about how their relationship progressed in the end.

My rating: 😍 New Favorite

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Final Thoughts

I absolutely loved this collection but it’s definitely not for everyone.

Would recommend if you:

• enjoy a blend of sci-fi and horror
• enjoy thought-provoking stories that question the idea of “normality”
• appreciate weirdness
• love writing that activates all of your senses
• appreciate exploring gray areas of humanity and morality

Skip if you:

• don’t like ambiguous endings
• hate feeling unsettled while reading
• prefer realistic fiction

Overall rating: 😍 New Favorite / ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Let’s chat: What is a short story collection that you enjoyed?

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