The Hole, by Pyun Hye-Young (2017)

By Pyun Hye-Young

Translated by Sora Kim-Russel

(Novel, Horror)

Ms. Pyun creates a nightmare world of claustrophobia, surveillance, paralysis, and weaponized gardening.  Her narrator, a middle-aged man wakes up in a hospital after experiencing a car wreck. He discovers he is paralyzed, and his wife, a passenger in the car, is dead. Slipping in and out of consciousness, he experiences flashbacks of the accident, re-experiencing his trauma in fragmented images. Where was he going? What had his wife been saying? Did he have time to come to her aid? Had he said anything while unconscious? Not surprisingly, his stay in the hospital is long. After a time, his most regular visitor is his mother-in-law. She visits every day, inquiring after his progress, watching the different therapists who work his body through a variety of slow contortions to flex and exercise his atrophying muscles. He hears her ask his doctors how soon she can take him home and wants to object. He knows he will do better under professional care and, truth be told, the sight of his mother-in-law only exacerbates the guilt he feels over his wife’s accidental death. Unfortunately, the narrator is unable to speak; he can only communicate by scratching out a word at a time on a piece of paper, an activity that leaves him exhausted. Eventually, his mother-in-law secures power of attorney and becomes his caregiver. She arranges to have him and his hospital bed moved to his home and placed in his former bedroom. She manages the hiring and firing of visiting nurses and physical therapists, though she eventually takes over both of these roles. Is she trying to heal and rehabilitate the man, or is she trying to punish him for causing her daughter’s gruesome death? Soon, the mother-in-law begins a new project at the house: she is training climbing plants and planting trees between the invalid’s house and the road. She is also digging up her daughter’s garden, creating a larger and larger hole on the grounds outside her son-in-law’s window. When will she stop? This is a horror novel and the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award.

“Perhaps when Oghi was gone, those carp would be the only living thing at the house along with her. She would raise living creatures, just as she said she would. But on second thought, maybe his mother-in-law wasn’t raising carp in order to see something live. Even carp in a pond will die eventually. And when they do, their mouths gape and they roll and float to the surface, their bodies as stiff and unmoving as Oghi’s. (191)