In one of my favorite stories in Lim Sunwoo’s collection, With the Heart of a Ghost, a woman turns into a ghost for one hundred hours after suddenly dying. Those are the rules of the universe as told to her by a pigeon, allowing her extra time to say goodbye. She asks the pigeon how he can converse with humans, and he explains he developed the ability after his job as a messenger became obsolete. “Despite myself, I was impressed that the pigeon had succeeded in finding a new job. This bird had twice done something I’d never been able to achieve while I was alive.” 

This interaction perfectly reflects what this book embodies. It’s so easy to relate to these characters in their perceived failures or disappointments. Who among us hasn’t fretted over the fact that we will never find meaningful work or even just a job to pay the bills?

While each of these eight stories has a touch of the magical or strange, they are deeply rooted in the everyday. The characters spend a lot of time on mundanities—scrolling on the phone, doing laundry, eating, work. Often these characters are simply going through the motions of their lives. That is, until their sorrows catch up to them, and in Sunwoo’s world, this wake-up call takes the form of the absurd. 

In the title story, a woman working at a bakery is suddenly accompanied by a ghost that looks just like her. Her boyfriend has been in a coma for years following an accident, and she visits him faithfully every week, waiting for him to wake up. “Some days,” Eonni reflects, “I thought I’d be able to wait for Jeongsu forever; a day was over once you slogged through it. But on the other days I didn’t think I could wait for him for another second. So not thinking about it was the best answer I’d come up with.”

The ghost’s presence forces her to recognize her feelings and finally confront them. Eonni holds her feelings inside, ignoring them, and while the ghost is basically a mirror of her, there’s one difference: The ghost is more responsive to her feelings that she herself is. The ghost flops on the floor when Eonni is sad, hums when she’s happy, and erupts in anger, all while Eonni remains outwardly stoic.

In another part of this absurd world, jellyfish invade the oceans. They are not ordinary jellyfish: Any human who touches one becomes a jellyfish too. Elsewhere, a man turns into a tree in his ex-girlfriend’s apartment after she breaks up with him and is unable to move. Then there are a few stories about strange connections that people form, and how these at once reveal an essential loneliness while drawing people closer. Other unusual events, like a missing pet gecko in “Go Sleep at Home,” push the characters to look beyond themselves to others. In “The Unfamiliar Night,” a woman connects with an old friend who was always a little strange. But they find a common bond and comfort over shared meals and different yet similar disappointments in the trajectories of their lives.

It’s easy to be dazzled by the otherworldly elements in this collection. Yet each moment of change originates in an ordinary way, with one character openly talking with another, and most frequently, these are moments of care and nourishment, like sharing a home-cooked meal. In “Go Sleep at Home,” three people come together under the pretense of finding a reptile, but they are really soothing their loneliness by eating together:

It was already ten at night but we hadn’t even gone through half the studio. The guy put his phone down and asked if we were hungry. Would you like some ramyeon? Jo told him we weren’t done yet. Come back tomorrow, the guy said. It’s just that I’m hungry. He filled a pot with water. Can we really come back tomorrow? Jo asked. You won’t call the exterminator, will you? Yeah, sure, the guy said, surprisingly agreeable. Only then, two hours later, did we sit down. 

The translation by Chi-Young Kim keeps the steady rhythm of everyday life, even during extraordinary events. The sharp wit, the characters’ casual, conversational tone, and the melancholy feeling of loneliness—even when surrounded by others—are present throughout.  Although the small epiphanies in With the Heart of a Ghost do not amount to life-changing revelations, the characters in these stories do arrive at new perspectives. Even as they remain stuck in their daily rounds, tiny sparks of new knowledge do flare up, illuminating the stress and tedium of daily life and showing where real beauty and heart reside. 

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Lim Sunwoo was born in Seoul in 1995. She made her literary debut by winning the New Writer’s Award from Munhak Sasang in 2019. With the Heart of a Ghost was originally published in Korea by Minumsa Publishing in 2022 and has sold over 15,000 copies. She lives in Seoul.

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Chi-Young Kim is an award-winning literary translator and editor. A recipient of the Man Asian Literary Prize for her work on Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin, Chi-Young Kim has translated over a dozen books, including works by Ae-ran Kim, You-jeong Jeong, and Young-ha Kim, among others. In 2023, Chi-Young Kim’s translation of Whale was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Emily Webber is a reader of all the things hiding out in South Florida with her husband and son. A writer of criticism, fiction, and nonfiction, her work has appeared in The Rumpus, the Ploughshares Blog, The Writer, Hippocampus, and elsewhere.  She’s the author of a chapbook of flash fiction, Macerated. Read more at emilyannwebber.com.