"The best thing is the eyes" by Monika Kim | Plopp!

Student Ji-won has a preference for blue eyes. Or, better said, she's developing a preference for them. Especially for their taste: "I put the eyeballs in my mouth and swallow them whole, the optic nerves slide down my throat like spaghetti." Hmm. Maybe that's not the right opening for a literary review.

Let's start from the beginning: Ji-won, the first-person narrator and main character of this novel, which is not without reason titled "The Best Thing Are the Eyes," is surrounded by unpleasant men. First of all, there's the father, who leaves the family, who live in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Los Angeles, overnight to live with a younger woman. Then there's Geoffrey, a fellow student who claims to be hyper-woke and progressive, but who ultimately turns out to be an abusive stalker and a terrible nuisance. And then there's George, Ji-won's mother's suddenly appearing new—white, blue-eyed—boyfriend: a misogynistic jerk and lying jerk. An old-school macho who not only cultivates—to put it mildly—very traditional gender roles and fetishizes Asian women, but is also a kind of con artist and fraud. George, portrayed as an arrogant representative of Trump's America, eventually moves in with his new partner and her two daughters at her request, much to the displeasure of Ji-won and Ji-hyun, their younger sister. "Men like him are stupid, naive, and convinced of their own importance (...) He blatantly stares at Ji-hyun and me and all the other women, even though my mother is there; he treats us like objects, not like people."

So there are several problems at once: a mother who unconditionally recognizes men as leaders and who cannot, on her own, free herself from the gender role stereotypes imposed on her (good housewife, submissive partner); a father who is absent and uninterested in his daughters; and the emergence of men who are either racist, sexist, ignorant, deceitful, or all of the above.

It's inevitable that Ji-won, who occasionally has nightmarish visions and daydreams in which violence plays a significant role, develops the theory that "these men are to blame for everything." And at some point, she finally takes action. And, as mentioned, develops an appetite for human eyeballs: "The outer shell is cartilaginous. I push the bullet into my left cheek and bite down with my molars; a pudding-like substance explodes in my mouth."

It's certainly good that literature occasionally makes use of what horror films call "gore": scenes and images "in which injuries and mutilations are presented in large format, color, and detail" (Wikipedia). Even if, as in this novel, it's only on about 20 pages out of over 350. Such a thing is almost unheard of in contemporary German literature, whose target audience seems to be primarily Protestant religious teachers. At the same time, the novel conveys an anti-sexist message: "As a serial killer, Ji-won takes revenge on the male gaze by literally devouring the male gaze." (Südwestrundfunk, (SWR)

And she does so with some enjoyment: "The first eye is easy. It pops out with a wet pop." Eating the second is more difficult: "The oozing blood makes it slippery. I can't get a good grip on it, and I have no choice but to dig it out with my fingernails. I bite down. The eye bursts open in my mouth, and the blood spurts down my throat. I whine like a dog, but I can't help it."

The debut novel by Korean-American Monika Kim, which centers on a young woman who gradually mutates into a serial killer, was a bestseller when it was published in the USA last year. The book has been widely praised as a "feminist horror novel" (New York Times) in which "female rage" is acted out. The publisher Kiepenheuer & Witsch, which has now presented the German translation, is attempting to tap into this trend – apparently with the intention of targeting young women: "Angry 'weird girls,' that is, strange girls, are conquering pop culture. They are the anti-heroines to the discreet, sweet, and pretty vanilla girl, the clean girl, the tradwives. Women who do not conform. 'Weird Girls,' like in the novels of Ottessa Moshfegh.« (SWR) Other female writers to mention include: Alison Rumfitt, Mona Awad, Bora Chung, Lucy Rose.

Judging novels solely by whether the spirit inherent in the narrative (here: feminist social criticism) can be considered progressive or reactionary may be a desirable trend. However, it's also one where, as long as the stuff sells like crazy, something like a minimum literary quality no longer seems to matter. This ignores how one-dimensional the characters Monika Kim, the author, creates here are, and the poor linguistic standard at which she usually writes: "His narrow eyes glare at me angrily." – "One shiver after another runs down my spine. I get goosebumps all over my body." – "She looks at me, tears still clinging to her eyelashes like morning dew." – "Her face was wrinkled like a crumpled piece of paper." – "The warm summer air caresses my skin." – "My heart is pounding." – "A brutal pounding runs through my head." – "Tears roll down my cheeks."

And these are just a few examples of how page after page is filled with the overused language of pulp fiction, producing a kind of literary cotton candy. Who knows, maybe it's also due to the German translation; it's not out of the question. In any case, it's shallow, linguistically simplistic feel-good literature. Including some crooked sentences and unintentional comedy. The narrative follows the pattern of "And then this happened, and then this happened," which becomes tiring after a while. There's no sign of the author's own style or any sense of form here. But never mind, maybe that's normal for the TikTok generation, to which the author of this novel belongs. On the other hand: Who even cares about something like a sense of form in literature these days? Exactly. The film adaptation of the book is, of course, currently in preparation.

Monika Kim: The best thing is the eyes. Translated from English by Jasmin Humburg. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 352 pp., hardcover, €23.