Walking Practice

I know this book explores queerness and gender issues, but as an autistic person I maaaassively related.
The feeling of constantly having to control and monitor your body, it’s positioning, movements and what it does, breaking, moulding yourself and folding yourself in ways that feel unnatural and only satisfactory to others. Having to rehearse and fit in to tightly restricted roles that feel completely arbitrary and nonsensical, and pretending those rules make any objective sense. Feeling unsafe and completely unable to reveal your true self in relationships…. hating yourself and feeling like an ugly alien outsider. It all hit very hard.

It was extremely gross and also hilarious in parts, and very brutal in exposing what ultimately show more is human cruelty. show less

The debut novel of a South Korean illustrator, recently translated and published in English, and one of four winners of the Otherwise Award this year. The narrator is an alien living in Seoul who must concentrate on presenting a human appearance, or they’re liable to sprout arms and legs and eyes in odd places. They enjoy dating people online, arranging to meet them at home for sex and then, well, eating them. Yes, the narrator presents as both male and female during the story, and the title refers in part to the different gaits required to pass as each gender.

The prose tries to maintain a chatty tone, which I found grating. I know almost nothing about contemporary Korean literature, so I’ve no idea if it’s a popular style there show more (although I recall something similar in Greek Lessons by last year's Nobel laureate Han Kang when I read it earlier this year). I’ve read enough translated fiction, and even fiction in its original language and then translated into English (Swedish and French fiction, mostly) to know there’s a difference between translation and transliteration - and sometimes the latter often fails to take culture into account, both the original and that of the language being translated into (the same occurs all the fucking time from UK to US English, of course). The English translation of Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers didn't work for me because it relied too much on American idioms, and I don’t expect to find them in a Russian novel. Larsson’s Millennium trilogy was translated by an American who’d lived and studied in Denmark but was unfamiliar with many elements of Swedish culture and society. It showed. On the other hand, the English subtitles for a Swedish detective show I watched recently failed completely to transliterate a common Swedish expression because there was no obvious way to do so and keep the original sense.

Then there’s the writing system… Korean, of course, has its own writing system, Hangeul, and it’s very different to the variations on the Latin alphabet used by many other languages. An afterword by the translator points out the difficulties she had representing the author’s Hangeul orthographic tricks in the Latin alphabet. The nearest she could manage was through varying the kerning - which, as she admits to worrying about, does indeed look like bad typography or misprints.

Obviously, there’s more to Walking Practice than the tone of its narrative and the fact the English reading experience is a poor copy of the Korean reading experience. There’s a cinematic feel to the story, but unlike a movie there’s no story arc or resolution. Korean cinema doesn’t follow Hollywood story paradigms - it’s something to do with cats at present, isn’t it? - which is a good thing, and I’ve seen many excellent South Korean films. In future, I think, I’ll stick to their movies. show less

Korean artist Doli Min makes their author debut in a combo book of strange proportions. A shapeshifting alien, "Mumu," recounts to the reader their woes and struggles in finding food on Earth (that delicious homo sapien steak) due to the many strange expectations we place on genders and sexes when we interact. The title comes from Mumu having to practice how to "walk like a woman/man/other" in Earth's much stronger gravity.
CONTENT WARNINGS:
- Detailed Sex That Doesn't Feel Like Erotica, usually followed by descriptions of eating/preparing a human for consumption.
- Murder, and Detailed Gore About Preparing Bodies for Eating
- Non-Sexual Descriptions of Naked Human Bodies, Sexual Organs and such
- Detailed Talks About Society Expectations show more of The Sexes/Genders
- Weird Formatting That Will Make a Bibliophile/Editor Cry
- Direct Talk of Body Fluids (hard to explain in a glib fashion. Mumu discusses his bathroom habits like he's discussing the news is what I mean).

I found this tiny novella disgusting, unsettling, and at times hard to read in the literal. There are points where the formatting of the text changes (increased spacing and random capital letters) to indicate when Mumu is "relaxed", making it physically hard to read. However, I also found this novella quite insightful and curious when it made observations about the behaviors and expectations of people when it comes to sex, gender, being out in public, etc. I suffer with anxiety and found several points where I agreed with Mumu about humanity being quite weird.
Plus, the book features multiple pages of Dolki Min's trippy artwork, and those were beautiful.

Overall, a memorable read, and I'm happy to have given it a go. But I don't see myself picking it up again or adding it to my library. show less

This book is weird and totally disgusting. It's about a shapeshifting alien who hunts people by hooking up with them and then eating them. It's disturbing, but it's also a commentary on queerness, gender, etc. It feels like a meditation on how it feels to exist in our bodies. I didn't particularly like the alien protagonist, I'm not sure I was supposed to. They aren't human, don't act human, and don't care for humans at all even though they express wanting to be loved. Overall, it's quite dismal and I'm not sure what to make of the ending. Eventually the alien hooks up with another alien and dies. It happens quite abruptly, and I guess it's interesting that in the end the alien actually wasn't alone on Earth all this time, but even so, show more it was that other alien that ultimately kills/killed them.Overall, this book is weird and definitely an acquired taste. I wouldn't say I loved it, but I think there are some interesting musings here. I didn't love a lot of the things the alien had to say about sex and gender and people, but I get what it was going for. It's certainly an interesting (and quick) read. show less

This book definitely wasn't for me. It delves far deeper into sex than I care for. But despite that, it was a Darkly hilarious story. The audiobook narrator really pulled the whole thing together as well, bringing the character to life.

Honestly, as much as I expected the numerous sexual encounters to be the downfall of the book for me, I think it was actually the long-winded areas where the character his a depressed episode and complained that really drew out this book. I understand having it a bit, but with the book already so short, it just dragged the story out.

It had such a great start but became repetitive quickly. I skimmed from the halfway point until the last encounter.

I did like the detailed description of the aliens feelings. I laughed while reading about walking up the 60 flights of stairs. I, too, have felt that way about walking up several flights.

If I come across another book by the author, I will look at it. This is their first book, so I expect more in the future.

Dear reader
If you want to read about an amorphous blob like monster who can mould themselves into human shapes so they can hunt and eat humans whilst contemplating humanity in between meals, then I recommend Someone You Can Build A Nest In.

This was a crude, repetitive story. The alien just finds ONS to bang and then decapitate like a praying mantis. The commentary on humans, mainly focusing on gender, wasn’t anything amazing. This book, despite being so short took me forever to read because I hated it.