One of my favorite books of the year. Beautifully speculative, enlightening and philosophical, worrisome and hopeful.

This was exactly what I like from a short story collection. Original, unique, and pretty weird. Very interested to see what comes next from the author. It is hard to do short stories well, and I rarely like them due to this.

What a fantastic short story collection! Kim Fu is a beautiful writer. I will definitely read more from her in the future. Her prose is so razor-sharp, witty, and deeply profound. The only story that didn't connect with me was the opener, "Pre-Simulation". But overall, I truly enjoyed these 12 stories. "#ClimbingNation", "The Doll", "Bridezilla", "Liddy, First to Fly" were some of the stand-outs. My favorite was "Junebugs". This story deals with domestic violence. Such an important and moving story. Don't let this underrated book pass you by. Excellent work of fiction.

This collection of speculative short fic by Kim Fu is a fun, fast read. She has a polished, lyrical style and a vivid imagination. Each of her twelve stories' premises hooked me and kept me turning pages, but I found that they often ended abruptly. I would have liked a little more space for the landing. Recommended for fans of Karen Russell and George Saunders.

Review published in the speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons on 06/20/2022.


Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu

In spring of 2020, video conferencing apps came of age with COVID-19. One quirk of video calls that wasn’t immediately apparent was self view, which researchers have since identified as a leading cause of Zoom fatigue. [1] We tire when forced to watch ourselves for hours, and we end up asking the current speaker to repeat themselves because we were too busy checking our hair or crooked shirt collar. Sometimes we miss details entirely and message coworkers and classmates afterwards, not wanting to embarrass ourselves by admitting we weren’t paying attention.

Beyond self view on Zoom, what creates these small disconnects in communication, and what are we missing as a result? Kim Fu’s short story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century consists of twelve stories where the strange meets the mundane and examines these questions from multiple angles. (Fu has two previously published novels and one poetry collection, but this is her debut short story collection and her first foray into speculative fiction.)

Fu’s style is tight and visceral, and she brings to life haunting hypothetical possibilities and encounters with the strange with clean prose. Many of the stories in Lesser Known Monsters center on how we interact with technology both real and imagined. In “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867,” a grieving caller convinces a simulation phone operator to see her deceased mother one last time. In “#ClimbingNation,” one of the few stories without speculative elements, a woman visits a memorial for a YouTube-famous college acquaintance, convincing his sister and climbing friends that she was his friend instead of merely a fan. Several of these stories feature suburban children as narrators, such as “The Doll,” where a group of children stumble across a possibly haunted doll formerly owned by a girl who had passed away from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Beyond the horror-tinged “The Doll,” the protagonists of “Liddy, First to Fly” are a group of four girls, one of whom, Liddy, starts growing feathers on her lower legs that resemble “a downy, slimy, just-birthed animal, newly ejected from its mother” (p. 18). The other girls initially assume the wound on her leg is ringworm until they see the feathers. They help Liddy practice jumping in secret from their mothers, because they know adults either won’t see the feathers or will convince themselves the feathers aren’t there.

One adult could have seen what we saw and carried it quietly within her forever. But not four. Four adults have to agree on what happened, agree on the rules. Four adults can talk to each other until reality straightens, until doubt is crushed, until their memories unstitch and reform. (p. 31)

The near-magical ability of adults to rationalize away the strange is a skill the girls, who are only starting to hit their growth spurts, haven’t gained yet. Like the adults in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s childhood classic The Little Prince, to be an adult in Fu’s story is to be closed to possibilities and to not understand the logic of the children’s world. In the children’s minds, the chasm between childhood and adulthood is wide enough that not even the wings would be enough to open the adults’ eyes, an idea that comes back in both “The Doll” and “Do You Remember Candy.”

The adults in Fu’s worlds struggle with technology disrupting both relationships and smaller-scale interpersonal interactions. In “Twenty Hours,” which begins with the compelling opening line of “After I killed my wife, I had twenty hours before her new body finished printing downstairs,” a husband and wife own a printer capable of reprinting new bodies after sudden, accidental deaths (p. 83). Instead of using it as intended (that is, saving it for a disaster or accident), they repeatedly murder each other because they can do so with no consequences except a twenty-hour wait time for a new body. The motif of missed connections returns as the husband reflects on killing his wife, which would sound absurd to his less-fortunate neighbors unable to afford the printer. He ponders where his wife goes in the twenty-hour gap between her death and return and wonders what his wife does alone in between his own deaths. The printer has isolated them from their peers and each other, not unlike how cell phones have led to couples texting other people during dates instead of paying attention to each other.

Through the printer, Fu posits that new technologies both isolate and connect us, and in a similar vein, the previously mentioned “#ClimbingNation” examines parasocial relationships. The term “parasocial interaction” was created in 1956 by Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, psychologists interested in the relationship between TV presenters and their audiences, but the internet has allowed parasocial interactions to proliferate and has generated renewed academic interest. [2] In “#ClimbingNation,” the recently deceased YouTube rock climbing star Travis “had a way of addressing a room full of people and making it feel like he was only talking to you” (p. 56). The narrator April tears up at the memorial as she lies about how she and Travis were college friends, but she soon discovers that he was secretive and kept large parts of himself out of the public eye and even from his friends and family. Travis’s sister Miki mentions two teenage girls who never knew him in person and concludes, “At first, I was going to ask them to leave, but then I thought, who was I to say they didn’t know him just as well as any of us?” (pp. 59-60)

Fu validates the idea that a viewer knows the public figure in a small way, even if it is only the most polished and publicly presentable version of the public figure. April experiences real grief at Travis’s death, enough to make her seek out his memorial for answers about his passing. As social media has become an ever-present force, parasocial relationships have become a fact of modern life, and “#ClimbingNation” presents one possibility of what these relationships will look like as influencers and internet personalities age.

The final story in this collection, “Do You Remember Candy,” is eerily reminiscent of the current coronavirus pandemic and ties together the recurring ideas in this collection nicely. Told in third person from the point of view of a freelance web designer named Allie and her twelve-year-old daughter Jay, “Do You Remember Candy” begins with a day where everyone loses their sense of taste and all food suddenly tastes repulsive for everyone worldwide. In Allie’s world, “the stock markets crash, multibillion-dollar industries collapse, but so much doesn’t change. […] Allie isn’t released from her obligations. […] Clients still expect their designs on time” (p. 199). Both the loss of taste and Allie’s work routine echo the experiences of anyone who has lived through the past two years.

Jay, Allie’s preteen daughter, doesn’t understand why her mother and her friends are so caught up with remembering what food tasted like, leading Allie to conclude that her generation is the last one to understand food.

And Allie realizes Jay will never understand. The people demanding Allie’s services will be gone in a generation. […] The sensuous, life-affirming pleasure upon which whole cultures were built, which caused empires to rise and fall, will die with Allie and her peers. (p. 214)

Similarly, the children of today will never have known a world without video conferencing apps and COVID-19, as the virus is predicted to become endemic. Like the girls in “Liddy, First to Fly” who assume a collective group of adults will refuse to see Liddy’s wings, Jay doesn’t believe her mother was ever capable of feeling the same way as she is, again bringing back the idea of how two people will never fully comprehend each other’s perspectives no matter how close they are and despite technological or magical intervention. Even though the sudden loss of taste was a worldwide event everyone experienced, it makes the disconnect between Allie and her daughter worse and widens the already existing generation gap. Allie will never understand how Jay and her friends don’t miss candy and char siu bao, and Jay will never understand what her mother and her friends miss about food.

Jay dances as it snows outside in the final scene of the story, and she is “the picture of joy” (p. 214). Despite losing the ability to taste food, for Allie at least one of life’s greatest pleasures, the ending is a hopeful one as Jay and Allie adapt and carve out their own niches. Perhaps Fu is remarking that little moments of happiness are possible even when everything has changed for the worse, an optimistic end to this story and this short story collection.

From the surreal masses of june bugs coating an apartment to a runaway bride running towards a sea monster, the mix of technology and fabulism in Fu’s worlds is a fun house mirror or a Zoom self view window onto our world. The stories force us to examine who the real lesser known monsters of the 21st century are. Are the monsters the technologies, winged humans, and haunted dolls? Or are we, the people who live and adapt to the strange, the real monsters? This collection is ideal for reflecting upon the past two pandemic years and for the Internet Age as a whole.

Endnotes:

[1] Bailenson, J. N. (2021). Nonverbal overload: A theoretical argument for the causes of Zoom fatigue. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2(1). DOI: 10.1037/tmb0000030 [return]

[2] Ballantine, P. W., & Martin, B. A. S. (2005). Forming parasocial relationships in online communities. ACR North American Advances, 32. [return]

Kim Fu's Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is a short story collection that blends several genres like science fiction, fantasy, and crime.

I like Fu's style and the way she engages the reader with elements of everyday life but juxtaposes it with an eerie mood or strange turn of events. There isn't one story that I wouldn't reread; there are no skips. It would be difficult to choose a favorite, although I quite liked "Twenty Hours" and "Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867." I also appreciated the ambiguity and the tension Fu created.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys short stories or likes to dabble in speculative fiction.

Fu has created a collection of stories that is poised to be one of the best books of the year. Strange, beautiful and enigmatic; each of the the tales in Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century will stay with you for a long time.

I requested Lesser Known Monsters as background reading for a featured review we ran on BookBrowse in mid-February. This was sent to the publicist at the time it was published.

Review:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/y9280960/lesser-known-monsters-of-the-21st-century#reviews

Beyond the Book:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/btb/index.cfm/ref/y9280960/lesser-known-monsters-of-the-21st-century#btb

I didn’t really find anything to particularly like or dislike about this collection of unrelated short stories.
The debate about the possible dangers of fantasy fulfillment was interesting in “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867” and the insect infestation in “June Bugs” initially had a nice creepy factor that became muted when the story devolved into a tale of domestic abuse. Maybe I was misled by the title. There are no monsters here and the book was just OK for me.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This was book such a surprise--a wonderful surprise! 

Full of slightly macabre and fascinating stories, I was riveted and constantly curious as to what else Kim Fu's mind could whip up. 

Tales of 3D printers that can regrow a spouse that you've killed a few times over, haunted dolls, and legs that start sprouting feathers--Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century was brilliantly done.

One of the best aspects of this is that Fu never seemed to take anything too seriously with these tales. Instead, she wove these stories in the vein of the plausible--even when entirely implausible. As if the reader and the author were both aware of a strange world that already existed. Fu takes for granted that, as a reader, we can follow along with her logic as if it's just another day where the Sandman will come visit. 

A fabulous read that can be picked up and put back down at will without missing a beat.

I absolutely loved some stories in this collection but felt indifferent about others. I was really excited to get into more speculative fiction, the cover art is absolutely mind-bogglingly fantastic, and I’m a sucker for short stories— so maybe I hyped it up too much for myself?

What I will say, however, is that there were so many moments in which I’d read a phrase and pause to chew on it. Like reaaalllyyyy masticate.

My favorite stories: Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867, Time Cubes, Twenty Hours, Bridezilla, Do You Remember Candy

Kim Fu’s “Lesser Known Monsters” Will Soon Be a Well-known Collection
A new short story collection for readers of speculative fiction

In Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Kim Fu explores themes of loss, death, memory, coming-of-age, and domestic violence often through the lens of technological advancement or magical realism. Despite the reoccurrence of themes, each story is completely new and different from its predecessor. Fu gives each of her narrators — male and female, first-person and omniscient — a unique voice that distinguishes each story and demonstrates her breadth as a writer. She even manages to craft a story with no narrator at all (a style I don’t think I’ve seen before)! Impressively, and fittingly, “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867” is a transcript of a conversation between a woman and a simulation operator who may or may not be an AI. As the woman argues with the operator, we learn that she’s lost her mother and carries deep regrets that sharpen her memory. As the first story in this collection, this one had me hooked and ready for more. Having now finished the collection, this opening story remains one of my favorites.
Another standout story for me was “#ClimbingNation.” Since I’m a climber myself, I was really interested to see where this story would go. Like the narrator, I too follow some of the best and most famous climbers from the United States on social media. I even occasionally post my own photos from high up on a rock wall like one of the story’s main characters — although without the following. But aside from providing the foundation for plot, this story actually has little to do with climbing. April, the narrator, finds herself at the wake of a famous climber she might have known in college (but probably didn’t) who she avidly follows on social media. As the story unfolds, it explores what it means to really know another person. When and how do we know someone well? And how does knowing or not knowing another present advantages or consequences?
One of the stories I still can’t stop thinking about is “The Doll,” which opens with a shocking suicide layered on top of an awful tragedy and juxtaposed against the quotidian of suburban adolescence. When a group of kids find a doll in the backyard of neighbor’s house that’s soon to be demolished, they decide to take it. But when each of them has a creepy experience with the doll, they debate how to get rid of it. With this one, Fu explores the line between being haunted by past events and carrying them with us as she asks us to consider how childhood experiences and memories become part of us.
Towards the end of the collection, Fu plays with representing physical sensations. The fact that “Scissors” — a story that describes a sort of BDSM performance piece — made me so uneasy speaks to Fu’s mastery of language and her sharp understanding of human nature. She knows how to get just under the skin. But my favorite in this vein is “Do You Remember Candy?,” which like the first story focuses on loss and memory, making it a perfect bookend to this collection. In this final story, a pandemic has wiped out people’s sense of taste — sound eerily familiar? In Fu’s telling, the lost sense is permanent. While some people — mainly children and adolescents — are able to easily adapt to new ways of eating tasteless food purely for sustenance, many experience the loss on a much more personal level. From here, Fu shows us how memory is an embodiment of experience, and, subsequently, how powerfully bodily experiences can evoke memory. I found it a fascinating exploration of human creativity in the face of significant loss.
While a couple of the stories fell a little flat for me — I’m still not sure what to think of “Bridezilla” — this collection as a whole is excellent as it combines the speculative with reality through good storytelling and keen writing. A couple of stories reminded me slightly of Mariana Enríquez (although much less dark!) and others recalled some stories from Amber Sparks. For readers of speculative fiction or viewers of Black Mirror, I think you’ll enjoy these stories.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for providing me with an advance reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

the perfect anthology of speculative oddities. this really stands out in its strangeness. a kafaesque house, a girl who grows wings as a rite of passage, a insomniac confronts the entity of sleep, a runaway bride encounters a sea creature, a woman desperately tries to recreate the taste of food in a dystopian society flavors can't be felt, and more.

the writing is direct and abrupt which, combined with the stories being relatively short, makes for a impactful presence and a book easy to devour. eerie, haunting and provoking, it's hard to look away.

I’m on record as being a big fan of collections of short fiction. As someone enamored of both beginnings and endings, there’s something wonderfully satisfying about picking up a book that has plenty of both.

Now, there are those who ride hard for anthologies. It’s a proclivity that I understand, to be sure, but don’t quite share. Don’t get me wrong – love a good anthology – but to me, the big winner is always going to be a collection of work by a singular author, even if that means that I’m taking a bit more of a gamble on an individual’s style and substance. But when that gamble pays off? Jackpot.

“Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century” by Kim Fu offers the kind of payout you hope for when picking up a collection by an author with whom you are unfamiliar. So it is with me and Fu’s work – she’s written a couple of novels and this is her first published story collection, but I had never read her work before. Such is the joy of the book critic life – sometimes, you take a swing and see what happens.

In this case, what happened was an engaging, thought-provoking collection of stories. A dozen works of speculative exploration that utilize and subvert genre tropes in equal measure. These are stories that venture into the shadows without fear and travel darkened pathways with resolute boldness. Smart and sharp, riddled with unsettling bleak humor and emotional impact, “Lesser Known Monsters” is a first-rate collection for any fan of speculative fiction.

There are some unsettling love stories – “Sandman” and “June Bugs” both delve into the nature of relationships via some unsuspecting paths. “Twenty Hours” is another one that explores what it actually means to love, and at what point the person you love becomes something else.

Some of the stories take less traditional forms. The collection opens with the enigmatically-titled “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867,” consisting entirely of the transcript between a person seeking to engage with a simulation and the person serving as that simulation’s operator. “In This Fantasy” consists of an unnamed narrator describing a variety of fantasies, viewing themselves as existing in different times and places. And then you’ve got a story like “#ClimbingNation” that doesn’t necessarily fit into our usual idea of speculative fiction, yet still slots in neatly with the rest of them.

Others focus on the imaginative power of children. Stories like “Liddy, First to Fly” and “The Doll” delve into the true capabilities of youth and how different their encounters with the unknown are from those experienced by adult minds conformed by the rigors of a life lived.

The collection’s final story – and perhaps my personal favorite – is “Do You Remember Candy,” a tale of one woman’s efforts to fight back against the feelings of loss that come from a world in which all sense of taste has been lost. “Scissors,” a story of the freedom of submission by way of avant-garde performance art, is another highlight.

Honestly, we’re talking all killer no filler with this one.

There’s a lot to admire about “Lesser Known Monsters,” but one of the most impressive aspects of the collection is its cohesiveness. These stories have their stylistic and tonal differences, but even as they each carve out their own distinct niches, they also cohere in a manner that ties them together beautifully. Even though a number of these stories appeared first in other venues, the book reads as if they were always intended to be a part of this particular whole. There’s none of the jaggedness or rough edges that you sometimes see in single-author collections, even in ones where all the individual work is of high quality. But here, we have something where the pieces fit together, even when they’re pulled from different puzzles.

Fu’s fiction is packed with ideas. Her methods of exploring those ideas are variable – as I said, while I’m comfortable calling this a collection of speculative fiction, not all of these individual stories necessarily fit that description. And that’s a good thing – that variety lends “Lesser Known Monsters” an energy that is all the more robust because of its broad range.

Ultimately, these are stories about relationships, about the connections between people. Some of those connections are real, others are manufactured. Some are healthy, others not so much. Some spring from the realm of the internal, while others are born of external circumstances. But in the end, the ways in which our lives become entangled are centered within the frame.

“Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century” is a marvelous collection of work by a writer of tremendous gifts. These are stories that manage to be both heavy and buoyant at once, stirring up shadows without ever losing sight of the light. Compelling, thoughtful fiction like this would be difficult enough to generate once; doing it a dozen times is a true feat. In the worlds created by Kim Fu, love – in its presence, its absence or both – is inescapable, orbits intersecting and capturing one another.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century was an incredibly unique and captivating collection of short stories. As with most compilations, there were definitely stories I enjoyed more than others, but even the ones I didn’t love as much were interesting and thought provoking. The stories range from realistic to slightly futuristic, with an emphasis on technology in several stories throughout.. Some stories introduce actual creatures while others explore the more monstrous elements of humanity. This book is perfect for anyone who enjoys a little bit of blurred reality and magic in their stories.

Notes about a few of my favorite stories from this compilation (5/12 - see, they’re all good!)

Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007868: felt like I was watching a Black Mirror episode while I read this. Strong start to this compilation of stories and full of emotion.
#climbingnation: loved the unexpected twist at the end.
Twenty Hours: possibly my favorite story. A very interesting premise! Sci-Fi technology, but also explores human emotions and relationships.
Junebugs: creature feature involving an abused woman’s fresh start and a whole of bugs
Do You Remember Candy.: people lose their ability to taste foods. This story is about the memories of foods and the relationships/feelings attached to them.

Thank you so much to Tin House and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. I can’t wait to read more by this author in the future.

I have seen the monster and it is us. In this new collection of stories by Kim Fu provides excellent examples of the horrors of womanhood, of aloneness, of the possible futures we face. These stories are some of the most disturbing and powerful I have read in a long time, and I want to both re-read them all and never read them again. This is a masterful collection that will be studied and read and passed from reader to reader, all of them seeking someone to share it with and to talk about it with.

“Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century”, by Kim Fu is a collection of short stories that at no point shies away from the difficult and complex questions that have plagued humans from the beginning. Think grief. Think connection. Think love. Think lust. But what makes this book sting is the way these emotions and quandaries come up against the technology that is shaping the experience of being alive in the 21st century. Kim Fu writes in an unsentimental voice, and uses precise and incisive language that allows the reader space for their own feelings. The immediacy of the lines is gripping:
“She knew the pinprick-sized location—above the stem of my spine, behind the Cupid’s bow of my upper lip, in the center of my brain—where my soul resided, and took it out with a perfect bull’s-eye shot.”
This aptly summarizes the experience of reading the book.
The opening story, “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867”, is a transcribed conversation between a client and the operator of a futuristic simulation where virtual reality can simulate anything for the client. The story explores the addictive power of living for a couple of hours in a reality where lost loved ones can be recovered. The client and the operator argue about the ethics of allowing people to live briefly in a fantasy where there is no sorrow, and whether or not it is exploitative to enable that to which human beings are so vulnerable. Who wouldn’t want to return to a time where their loved one isn’t gone? It’s extremely tempting to try and live a version of life where the pain can be removed. The story explores what responsibility people have to one another when someone is experiencing intense, and in some cases debilitating, grief.
“But if we – if we advertise that someone can see their dead child again, they can see their village before the war, they can have a version of their life where their family is intact, go back to before it was shattered, they can live one ordinary day without grief…And if they choose to live inside of that fantasy, if they choose to forsake the real world and all its’ sorrows—then we’re the bad guys.”
“Time Cubes” is another speculative story that explores the possibilities of speeding through life— and what would or would not be missed. “Time Cubes” is carried along by the momentum generated by two key elements. First, there is the existence of the time cube, detailed by Fu extremely realistically, where the flick of a switch sends a plant from seed to bloom to death in the span of seconds. The second element is the protagonist, who is identified as a “depressive”. The resulting story gently meditates on what having the power to control life’s speed would mean in the hands of different people. In the hands of the salesman the time cube is a gimmick, being sold at a kiosk in the mall to impressionable children. The climax of the story lies in what the “depressive” will do with it. The ubiquity of depressed peoples in the story is a nod to the millennial ennui and there is a sad beauty in the way that someone who is depressed and experiences feelings of loss of agency, through a time cube, can gain a sense of control.

“20 Hours” dances along a line of speculative ideas in a similar way to “Time Cubes”. The story looks at what a relationship would look like between a husband and wife if they each were able to murder the other with the promise that each would be reborn in twenty hours. The story explores the cyclical ways that people in relationships push each other away, yearn for each other, and are relieved at their return. The difficult moments of marriage and intimate life are brought to light with great clarity in a world where temporarily killing the spouse is an option that allows for a cathartic release. Readers should be prepared to be left gutted by the end.
In “#Climbing Nation”, Fu delves into the ambiguity of the one-way relationships formed by viewers and content creators on social media. It is a chilling tale of bearing witness, set at a funeral populated only by young people. The lack of parents, or extended family/community gives the whole thing a feeling of existing separately from reality. The story is haunting, lonely, and addresses how much can be faked based by the forms projected out into the internet.

In “The Sandman” the book moves away from directly questioning the power of technology and its power into a mystical realm. The main character is missing sleep and love at different moments, and through the unspooling thread of the story the reader is taken along for the journey of what the lack of both can do to a person. The mundane every day and clear way with which the sleeplessness is rendered contrasts excitingly with the mysterious and other worldly appearances of the Sandman. The story is composed of two spaces- the logic bound day-to-day experience of the sleep deprived main character, who haunts her office like a zombie, and the mysterious realm of the night, replete with unexpected visits from the Sandman. There is a sensuality to the dark parts of the story that contrasts with the light parts, which have an arid quality. By the end the two merge quietly into one. Don’t be fooled by the seamless way the prose and plot ties together. This story sticks, in a way that only those who are asleep can know, and those who are awake can never say.

Similar ideas of vanishing certainty are explored in “In this Fantasy”, a vignette style period piece out of the 1800’s, time stamped by antiquated views of single women. There are echoes of ideas like those in Carmen Maria Machado’s “Inventory”, of horizon lines that continue to get farther and farther away. The language continues to be beautiful:

“My head on a pike for this sweet, short, pleasure drenched life?”

The story “Liddy, First to Fly” explores the horizon line that is coming of age, as well as the nature of friendship. Four young female protagonists discover that one of them, Liddy, has sprouted wings. The girls experience the emergence of Liddy’s wings on the playground, a place where they sneak moments of privacy and freedom from the watchful eyes of the adults in their lives. A boy that runs by and makes fun of them, inadvertently popping their magical bubble realistically illustrates how precarious and fleeting these moments really are. Fu deftly combines this enchanted event with plain and grounding details that bring the reader into the scenes. There is a great sense of this balance throughout the collection that makes “Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century” very engaging. Fu also cleverly addresses the doubts that the reader might have about the feasibility of these wings, through the character of Grace, who assesses the science and physics of the wings. A conversation takes place between Liddy and her friend Mags that goes like this:

“Are you scared?” Mags asked. After a beat Liddy replied, “No. It’s weird. It’s like there’s a part of my brain that knows I should be, but I just don’t feel it.”
This is a mirror for what the experience of reading the story holds as well. There is reason to fear the implications of a young girl being given wings with no explanation. But the excitement and potential of the girls is too potent in the story for fear to dominate.

Just like in “Liddy , First to Fly”, children in “The Doll” are rendered with great insight and clarity:
“I was one kind of ghoul: a boy to whom nothing bad had happened, all suffering as unreal as comic book gore. Connor was another: a child to whom many bad things had happened, who relished any story where he was not the victim.”
The children in “The Doll” are trying to understand death. Through their eyes Fu offers a very transparent lens with which to address the incredible gravity of losing people, there one day and gone the next. It is an experience that with age perhaps gets easier to accept, but not to understand. Accessing these questions through a child is an accessible angle with which to tackle a topic that is ultimately insurmountable, while managing the economy of words which is required by the short story form. “The Doll” also addresses the theme of how memories stay with people, follow them, and in some ways, never really leave. This story subtly and delicately renders what being haunted looks and feels like. There are no consequences or stakes, just a presence that ebbs and flows in clarity, ever-present on the periphery.
The collection is admirably diverse in the subject matter that the stories address. There are many highly realized settings and none perhaps more so than the theater stage upon which “Scissors” plays out. There is immediate tension in the character Dee’s restraints, the stage, the audience, and the vulnerability of Dee’s soft body as scissor blades press into her skin. Fu’s precise language can be felt in the bodily sensations of the story as it explores themes of trust and vulnerability, loss of agency, and the sharp truth that in the presence of another person we are never completely in control. The story is reminiscent of Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist” in its examination of the mob mentality, and the mentality of the performer (s) in the face of a crowd, and was also featured in the collection Kink, and may not be safe for work!
Of all the stories in the collection “June Bugs” is the most traditional nod to the genre of short story. A Raymond Carver-like bleak and lonely domesticity combines with the eerie vulnerability of a woman alone in her home that Joyce Carol Oates captures so chillingly. “June Bugs” is a gripping tale of fear and freedom. The hyper realistic presence of the June Bugs beats intensely against the protagonist and in turn the reader. The metaphor of the bugs is skillfully shifted around the story, sometimes symbolic of pervasive anxiety, other times of PTSD, and other times of the inner power that the woman possesses. Fu’s icy prose is unflinching in its depiction of a woman’s journey away from abuse, and all the difficulties along that road, both internal and external.
“Bridezilla” unfurls in a spirit of self-actualization in a much more bizarre and satisfyingly mysterious way. The bride’s consciousness dissolves and becomes one with the natural world’s and in the moment she is liberated from doing the right thing and from being a good or a bad person. She is able to step off the linear conveyor belt, and simply put one foot in front of the other. Elements which will not be spoiled include a sea monster, a dog, and the smiling face of a sailor aboard a ship! What is included and what is omitted is especially important in this story.
The collection closes with “Do You Remember Candy”, which rings of life in the age of the Covid-19 pandemic. The driving element is a loss of taste, and just like in “The Sandman”, there is a fluid movement from the real to unreal. Fu has a deft sense of control as the writing switches between grounded plot points, and thought-provoking speculation about the people living through the unprecedented times of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic:
“The sensuous, life-affirming pleasure upon which whole cultures were built, which caused empires to rise and fall, will die with Allie and her peers.”
“Do You Remember Candy” raises questions of what the effects of all that has been lost in the pandemic will do to a generation of people. As with the rest of the questions begged in the spare and luminous collection of stories that make up “Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century”, the questions raised transcend any possible answers.

I have yet to go wrong with a Tin House title and this was no exception. I really loved this collection of short stories. Like any collection, there were some that stuck with me more than others. What I really enjoyed was the way in which each story creates its own world that feels just adjacent to our own, with a weird quirk to it that sets the story in motion. In one, a normal girl on the brink of puberty, suddenly begins to grow feathers. In another, the whole world loses their sense of taste, making eating terrible and leading one woman to create a method of invoking the lost sense. One of the longest stories in the collection, "June Bugs," is an unsettling look at a woman escaping from a toxic relationship and finding herself in an equally unsettling situation. Through each of these stories, Fu explores relationships, modernity, and what it means to be human.

I look forward to seeing what Fu does next!

Tersely-told speculative tales of the zeitgeist: sexuality, guilt, technology, depression. As a bookseller, I can recognize this book is absolutely not for everyone, but the short stories here shine under the right readership. Fu expertly deals with dark, difficult and complex topics, a master dressmaker knowing exactly where to cut the expensive silk fabric. Out of everything, I most appreciate Fu's restraint -- these stories could have easily ballooned out of a lesser writer's control, but there's few mistakes in this crystalline, gleaming prose. A real winner and an incredible talent.

I was so looking forward to Kim Fu's debut collection, and it doesn't disappoint. Even the smallest detail--for instance, enjoying char siu bao--is rendered so gorgeously that this reader felt as though I were in the story itself. Notwithstanding their more fantastic elements, each of the 12 tales also serve as commentaries on human nature, for better or for worse.