To the Kennels and Other Stories

South Korea is rotten to the core in this disturbing short story collection from Shirley Jackson Award winner Pyun (The Law of Lines). Each of the eight tales teems with images of decay and neglect, including maggots feasting on a bloated corpse and emaciated, constantly barking canines. It’s a dog-eat-dog world for Pyun’s human characters, too, including the protagonist of “Night Work,” who ekes out a living by day as the watchman for the ancient tombs beneath his village, then spends nights shoring up his family home against an onslaught of insects, rodents, and feral cats. Other motifs include headaches and highways. Both appear in the opener, “The Trip,” which finds an ill-matched couple setting off for a weekend getaway that turns into a marathon trek through unrelenting fog: “If not for the taillights of the car ahead, she would have believed they were driving through hell.” While Pyun delivers some delightful turns of phrase and absurdist humor (as in “Parade,” in which six stampeding elephants escape from a third-rate amusement park), the unrelenting grimness of these stories grows wearying fast. Even strong-stomached readers may be exhausted by this queasy house of horrors. (Oct.)