K-LIT REVIEW Minyoung Kang's 'Plant Lady' gets comfortable with 'cozy horror'

A lush plant shop tucked away in an unassuming residential neighborhood; a lone woman snipping and pruning, enveloped by leaves and shoots she cares for with motherly tenderness; a small cast of ordinary characters each bearing issues the resolution of which promised happy endings; and lastly, the must-have feature — some cats. "Plant Lady" by Minyoung Kang has all the essential ingredients of a typical cozy read. If you disregard the murders, that is.

My advice for this book is to skip the blurb. Do not read it at all. This is coming from someone who sorely regrets scrutinizing the blurb from start to finish before diving into the book. Had I ignored the synopsis of events, the preposterous juxtaposition of a soothing neighborhood plant shop and the gruesome plot that unfolds in it would have been 10 times more impactful. Instead, this book is best approached from the following angles: feminine rage, cozy horror and a fast-paced plot that takes no prisoners.

Start with feminine rage. In her author’s note, Kang explained that she had read too many books in which unnamed women died for no good reason. That is why, in her own work, she wanted “to shake things up, to write a story where women were remembered, set in a world where [they] weren’t always suffering or dying.”

As promised, the suffering and dying in "Plant Lady" happen exclusively to men: men who took women for granted, men who treated women as possessions, men who inflicted violence on women and children. Nasty, rotten criminals who thought they owned the world meet their match when they cross paths with the calm and unflappable Yoohee. The protagonist and proud owner of Plant Shop — that is the shop’s name — always has advice on hand, or a little something more “impactful” should the first option fail.

Given the astounding extent and frequency of gore in the novel, it should have gone without saying that this book is firmly categorized as “horror.” Yet, the novel’s unique traits draw a clear line between itself and traditional books of the genre. Impossibly, "Plant Lady" manages to blend the psychological comfort of cozy fiction with the dopamine rush that horror excels at, carving out a niche in a subcategory of its own: cozy horror.

Korean literature dominates this oxymoronic field. National darling Cho Yeeun’s brand of horror warms as much as chills the heart, as the translated book "Teddy Bears Never Die" demonstrates with its perfect storm of horror, young adult romance and social commentary. Choi Jin-young’s "Hunger" became a social media sensation as readers rushed to share the grotesque yet mesmerizing way she portrays love: through cannibalism.

The way violence is carried out in "Plant Lady" is reminiscent of the gory yet guiltily satisfying deadly justice seen in the works of International Booker Prize nominee Bora Chung. In an interview, Chung had once explained that part of the motivation behind her book "Midnight Timetable" was the fictional realization of violent fantasies against bad actors that would have been quite illegal in the real world.

Like Chung, Kang approaches justice in her fiction with the same bone-crunching, blood-splattering gusto. "Plant Lady" is a summation of all the rage-filled “if onlys” that could never be in real life, where malicious acts slip through the cracks of the law every day.

Though there is no shortage of violence in "Plant Lady," there is surprisingly little by way of thrills and no heart-in-throat moments of suspense at all throughout the novel. This is due largely to the Yoohee's nearly inhuman aplomb and capability quickly convince readers to trust that she will always find her way out of a tight spot. This reassured sense of trust keeps readers in a zone of mental safety no matter which how violently the plot unfolds.

From the start, the narrative of "Plant Lady" sets off on an incline and only goes upward at breakneck speed. Readers aren’t given a single moment to catch their breath over 198 pages as violence, murder and worse whiz past one after the other, powered by pure dopamine. Such pesky things as morality and debates about right and wrong have no place in the novel.

As a result, the reader gets much of the satisfaction of a cat perched on a high branch, observing all the commotion from a distance but wholly unbothered by it. The omnibus structure further lessens the mental burden, ensuring that each chapter starts afresh and is neatly wrapped up at the close. All the while, an unhurried overarching plot trundles along underfoot.

Shanna Tan, the translator whose name graces the covers of many cozy titles, including international hit "Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop," delights with her playful translation of the text. When Yoohee first announces that she would quit her job and start a plant shop in a new part of town, she is asked, “Must you really uproot yourself?” and later on, when contemplating how to handle an infestation of pests, Yoohee decides that she must “nip the issue in the bud.” The book is similarly peppered with subtle plant-related metaphors, deliberate choices that add authenticity and spruce up the English reading experience.

For readers in search of a low-stakes cozy read but who tire of the same repetitive joy-and-rainbows formula, "Plant Lady" is the perfect step out of the comfort zone — just far enough for a whiff of something new, but still firmly rooted in the nurturing soil of literary healing.

"Plant Lady" is available at dbbooks.co.kr.

Faye Leung runs @the_bibliocracy, an Instagram account dedicated to singling out reads for savoring. She regularly posts book reviews and recommendations, and has a particular fondness for Korean literature.