On the surface, Ha Seong-Nan’s stories seem pleasant enough, yet there’s always something disturbing just below the surface, ready to permanently disrupt the characters’ lives. A woman meets her next-door neighbour and loans her a spatula, then starts suffering horrific gaps in her memory. A security guard falls in love with a magician/petty thief, and suffers a life-altering accident. A man, feeling jilted by an unrequited love, becomes obsessed with sorting through his neighbours’ garbage in the belief that it will teach him how to better relate to people. These are some of the captivating, strange stories in Ha’s collection - the latest in the trend of brilliant female Korean authors to appear in English.