REVIEW: The Hole (book) by Hye-young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

The Hole is a Korean psychological horror/thriller novel. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Oghi wakes up from a coma after a car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and disfigured. The only person left in his life to care for him, since he has no other family, is his mother-in-law. She hires an additional caretaker for him, and he also has a physical therapist, although he doesn't see them as often as he maybe should. 

All Oghi can do is lay there, try to communicate his needs (he can't speak intelligibly, although he's eventually able to write a bit), and think about the past. Initially, his mother-in-law cares for him reasonably well, but as time goes on, something changes. Oghi notices that she's digging holes in the backyard, uprooting his wife's beloved garden. He also finds himself more and more neglected.

The back of the book calls this "Misery meets The Vegetarian." I haven't read The Vegetarian, but as far as the Misery comparison goes, the main thing the two works have in common is that they both feature a main character who is absolutely at the mercy of someone who increasingly doesn't mean them well. That said, Oghi's mother-in-law is more subtly broken than Annie Wilkes and is never entirely presented as a villain.

Oghi is initially presented as a loving husband who is struggling to deal with both the loss of his wife and the massive changes that his paralysis has necessitated in his daily life. As the story progresses, readers learn that things aren't quite so black and white. Oghi, his wife, and his wife's mother all have more to them than readers are initially told, and it's eventually apparent that there are other stories going on here besides Oghi's experiences after the car accident.

I went into this expecting it to be horror and, although there are aspects of horror in Oghi's experiences and his relationship with his mother-in-law, this is more psychological fiction. There were layers here that would likely require a reread to properly process, although even then I'm sure there are aspects I'd miss, not having enough knowledge of Korean culture. This definitely stuck around in my thoughts, although, in the end, I wasn't really sure what to think about the whole.