The Cabinet

DNF @ 10%

Just a series of fake vignettes, supposedly stories out of some Cabinet 13 that someone watches over. I think the stories are supposed to be cultural satire, but I didn't really want to pick it apart. Just not my thing.

There were some amazing thought provoking moments that got punctuated with some extremely unnecessary details about the sensual. I kept questioning why it was there at all since it had no relationship with the topic being discussed. It could have saved itself with the ending but it didn't.


I hope lit fic authors realise that throwing around random scenes about porn, sex, rape, etc doesn't exactly make your book “mature” or “Avant Garde”. It just looks like a child talking about something they have no idea of.

I feel like this book would satisfy a handful of diverse readers: those who are fans of Wes Anderson films; those who find enjoyment in the mundane aspects of the popular anime, Mob Psycho 100; and those who like slice-of-life stories following peculiar individuals, to name a few. The majority of this book follows the everyday life of a curator, of sorts, as he interviews and follows the lives of these symptomers, or people in the early stages of the next evolution of mankind. Think low-level mutants a la Marvel Comics' X-Men.

The best parts of the book come from its relaxed writing style as well as the personality that oozes from the pages. While the narrator/protagonist does not have much characterization, you definitely get a sense of his personality and feelings towards his occupation. The book is funny, thought-provoking, strange, and heartfelt all wrapped in a tight 300 pages. Its concise style makes for an easy read that would befit any setting, from a late night read before bed, to a midday read during lunch, to a late afternoon visit to the park. At some point, you no longer feel like a reader, but instead an observer of these people and how their “symptoms” impact their lives and our protagonist.

Towards the end of the story, there is a semblance of a plot that starts to brew, but it unfortunately does not get enough time to properly offer anything substantial to the story as whole. It would've served the book much better if these plot threads were spread out throughout the book, leading to the appropriate climax that would allow the book to come full circle.

In the end, the positives outweigh the negatives here. The Cabinet is a fun and relaxing read that is sure to find fans as the years go on, and already feels like a classic in the making.

Trust me, you don't know where this one is going. We open with Ludger Sylbaris, the lone survivor of the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee who escaped to Mexico where he posthumously wrote a book about the inhabitants of Saint-Pierre spouting badger tails, or having two penises. Is this early evidence of symptomers or a clue to the raving paranoia of those locked in their own tiny cages?

Symptomers, it's posited, are humanity's next stage, a new species of people who consume gasoline, eat steel, edit their memories, or have trees growing out from them. And they're all there in Cabinet 13 for Deok-Geun to discover. The book moves along in a series of vignettes that linger at the edges of surreal and disaffected. Someone wants to become a cat, someone else spends half a year methodically drinking 12,000 beers, there's a gluttonous episode in a sushi bar and a violent interrogation. But why? It's a mad, mad world.