- Publisher: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS
- Publication date: 03/14/2023
- Pages: 176
- ISBN: 9780063258617
- Author: Dolki Min
- Translated by: Victoria Caudle
Walking Practice by Dolki Min (translated from the Korean by Victoria Caudle) is a strange little book. After their world was destroyed, an alien has landed on Earth with no source of fuel to escape. They’ve spent the last several years learning to adapt and survive on the Earth. They literally adapt as they have shape-shifting abilities, and they use it to hunt their favorite prey, horny humans. They use various dating apps to hook up with their prey, then shift into hunky men or voluptuous women to seduce and then eat their dates.
This may sound like a horror novel, but it is really more of an introspective journey with the alien. It is told from a first person perspective and details the troubles the creature has in walking in the higher gravity of Earth, especially when it can only use two legs instead of its more normal three. Believe it or not, but a novel with an alien who bites the heads off its victims actually has quite a bit of humor and quite a bit of heart. The alien sometimes struggles with the morality of its actions as well as walking in high heels.
The translation by Victoria Caudle seems first rate, but I have not read the original Korean. There are some sections where the original version uses the spacing and other visual clues to help imply the creatures internal mental state. Caudle has found a way to translate this using spacing and symbols and such in the English language version. I think she was successful in this, but again, I don’t know how it was done originally.
Dolki Min does a fabulous job at creating a unique story with a unique narrator. Caudle does a fine job of rendering that story into English. If you speak Korean and have read the original, I would love to hear your take on the translation.
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