Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality: Visceral, dark, gory, ceaselessly surprising, and deeply interesting
Lindsay Wong has written this bizarre and deeply unsettling collection of stories based on the Asian immigrant experience. Completely surreal and unsettling, this novel had me rolling around in my bed in stress and curiosity from the insane twists that were happening. Definitely a multiple-sitting read again, as I've found it personally difficult to draw solid conclusions from the supernatural settings and characters within every doomed plot. No one ends up unscathed in Wong's mix of ancient Chinese myths and contemporary modern experiences, providing her sarcastic and humorous commentary on Chinese history - from the beauty standards, conflicting historical events, gender roles and expectations, and filial piety to name some. Deeply visceral and quite gory at times with the description, I personally enjoy gothic themes of body horror, but may advise those with a weak stomach to tread lightly.
I highly recommend this collection! I'll be including my thoughts on my favourite story below, so watch out for spoilers.
The one that the entire book is named after, Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality definitely has stuck with me even though I read it weeks ago. It tells the past of a flawed woman from centuries old China who achieves immortality through consuming the Night-Blooming Deathlily. Now falling apart and losing fingers and slabs of skin, she is rotting away as she presides over the annual gameshow-esque, televised eating of the deathlillies, where unbelieving socialites and selfish elites snarf down as many of the petals as they can before ultimately bursting blood from their eyesockets and passing away. Shuchan remains the only person to have survived for nearly four hundred years from this flower. In the 1600s, she and her three sisters are in a harem of an important noble. One of them was found to be cheating with a Turkish merchant, condemning all of them to execution. Shuchan manages to choose self-preservation and through rebel forces, survives and becomes the second wife of another noble who is obsessed with finding immortality. She follows him to the forest of the deathlily and is the only one who survives, becoming a national treasure in the 90s. It's the ending of this tale that is the most haunting. During her presiding over the annual festival, Shuchan loses it and begins to perform this grotesque dance, flinging her rotting body around and losing body parts like a pinata. She gets shoved from behind, causing her head to fall off and the last section of the story is how she is conscious of them turning her into a museum exhibit. A wig gets placed on her head, her skin glazed with chemical peel, and during the entire process, she is fully aware and forever will be in her glass cage. It was so bone-chilling to ponder this reality of immortality - the never ending perception of the ever-changing world around you, as your body decays and you become a mere object to display alongside pots and jars of ink unearthed from burial sites.
I highly recommend this collection! I'll be including my thoughts on my favourite story below, so watch out for spoilers.
The one that the entire book is named after, Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality definitely has stuck with me even though I read it weeks ago. It tells the past of a flawed woman from centuries old China who achieves immortality through consuming the Night-Blooming Deathlily. Now falling apart and losing fingers and slabs of skin, she is rotting away as she presides over the annual gameshow-esque, televised eating of the deathlillies, where unbelieving socialites and selfish elites snarf down as many of the petals as they can before ultimately bursting blood from their eyesockets and passing away. Shuchan remains the only person to have survived for nearly four hundred years from this flower. In the 1600s, she and her three sisters are in a harem of an important noble. One of them was found to be cheating with a Turkish merchant, condemning all of them to execution. Shuchan manages to choose self-preservation and through rebel forces, survives and becomes the second wife of another noble who is obsessed with finding immortality. She follows him to the forest of the deathlily and is the only one who survives, becoming a national treasure in the 90s. It's the ending of this tale that is the most haunting. During her presiding over the annual festival, Shuchan loses it and begins to perform this grotesque dance, flinging her rotting body around and losing body parts like a pinata. She gets shoved from behind, causing her head to fall off and the last section of the story is how she is conscious of them turning her into a museum exhibit. A wig gets placed on her head, her skin glazed with chemical peel, and during the entire process, she is fully aware and forever will be in her glass cage. It was so bone-chilling to ponder this reality of immortality - the never ending perception of the ever-changing world around you, as your body decays and you become a mere object to display alongside pots and jars of ink unearthed from burial sites.
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