Green Frog by Gina Chung

Green Frog is a series of short stories by Korean American author Gina Chung. They are stories of heartbreak, of family, of relationships that draw from Korean mythology, folklore and tradition. Chung sets the tone for this collection right from the first story How to Eat Your Own Heart – which, as the name suggests, is a series of instructions for cooking your heart when it has been pulled from your chest. Many of the stories that follow take and build on this metaphoric image.

Many of the stories focus on fractious relationships between mothers and daughters but Chung explores a range of relationships. The stories are not all contemporary or naturalistic and it is the more speculative ones that seem to work best. Human Hearts s a story told from the perspective of a young Kumiho (nine-tailed fox) who is given a horrible task by her mother. Attachment Process is a science fiction tale in which families can manage their grief by interacting with a robotic simulacrum of a lost child. Mantis is fractured relationship tale told from the perspective of a praying mantis. And Presence also uses a science fiction premise – the ability to remove and store unwanted memories – to explore responses to trauma.

The shift of tone, narrator and style in Green Frog emphasises rather than overplays the connections that Chung is making. Themes of otherness, processing grief, dealing with trauma, fractious relationships particularly between mothers and their daughters but also between partners and further across extended families pervade all of these stories, creating resonances and reflections and bringing them into a thought provoking and satisfying whole.

Green Frog by Gina Chung

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8.0/10