Monika KimThriller · Psychological Horror
Molka
Synopsis
Junyoung has rigged an ordinary Seoul office building with hidden cameras, watching the women who work there without their knowledge. It is a habit that has become an appetite, and the woman it settles on is Dahye, still raw from her sister's drowning and only beginning to feel steady again.
Dahye is dating Hyukjoon, the son of a wealthy media family, and for a while the relationship looks like the good fortune she has been owed. Then footage of her, taken without her consent, starts circulating online along with a wider camera scandal reaching into the city's elite. Hyukjoon leaves. Her parents turn on her. She starts seeing her dead sister in empty rooms.
As the source of the footage traces back toward Junyoung, Dahye stops absorbing the blame and starts working out how to make him answer for it, whatever that costs her.
Molka is Monika Kim's second novel after The Eyes Are the Best Part. It keeps the same register: a horror novel built on a real and ongoing crisis, angry rather than squeamish, with a supernatural thread running under the violence. It is bleak, propulsive reading, more interested in reckoning than in comfort.
How it reads
Prose complexity 7/10
Content warnings (4)
ViolenceStalkingTraumaSexual Content
- Monika Kim's debut book did such a number on me when I read it, that I knew whatever she wrote next would be stunning. Molka does not disappoint. Molka is a South Korean term that refers to hidden cameras. Often these hidden cameras are used for perverse purposes, from public restrooms or sexual activities where the other partner is unaware they are being filmed. As someone who is a long time k-pop fan and saw Burning Sun unfold, I was familiar with certain aspects of this book. Molka, the book, is a peek into these voyeur tendencies told from two POVs. The book opens with Junyoung, an IT tech who spikes on the women's restrooms using Molka. This sets the tone for the remainder of the book. I felt slimy and angry anytime we were reading for his POV. The other view point we get is Dahye, an office worker who is dating a chaebol (the son of a corporate company). Dahye is a victim of the use of molka in two ways and her story made me SO mad. There is also a supernatural element that, for me, really tied the book together. Like 'Eyes,' this book is just as much of a social commentary as it is a horror book. Women everywhere can relate to the how men treat women in this book. How behind doors, men you've trusted, thought better of, etc may not be who they present. That even when women fight back, they are not treated on the same level as their male counterpart and are often punished. In our day and age, this book carries so much weight and that's what I really love about it. Thank you to Kensington Publishing, Netgalley and Monika Kim for an eARC. All thoughts are honest and my own.
- A very interesting take on voyeurism and horror. It left an unpleasant sensation and struck a little real at times. It was well executed and approached the topic with what felt like anger and a push for revenge. More thriller than horror.