The Crustacean

For fans of My Dark Vanessa and Acts of Desperation, THE CRUSTACEAN is a Korean high schooler's response to Lolita

"When I was 13 I knew nothing about anything.
I only cared about love.
And the older man, who I thought I fell in love with, never told me he was divorced.
I made that up on my own."

Chichirim is a plain 13-year-old girl. An ordinary, misunderstood, lonely seventh-grader. A girl with a terrible secret.

Her dad is worse than useless. And her mum spends all her days tattooing thick ugly eyebrows on old women.
Her parents forget her birthday and her sister hates them so much she wishes they were dead.
Chichirim does bad things at school. And still, no one cares.

Until, one day, an older man picks her up on the side of the road.
He tells her she is pretty.
Her tells her what to do.

Underneath her hard outer shell, her softness is being exploited and destroyed by the people she trusts and loves the most.

"I want to come back as a crab. A crab's skin is made of bone and the flesh is inside the bone. But we're the opposite. We have bone inside flesh."

THE CRUSTACEAN is an intricately crafted novella exploring memory, exploitation, and the lasting effects of adult abuse and betrayal, for readers of My Dark Vanessa and Tampa.

Review

'THE CRUSTACEAN isn't a novel; it's an obsession. The narrative voice of its protagonist ate me alive. A raw, brave missive from the abyss, told slant through the wryly comedic lens that is so necessary for survival. I would kill and die for this book.' -- Alissa Nutting ― author of Tampa

About the Author

Jang Jinyeong made her literary debut in 2019 by winning the Jamobook New Writer's Award. She is the author of the short story collection Only If I Make Up My Mind and the novel My Hobby is Private Life.