Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality by Lindsay Wong
Review by Lauren Simon, Senior Library Assistant, Central Library
Lindsay Wong’s 2023 short story collection "Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality" is nothing like other immigrant narratives, and it’s nothing like other fairytales. These stories are dark, strange, and sometimes disturbing, but they’re also beautiful and unnervingly funny.
Wong has the exceptional ability to tell a gut-kickingly frank and raw tale in a world populated by ghosts, shapeshifters, demons, and other supernatural horrors. She takes inspiration from Chinese and Western folklore, but magic in these stories is painful, bloody, and visceral; and her characters respond to curses and monsters as real humans experiencing trauma – sometimes with terror, but also with apathy or pragmatism.
The immortal Shuchun’s body slowly rots as she participates in a deadly reality show year after year; Xiang the hot spring ghost is so bored of driving tourists to grizzly deaths that she considers taking up crochet or day trading; and, after their deaths, thirteen-year-old Mei-Chow’s parents helpfully morph into household furniture.
Inevitably, the most monstrous characters in ‘Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality’ are human beings, and the closest we get to happily-ever-after in these stories is survival.