The Old Woman with the Knife is a masterpiece of irony. Not an obvious, grating irony, but rather the genuine, existential and formal irony that is characteristic of works that belong to the realm of ‘literature,’ regardless of the genre (in this case, crime).

     Here is Hornclaw—referred to as ‘Granny’ for reasons of deference. The geographical and chronological aspects of the novel are clearly set: contemporary Korea in the shadow of an economic recession. But sociologically, it is not so clear: this ‘Granny’ uses a knife rather than knitting needles. Hornclaw’s profession seems incompatible with her age and the fragile respectability that this confers. She is a contract killer—or, to use the jargon that seems to have spread throughout society like an invasive plant, she is an ‘operator.’ The writer Gu Byeong-mo herself is like a seasoned contract killer. From the outset, she aims at—and hits—what is the pulsating heart of any good book, namely irony.

     What could be more ironic than a character who specialises in the body, an expert in the vulnerability and mortality of this machine made of muscles, nerves and vital centres, having to face the deterioration of her own body? It is not without irony that time has caught up with someone who is in the business of putting an end to the time allotted to others. Nor is the fact that an expert in the elimination and eradication of others should, in turn, find herself confronted with forgetfulness and the slow erosion of her memory. 

     Time and age have forced Hornclaw to become more introspective, and like a trap that ensnares the animal that wanders into it, the sins she has committed form the basis of her punishment. We can leave aside moral and metaphysical considerations. As a novelist, Gu is not particularly interested in spelling these out in literal terms: it is up to us, if we have the time and the inclination, to do the work. However, we should keep in mind the idea of just desserts, of poetic justice, of judgment passed with a single word.

     With her body feeling the weight of the years, Hornclaw’s past resurfaces and, like a virtuoso clockmaker, Gu sets in motion the complex and perfectly interlocking mechanisms of a story of resurgence and revenge. The first commandment of crime fiction reviews (‘Thou shalt not reveal’) prevents me from saying any more. Suffice it to say that revenge is a sub-species of judgment.

     Judgment is not limited to these solemn forms that I have just mentioned. It proliferates in many different forms and is everywhere. It has infected the corporate world, including the agency where Hornclaw works, where there is relentless evaluation of colleagues and their skills. It affects how Korean society sees itself, or more precisely, how it sees one segment of itself: elderly people. It affects how they are classified and perceived—from undesirable to acceptable, from honorable to useless.

     There is something Kafkaesque about The Old Woman with the Knife, and indeed, Kafka is mentioned in the book. There are echoes of the writer from Prague both in the inescapable inhumanity of Hornclaw's agency, and in Hornclaw's obsession with wrongdoing. But there is also something of the film, Kill Bill. The action scenes, brilliantly executed, are themselves subject to the law of practical judgment: what should be done, and how should it be done? The language is surgically precise, sometimes literally so, but interspersed here and there with evocative observations which take us into a strange and poetic other world. 

     And what of the suspended judgment, the indifference towards the lives and suffering of others that characterizes the ‘operator’? We remember Gromov in Chekhov’s Ward No. 6 exclaiming: “If organic tissue is capable of life it must react to every stimulus. And I do!” And in The Old Woman with the Knife, we read: “a stirring, as faint as a foetus’s first heartbeats, began deep into Hornclaw.” Hornclaw is judged because she belongs to the world of humans.

Translated by Pascale Sutherland

Damien Aubel

Writer (Marest, 2023)

Literary and art critic for Transfuge