Six Genre-Bending Books About Parasites, for Lovers of the Movie Parasite – tor.com

I always go into movies blind. Maybe Im a purist or some sort of ass backwards control freak, but I most enjoy movies when I know my reaction to them is purely mine. While I always value a good, critical review, I dont really care to know the Rotten Tomatoes rating or whether it lives up to the book version. Its always more rewarding (and, really, more interesting) to compare a fully formed opinion of my own to everyone elses and see where I fall in the space of media and consumer consensus.

So I walked into Parasite fully expecting a horror movie. Based on the classically opaque trailer and the fact that it played before some other horror movie, my brain filed Parasite away under horror movies in 2019. I, of course, did not get a horror movie. And, reader, it was perfect.

Instead of horror, I got something horrifying, for sure, but so much more exquisite. Have you ever taken a nondescript piece of chocolate from a box that bears no description of what each little square and oval holds, so you have to just go ALL IN and bite into the thing? Because, when all is said and done, you know that, at the very least, you WILL be eating chocolate and thats a net positive. And so you bite into it and, yes, theres the chocolate but then you discover whats underneath and its raspberry nougat or marzipan or just pure truffle (substitute any of these for your favorite chocolate stuffing) and the experience becomes richer, more complex exactly what you were expecting but with added layers of gooey goodness.

Thats how I felt when I saw Parasite.

I wanted to create a list of books that carried the same experience for me. Not just books about parasites, or about class warfare (though who doesnt love a good fungal uprising), but books with epic climaxes, a seething rage just beneath the surface, and healthy servings of existential dread. And here they are:

Careys novel presents, on the surface, a classic sci-fi narrative: it takes place in a world where a parasitic virus turned the worlds population into zombies, and those who remain struggle to find a cure and save humanity. Of course, part of finding that cure is conducting morally questionable experiments on children who have the virus. What no one counts on is the zombie kids being able to intelligently and strategically fight back.

What captivated me the most about Parasite is how the members of the Kim family were just as grotesque as they were sympathetic. There is something admirable about the will to survive, even if it means destroying everything in your path.

Maybe its a stretch to say all the short stories in Her Body And Other Parties are about or involved parasites, but isnt it in the name, after all? One of the definitions of party is a person or people forming one side in an agreement or dispute. In the books case, the parties involved are the body of a woman and some unidentified other. And are they agreeing or disputing? Perhaps a little of both, all the while blurring the lines between whats reality or fantasy.

Parasite feels a little fantastical in much the same way, and portrays the relationship between the Kims and the Parks as both consensual and not. Its never clear who exploits whom and if either party is aware of that tension.

The obvious King novel to include in this list is The Stand, a book entirely about a mutated virus that wipes out humanity and ushers in a biblical apocalypse. And I love The Stand, okay? But Kings most famous works are also his most heavy-handed (and thick enough to stop a bullet). Im partial to the weirder, smaller tomes (clocking in at 332 pages, Geralds Game is basically a novella in King-verse), and this one has a truly genre-bending feel. The entire story is a ghostly cat-and-mouse game, capped with an amazing twist at the end, just like Parasite.

Paul Tremblays A Head Full Of Ghosts is a distinctly modern take on classic demonic possession. What happens when someone appears taken over by demons in the age of deep fakes and reality TV? A Head Full Of Ghosts is a story of unreliable narrators and the modern influence that the court of public opinion holds over everything. It asks as many questions and offers few answers, much like Parasite does. At the end, it leaves readers wondering exactly who is possessing whom. And whats possession if not another form of parasitism?

Did anyone else have dreams of being eaten by sentient plants as a kid? No? Guess it was just me. Semiosis is a story about the natives of a new world draining its colonists of their resources and lives. Except, in the case of SSemiosis, the leeching comes from a shocking and unanticipated source.

Both book and film are undercut with social commentaryenvironmental and classist imperialism.

Moshfeghs novel isnt categorized as horror, but neither is Parasite, and Id make the case that both certainly are. Theres no gore, no zombies, no vampires, no apocalypsebut there is dread, heaps of dread. And monsters, too, if you look hard enough. The monstersthe parasitesarent supernatural, or riddled with some plague. Theyre normal people. Theyre you and me. Theyre us average humans leeching off of other humans in some way. In Moshfeghs novel, as in the film, every interaction, every move, is transactional, and all a ploy to trample other humans and get ahead. Ahead of what, though?

A Starvation Artist by Franz Kafka

In preparation for writing this article, I looked up the etymology of the word parasite because Ive been a linguistics nerd since I won my elementary school spelling bee three years in a row. Turns out that its derived from the Greek for alongside and food, and later eating at anothers table. In Kafkas short story, a man performs a great feat: living without food. But, as his performance continues, the crowds mock him and treat him like a sideshow act. As they lose interest, he withers away, the attention that kept him fed disappearing along with his will to live.

Paranoia by Shirley Jackson

One of my favorite stories by the masterful horror writer, Paranoia is a little known story of the big bad, lurking just around the corner or hidden in a basement, and how one can see the signs, even when no one else can (or carese to believe in them).

Lauren Jackson (LJ) is the marketing/publicity manager at Saga Press and Gallery Books. Her primary areas of interest are true crime, horror, Star Trek, and making spreadsheets. Her sun is in Scorpio with a rising sign in Libra and a moon in Gemini, for which she is seeking professional help. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @alsoknownaslj, or on Hinge if your filters are right.

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Six Genre-Bending Books About Parasites, for Lovers of the Movie Parasite - tor.com