Hungry ghosts and an enraged serial killer – either one is enough to satisfy the typical horror plot. But in Kylie Lee Baker’s new novel, Bat Eater And Other Names for Cora Zeng, Cora is being ravaged by both – and, it turns out, much more. Under the novel’s thick surface of blood and gore is a story that unapologetically critiques the illogical prejudices forced upon Asian Americans amid the Covid-19 pandemic. While the book is Baker’s horror debut, it’s evident that her experience with the fantastical and paranormal has equipped her with the skills to be a horror prodigy.
The story takes place in Chinatown, New York, in the early months after Covid-19’s spill into the United States. Cora Zeng is really not cut out for a pandemic. A thorough psychoanalytical report might define her as a woman with self-destructing paranoia and OCD. After having seen her older sister, Delilah, be pushed into an oncoming train by a man veiled in a mask, Cora is trying to move on and create an identity for herself that doesn’t consist of being her sister’s shadow. She tries not to remember the man’s white-spider hands, her sister’s beautiful face unattached to her body, or the words – “Bat Eater” – that punctuated her death. She is doing everything she’s supposed to – working as a crime scene cleaner to pay the bills, attending church with her American Aunt Lois, entertaining her Chinese Auntie Zeng, who warns Cora about the Hungry Ghost Festival, the month when the gates of hell open and neglected ghosts come to feast.
But her wishes to escape her sister’s death and live a life of normalcy remain unanswered when a slew of murders in Chinatown reveal an unsettling pattern. East-Asian women are being targeted in gruesome murders, the kind that strips a person of their humanity. And each crime scene is accompanied by brutalized bats. As this revelation settles heavily onto Cora, she starts noticing things amiss within her home, and the loose thread of her sanity pulls taut:
Cora has been misremembering things lately. She thought she bought a loaf of bread last Tuesday, but on Wednesday morning her bread box was empty. The week before, she gave a purpose to each and every one of her dozen eggs, but by nightfall, she was one short and her plans were ruined. Delilah always said Cora was the good kind of crazy, the kind that didn’t hurt anyone, that did good things but just too much of them. But now Cora has forgotten something, has gaps in her memory, empty holes in the grout of her brain where something used to be, and that doesn’t feel like the good kind of crazy anymore.
Forced to confront the monsters of the world (and she swore the world was mostly good); forced to question whether her Auntie’s hungry ghosts could be more than just an old folktale (and she never believed in those, did she?), Cora’s fragile comfort shatters.
Kylie Lee Baker’s writing style exhibits a complexity that disproves the stereotypes of the horror genre. She seamlessly intertwines the morbidly poetic realities of the situation with Cora’s blunt inner monologue. She inserts nightmaric seeds into the minds of her readers, but soothes the terror with heartwarming relationships. And through the lens of Cora’s mind, Baker brilliantly represents the harsh truth of how Asian Americans were treated during the pandemic. After all, what sense does it make that someone like Cora, who ritualistically double-masks and decontaminates, could be blamed for the pandemic?
Perhaps the most impressive feat of Bat Eater And Other Names For Cora Zeng is its loyalty to realism despite such disproportionately unlikely circumstances. Pandemics, murders, and ghosts don’t offer platitudes or closure, so neither does Baker. While the story’s writing style could be interpreted as unnecessarily cruel and Cora could be labeled as too rooted in her mind, Baker seems to have known exactly what kind of book she wanted to write, and those theoretical critiques only make the story feel more complete.
This book breaks boundaries for a paranormal horror novel by being the thought-provoking, society-shaming powerhouse that it is. Alone, a character as complicated and nuanced as Cora is enticing, but joined with an addictingly terrifying plot and all-too-relevant message, the novel handily earns its place as a well-rounded addition to the horror genre.
Shaylee Geary is a student located in Orange County with a passion for writing.
Orange County Review of Books 