Vampires have long fascinated popular imagination. From myth and folklore to their many avatars in novels and movies, these nocturnal creatures have captivated us through the ages. Their journey in popular fiction is believed to have started with Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla, and they became quite well-known figures after the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897. In recent times, books like the Twilight series (2005-2020) and animated films like Hotel Transylvania (2012) have reinterpreted and put a fresh spin on the myth. The Midnight Shift, written by Cheon Seon-Ran and translated from the Korean by Gene Png, situates the age-old vampire myth in contemporary Seoul to create a book that is essentially about loneliness and isolation.

Seon-Ran is the author of the multiple-award-winning A Thousand Blues (translated into English by Chi-Young Kim, 2025), in which a young woman adopts a robot and together they set about rescuing a horse. In The Midnight Shift, Seon-Ran moves her attention to the impact of isolation and loneliness on people cut off from the warmth of meaningful human relationships. Suyeon, a young police detective, feels that there is something suspicious about the suicides at a hospital for the elderly. Due to the absence of proof and her department’s lack of interest in the case, she decides to look closely into the matter herself.

In the course of her investigations, she comes across a woman named Violette, who manages to convince Suyeon that these deaths are murders staged as suicides, and there is a vampire behind them. A vampire-hunter herself, Violette is on the prowl for the perpetrator behind these crimes, and Suyeon and Violette pool their resources to put a stop to the killings.

The action of the novel unfolds from the perspective of three characters: Suyeon, Violette, and Nanju, a nurse in the hospital who is helping the vampire kill his victims. While the sections from Suyeon’s and Nanju’s perspective are mostly set in present-day Seoul with some digressions into their pasts, that of Violette is set entirely in France of 1983, where she grew up as a child adopted by French parents. Through their stories, we get a sense of the people they are, and what drives them to do what they do. At some point in their lives, they have all battled loneliness. In the case of Violette, this stemmed from being an outsider in a country that was her own and yet not her own. Despite a loving home and family, she could make no friends until she came across Lily, a figure who was nothing like the people around her. Nanju and Suyeon, too, have both battled loneliness from a young age and carry those scars even now.

Then there’s the loneliness of the elderly, many of whom are terminally ill and almost all of whom have been left behind by their family. The only exception is Granny Eunshim, whom Suyeon visits regularly despite there being no blood relationship between them. Perhaps because they are both lonely and elderly, their deaths are not taken seriously by the police. As Chantae, another police officer, tells Suyeon, the people are killing themselves because “that’s their only way out”: It’s the lonely, The Midnight Shift stresses, that become the prey of the vampires.

Indeed, the vampires aren’t all and always evil. We meet different vampire figures in the course of the novel, and while one of them is the killer Suyeon is looking for, there are others who live amidst humans peacefully, respecting the agreement drawn between the humans and the vampires years ago. This complex relationship between the humans and the vampires is also reflected in the sapphic romance that runs through the plot in the yearning that exists between Violette and her otherworldly friend Lily.

The figure of the vampire, “breathing in the scent of lonely blood,” is a symbol of the soul-numbing isolation which can turn a person into an automaton, killing off all joy and will to live. When this goes on for a long time, the burden of meaningless life can feel even greater than the fear of ending it—an idea which Seon-Ran braids seamlessly into her book’s vampiric lore. As Violette explains to Suyeon:

People who are driven to the edge of loneliness and solitude don’t cry. They’ve forgotten how, or know their tears would go to waste. They pass their days staring into nothing with soulless eyes. Crying when you are sad, that is, being able to cry, is a testament to the fact that your will to live still exists. People who have lost their will to live don’t cry. Because crying won’t grant them release. If no tears are shed, then no moisture escapes the body. Extra moisture dilutes the blood, just like aged wine. And since they [vampires] are creatures with an inconceivably keen sense of smell, they can discern the scent of lonely blood. (p.115)

While the novel drives home its point of loneliness being the real monster, and the concomitant need for human connections, it falters at the level of creating memorable characters. Violette is the only character that stands out and feels three-dimensional. In contrast—and even though we know something of their pasts, desires, and motives—Nanju and Suyeon don’t really come alive on the page, particularly in the case of the former, who remains a cardboard figure. This feels like a missed opportunity, since Nanju’s shades of grey hold a lot of promise that is never quite realised. Then there’s the pacing of the novel, which sags quite a bit in the middle section. Readers interested in knowing more about the vampires’ histories and their motivations might be dissatisfied, too: Although Seon-Ran gives some time to the backstory, helping the threads of the past and the present converge, this knitting-together seems somewhat hastily done, along with the slightly rushed conclusion.

Loneliness is an epidemic that has been spreading rapidly in South Korea in recent years. The country has been battling an upsurge in “godoksa,” or lonely death, which has become the fate of many middle-aged people in the country. According to a report published in The Guardian, “A 2022 Seoul Institute survey found that 62% of single-person households report experiencing loneliness, while city estimates suggest 130,000 young people suffer from social isolation.” And this is not the case in Korea alone. All over the world, cases of feeling cut off from others, shrinking households, and lack of community and close friends have seen a sharp spike.

In such a world, and despite its deficiencies as a novel, The Midnight Shift’s message feels especially relevant. At one point in its pages, Suyeon comes to realise that the monsters are always lurking in the shadows but it’s possible to stall their entry to our world. Her parting words hold the key to keeping the vampires of loneliness at bay: “The only way we can protect ourselves is by making sure no one is left alone.”