Portable Curiosities takes its name from a travelling freak show and demonstrates Koh's mordant wit and Murakami-esque approach to the absurd. In the futuristic 'Cream Reaper', the protagonist witnesses the rise of a lethal ice cream where, 'the catch is that once you've tasted it, you may have to die'. This Russian Roulette ice cream pillories the foodie movement, food porn, and celebrity chefs like Heston Blumenthal. Similarly absurdist is 'Two', about a man who responds to life's fleetingness by trying to beat it. In his race against time, his son makes 'The Most Irrational, Economically Humiliating Career Choice Possible For this Historical Moment. He had become a poet.' Reminiscent of Yasunari Kawabata's 'One Arm', the narrator of 'The Fantastic Breasts' attends a conference on 'The Difficulties of an Objectified Existence in a Patriarchal World', while in pursuit of the perfect pair of breasts. However, it is the image of the 'middle-aged woman ... found wedged in one of the glass ceilings', in 'Civility Place', that provides the starkest post-feminist commentary.

While many stories reference Japan, 'Sight', with its Malaysian-Chinese characters, best demonstrates Koh's complicated relationship to outsiderness, identity politics, and power. In the meta-narrative of the final story, Julie states, 'The reviewer said my fiction is bland ... I think it's a typo. I think he meant to type "wild".' Julie Koh's fiction is better than wild; it is a savagely brilliant exposé of society's vices.