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A novel for those who loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum, The Poisonwood Bible and The Lovely Bones. Raped then murdered in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in 1942, Lin Shui's 'Hungry Ghost' clings tenaciously to life. Holing up in a hospital morgue, which is destined to become a school, just in time she finds a host off whom to feed. It is twelve-year-old Alice Safford, the deeply-troubled daughter of a leading figure in government. The parasitic ghost follows her to her home on the Peak. There, the lethal mix of the two, embroiled in the family's web of dark secrets and desperate lies, unleashes chaos. All this unfolds against a background of colonial unrest, riots, extremes of weather and the countdown to the return of the colony to China. As successive tragedies engulf Alice, her ghostly entourage swells alarmingly. She flees to England, then France, in a bid to escape the past, only to find her portable 'Hungry Ghosts' have accompanied her. It seems the peace she longs for is to prove far more elusive that she could ever have imagined. 'The Hungry Ghosts' is a remarkable tour de force of the imagination, full of instantly memorable characters whose lives intermesh and boil over in a cauldron of domestic mayhem, unleashing unworldly spirits into the troubled air.… (more)
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Presented from several points of view, what makes this tale special is that one
The Hungry Ghost attaches herself to Alice, the unhappy daughter of a senior British official, and is joined by a retinue including the ghost of Alice’s aborted baby, her beloved dog, and a headless canary. Sad, poignant yet compelling, this literary novel is an impressive debut.
There is also the problem of Alice's behaviour. While others might see her as a bit odd but merely inquisitive child, her family sees her as a troublemaker with emotional and mental issues that make their lives difficult. It certainly does not help mattes when Alice becomes haunted by the angry spirit of a young Chinese girl who was raped and murdered by a Japanese soldier about 20 years earlier.
The novel follows Alice and her ghost from her early teens till middle-age. The story is told in small chapters which all have different voices. This allows the reader to see all of the different facets of the events. Alice has a very different view, for example, of a medal ceremony they attended for her father than her mother does. There strong contrasts between the voices makes for a particularly engaging read.
I also found Alice's character to be fascinating. She was bright and interesting, but at the same time terribly insecure - likely due to her family. Her ghost was well-fleshed out as well, and I enjoyed the chapters told from the ghosts perspective. The other characters are hugely flawed, which make them rather interesting, and they place this family beside a less dysfunctional family to further demonstrate the abuses which are heaped on Alice.
There are several important twists in the story which I will not reveal, however I was satisfied with the conclusion. Some got what they deserved, others didn't. This is of course much like real life.
The various first person narratives, from the family and the assortment of ghosts, didn't work for me either, I'm afraid. Nobody thinks or talks in that faux-poetic style, and there were no distinguishable personalities from character to character. Myrtle the mother stood out, if only for being so dreadfully middle class and cold-hearted, and I quite liked Nicola's changing perspective, but otherwise I was unmoved.