By: Pik-Shuen Fung
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 272
Release Date: July 13th, 2021
Publisher: One World
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Summary from Goodreads:
For fans of The Farewell, this graceful and indelible debut about love, grief, and family welcomes you into its pages and invites you to linger, staying with you long after you've closed its covers.
How do you grieve, if your family doesn't talk about feelings?
This is the question the unnamed protagonist of Ghost Forest considers after her father dies. One of the many Hong Kong "astronaut" fathers, he stays there to work, while the rest of the family immigrated to Canada before the 1997 Handover, when the British returned sovereignty over Hong Kong to China.
As she revisits memories of her father through the years, she struggles with unresolved questions and misunderstandings. Turning to her mother and grandmother for answers, she discovers her own life refracted brightly in theirs.
Buoyant, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny, Ghost Forest is a slim novel that envelops the reader in joy and sorrow. Fung writes with a poetic and haunting voice, layering detail and abstraction, weaving memory and oral history to paint a moving portrait of a Chinese-Canadian astronaut family.
Review:
This was a wonderful look into Chinese culture and the characters dealt with life, love and grief. Even though I really enjoyed the story, there were times when the transition between chapters was a little rough and impeded the flow of the story. Still worth the read.
Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review.
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