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A review by rosepoints
Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung
5.0
i sobbed while reading this. multiple times. something about it just hit so so hard. i'm korean instead of chinese, but it still resonated so deeply with me. when i read the lines, "why did i remember only his disappointment in me? did i ever get to know who he was becoming? did i try?" i truly felt like fung was lifting out one of my own dilemmas and personal regrets out of my own skull and putting it to paper.
at first, it seems like there's not much to the book. the chapters are short, and on my e-reader, often only one page long. sometimes, the narrator will talk about her grandmother and her mother's stories, indicated by the title, but all together, they weave such a gripping story of a family from hong kong, spread out tangibly through space (their immigration, the flying to and from the hospital) and intangibly through time (generational stories, generational trauma). the story also delves into cultural rifts in the family, particularly between the narrator and the father, and into cultural and universal manifestations of grief.
utterly haunting, could not stop reading this and could not stop thinking about it.
at first, it seems like there's not much to the book. the chapters are short, and on my e-reader, often only one page long. sometimes, the narrator will talk about her grandmother and her mother's stories, indicated by the title, but all together, they weave such a gripping story of a family from hong kong, spread out tangibly through space (their immigration, the flying to and from the hospital) and intangibly through time (generational stories, generational trauma). the story also delves into cultural rifts in the family, particularly between the narrator and the father, and into cultural and universal manifestations of grief.
utterly haunting, could not stop reading this and could not stop thinking about it.