The Ghost Bride in Pick-a-Shelf

May 31, 2020 Sunflower rated it it was amazing

Shelves: e-books, fiction-read-2020

Again a childhood in Malaya including visits to the Haw Par Villa and a familiarity with much of the background made this compulsory reading for me. The words and descriptions are so evocative, even though I lived there many years later, and my knowledge of the Straits Chinese spirit world is limited. Even without this background I think the story stands alone. What's not to like with a heroine who is either brave or foolhardy, depending on your point of view, so much that she is prepared to ent ...more

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Jul 30, 2024 Harold Ogle rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, supernatural, fantasy, santa-clara-county-library, orphan, folklore, romance

Recommendation: a good fairy tale combined with historical fiction.

Critique: This book is pleasingly well-written. Very often when reading a book I am distracted by viewing the text as an editor, copy-editor, and sometimes even as a proofreader. But this book has the sort of rare writing where I could cease noticing the writing and just get absorbed in the characters and plot.

One facet of this writing that particularly impressed me is that I didn't know for certain how the story was going to pla Recommendation: a good fairy tale combined with historical fiction.

Critique: This book is pleasingly well-written. Very often when reading a book I am distracted by viewing the text as an editor, copy-editor, and sometimes even as a proofreader. But this book has the sort of rare writing where I could cease noticing the writing and just get absorbed in the characters and plot.

One facet of this writing that particularly impressed me is that I didn't know for certain how the story was going to play out; a lot of novels broadcast how the conflicts in the book will be resolved, but with The Ghost Bride, while I could see different paths that the story could take, I was never sure which path it would take. That uncertainty is a precious thing, and I remain very impressed by it here.

The story involves a blend of many faith traditions and a variety of folklore that presents an original, synthetic view of the afterlife. Souls inhabit their bodies, but exist discretely from them, and can be separated from the body without death. These souls then exist in a superliminal version of the waking world: a combination of the dream world of the subconscious and the afterlife. This space is occupied by human souls, but also the souls of animals and objects, as well as spirits, monsters, and demons that only exist there. This land of the dead is filled with non-euclidean geometries.

Review: (view spoiler)[Near the end of the 19th century in Malaya, teenaged Li Lan is the only daughter of a Chinese family living in Malacca. The family has fallen on hard times: the mother died long ago of smallpox, which left the father horribly scarred. In his grief, the father gambled the family fortune on a series of bad investments and has become addicted to opium. Li Lan has been raised by as much by the family's amah (maid/housekeeper) and cook as by her father. As an infant, Li Lan was promised in a marriage arranged with the wealthy Lim family to the patriarch's nephew, Tian Bai. But with the many misfortunes, that agreement was not spoken of for years. In that time, the first son of the Lim family, Lim Tian Ching, grows sick and dies. The Lim family offers to pay all of Li Lan's family's debts...if she will agree to become Ching's ghost bride.

A ghost bride was an actual custom, where a woman would be welcomed in as the "wife" of a deceased male. She got to become part of the family in exchange for honoring the memory and performing various rituals for the deceased. But in this novel, it goes a step further, since Ching's soul persists in the land of the dead and he visits her in dreams. She's filled with revulsion at the idea but she dutifully entertains the idea for a while since it would solve her family's financial troubles. While visiting the Lim household, she meets Tian Bai and is instantly attracted to him for all the qualities he has that distinguishes him from his spoiled, vindictive, dead cousin, Ching.

What follows then is a coming-of-age story in which Li Lan gets very sick and finds her soul separated from her body. Not only is she a ghost bride, she has also become a ghost! Much of the book is taken up with her quest to figure out what is happening to her and if there's any way that she can leave the spirit world and the land of the dead to re-enter her body. On the way, she uncovers a number of unpleasant details about all the people in her life and matures a great deal as a result. (hide spoiler)] ...more

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