by Sharlene

Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung

Good things come in small packages. Like dim sum. Siu Mai and Har Gow are perfect one or two bite dumplings, any bigger and they just seem a bit too much. 

And in Ghost Forest, the scenes and vignettes, are sometimes just one or two pages. Sometimes not even reaching one page. But they convey so much. 

This is the story of a family that moves from Hong Kong to Canada before the 1997 Handover. The dad remains in Hong Kong to work. He’s known as an “astronaut father”, visiting his family for Lunar New Year. 

A Chinese painting by my grandfather

The story opens with 21 days after the father’s death, and the daughter watches a bird perched on her balcony. She says, “Hi Dad”. That made me think of that huge moth that stayed in our house for a few days after my grandfather’s funeral. Some Chinese people believe that moths are the spirits of your dead loved ones visiting you. And maybe that’s just superstition or us clinging to any little symbol that brings us meaning, but somehow that brought some comfort. 

At 272 pages, this is a short and simply written book, but it’s best if you take your time with it. I tend to be a fast reader, so when reading a book like this, I’m forced to slow down, to take a pause between these segments and reflect on them. 

Ghost Forest is a quiet and soft read but it managed to wring out all these emotions from me via its spare prose and blank space. 

7 Comments

  1. I would never have heard of this – I have just got it on my Kindle as I can’t see it in paperback. Do you to Chinese painting in your family? My nan used to have it as an option at her Chinese school, although I have never done it

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  6. Gosh I am half way through this and have to stop myself from devouring it in one sitting. I don’t usually come across Cantonese characters and I really identified with the family dynamics, even though it is a very different set up to my own, but I’ve never read a book where the culture of the characters is so recognisable. I hope the end doesn’t disappoint, it is beautiful so far and I would love my book group to read this so I can show people “this is what it’s like to be Cantonese”.

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