The Ghost Bride – Yangsze Choo

What’s it all about?:

“One evening, my father asked me if I would like to become a ghost bride…”

Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.

Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family’s only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, a traditional ghost marriage is used to placate a restless spirit. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.

After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lim’s handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.

What did I think?:

My sister and fellow blogger Chrissi Reads recommended and gave this book to me and I was attracted to it immediately. Not only is the cover absolutely stunning but I loved the synopsis – a little bit historical, Asian fiction with a dusting of the paranormal, sounds like my perfect book! And it was, on so many levels. Our main character is a seventeen girl called Li Lan who lives in 19th Century Malaya (now Malaysia) under British rule as a member of the upper class. Sadly, there is nothing upper class about her situation. She has lost her mother under strange circumstances and her father in his grief has become addicted to his opium pipe and is slowly disappearing from her also. They live in a large, beautiful house that is now slowly crumbling away due to lack of maintenance and her prospects, especially for marriage look entirely gloomy. Her only comfort is her old Amah who has been with her since her birth but even she, fiesty though she is, cannot hope to influence her father as he slides further and further into addiction.

One day, her father calls Li Lan in and mentions that he has had an interesting offer from the rich Lim family concerning a match for her. The unfortunate thing is that the bridegroom to be is their dead son, Lim Tiang Ching. Yes, you read right. Dead. Her father says that he instantly refused the proposal but he worries as at least it would have meant that Li Lan would have been provided for for the rest of her life. Li Lan is horrified but agrees to just pay a visit to the Lim household as a courtesy. On arriving, she is stunned by the magnificence of the house, the surroundings, the food she is offered and the servants who cater to her every whim. She also finds something she was not expecting – to fall in love. No, not with the dead son, with a very much alive cousin and heir-to-be, Tian Bei. After meeting him, albeit briefly, she decides there is no way that she could ever become the wife of a dead man, especially one so repulsive as Lim Tiang Ching who begins to invade her nightly dreams, insisting that she should be his wife.

Li Lan continues to refuse him – it’s just a dream, right? However, he becomes angrier and more harassing on each visit and soon she becomes drawn into the spirit world, leaving her shell of a body behind as a living ghost. Stuck between two worlds Li Lan meets with a kindly and enigmatic guide, Er Lang who sends her to The Plains Of The Dead, a hideous place where spirits wander before being judged. This harks back to Chinese mythology where after death, spirits must go to the Courts of Hell to atone and be punished for any sins committed. After an indeterminate amount of time, depending on the severity of the sin, they then enter the reincarnation stage where they are born again to a life of comfort or poverty depending on how they behaved in their past life.

“I had seen some of the painted hell scrolls that depicted the gruesome fates awaiting sinners. There were people being boiled in oil or sawed in half by horse and ox-headed demons. Others were forced to climb mountains of knives or were pounded into powder by enormous mallets. Gossips had their tongues ripped out, hypocrites and tomb robbers were disemboweled. Unfilial children were frozen in ice. The worst was the lake of blood into which suicides and women who had died in childbirth or aborted their children were consigned.”

When I read up a bit further on this superstition, I also found that one could be punished for the sin of “misusing books,” which I found amusing and fascinating! See guys, I told you dog-earing was wrong! Anyway, Li Lan must carry out various tasks in the spirit world whilst trying to avoid demons with ox for heads and corrupt Hell officials who are baying for her blood. Li Lan learns so much about herself and the mystery of her family as she navigates her way through the dangerous Plains but she must hurry. If she does not complete her tasks within a timely fashion, the fragile link between her body and the spirit world will be severed and she will be trapped there forever.

Diyu – a version of hell in traditional Chinese culture, during the Tang dynasty this increased to 134 hells with 18 different levels of pain and torture with Levels known as the Chamber of Tongue Ripping, The Chamber of Scissors, The Chamber of Iron Cycads, the Chamber of Mirror, Chamber of Steamer, Forest of Copper Column, Mountain of Knives, the Hill of Ice, Cauldron of Boiling Oil, Chamber of Ox, Chamber of Rock, Chamber of Pounding, Pool of Blood, Town of Suicide, Chamber of Dismemberment, Mountain of Flames, Yard of Stone Mill, and Chamber of Saw.

Source: http://listverse.com/2013/09/04/10-fascinating-descriptions-of-hell/

Hmm, not a place I fancy visiting any time soon.

I began this book with such high expectations and I’m delighted to report that what I read exceeded those. Yangsze Choo has woven a mesmerising tale which is beautifully descriptive in its historical detail and brilliant in plot execution. I love learning new things about different cultures and this was one of those books which explains everything so simply to the reader without ever feeling patronising. I found all the superstitions and folklores fascinating, especially the burning of offerings to appease the “hungry ghosts.” I can’t believe that this is the authors debut novel, the writing is so accomplished and in no way amateur. The whole book is fresh, exciting and like nothing I have ever read before, even the ending (although surprising) is totally unexpected and original. I can’t wait to see what she does next, I know I’ll be snapping it up immediately.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

On A Chinese Screen – W. Somerset Maugham

What’s it all about?:

Maugham spent the winter months of 1919 travelling fifteen hundred miles up the Yangtze river. Always more interested in people than places, he noted down acute and finely crafted sketches of those he met on countless scraps of paper. In the resulting collection we encounter Western missionaries, army officers and company managers who are culturally out of their depth in the immensity of the Chinese civilisation. Maugham keenly observes, and gently ridicules, their dogged and oblivious persistence with the life they know.

What did I think?:

This short book reads more like a series of journal entries than anything else, noting the differences in Chinese society at that time and how Westerners tend to cope with it. These are a series of snapshots into different individuals that could have been sketches for stories themselves. I’ve only ever read one other Maugham book (Christmas Holiday) which I loved, but I have to admit, I didn’t really get on with this book at all. On finishing it, I feel slightly confused over what it was all about, and the only entries I can remember vividly are the ones where he talks about the Chinese labourers or “coolies” as they were known at that time. When he talks about the loads that they carry, and the work that they carry out, I found it quite moving and probably would have preferred to read more about that than missionaries or pompous army officers, no matter how ridiculous he made them.

I’m definitely going to read more by Maugham, I have Of Human Bondage coming up fairly shortly and am looking forward to it, but I’m afraid this book wasn’t for me. The slightly generous rating I have given it is based on the strength of Maugham’s writing and the beauty of his descriptions.

Would I recommend it?:

Probably not.

Star rating (out of 5):

Big Breasts and Wide Hips – Mo Yan

What’s it all about?:

In a country where men dominate, this epic novel is first and foremost about women. As the title implies, the female body serves as the book’s most important image and metaphor. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900. Married at 17 into the Shangguan family, she has nine children, only one of whom is a boy, the narrator of the book, a spoiled and ineffectual child who stands in stark contrast to his eight strong and forceful female siblings. Mother, a survivor, is the quintessential strong woman, who risks her life to save the lives of several of her children and grandchildren. The writing is full of life–picturesque, bawdy, shocking, imaginative. Each of the seven chapters represents a different time period, from the end of the Qing dynasty up through the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the civil war, the Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao years.

What did I think?:

This book can be described as a quick history of China’s more violent and turbulent years during one generation which is seen through the eyes of one boy, brought up as the only male amongst eight sisters, and he is completely obsessed with breasts. But not in the usual manner – he constantly craves his mothers milk after attempts to wean him off fails dismally. And there are a lot of breast references, almost every page has something about them or the nipple area in general! This induced much sighing and eye-rolling from me, I’m afraid – it just got a bit boring, and yet should have been empowering. Importantly, I do think it’s also a feminist novel, due to the strength portrayed by the women in the story, namely Mother and the eight sisters as the entire family suffers through deaths, tortures, beatings and betrayals. There are some pretty powerful scenes here, the imagery of which will be fixed in my imagination for a while, I think. It is interesting to note that although this book won a very prestigious prize, it failed on the “morality” stakes and was banned in China.

I’ve got to admit, I found this book a bit of a roller-coaster ride. It started off quite slow but I started to get into it after about 100 pages, then it tailed off again, then picked up, then tailed off yet again. I have never been swayed in my opinion so much before this novel, and it is probably testament to the brilliance of the writing that I stuck with it until the end. The characters themselves are not really drawn with much depth although they have the potential to be incredibly interesting (I’m thinking of the “kick-ass” mother here).  Jintong, our narrator and male child, comes across as spoilt, weak, and incredibly disturbed, however there seems to be a bit of a theme of madness in the story, perhaps our author is suggesting too many hardships does send people over the edge? The spiritual elements of the story, including the “Bird Fairy” and the “Fox Fairy” left me a bit puzzled also, as I didn’t see a real need for them and did not feel they enhanced the narrative in any way.

Best bits? The writing, most definitely. I cannot deny that it was beautifully written, and there always seemed to be “something happening,” so the pacing was perfect. In this way, I can kind of see why the author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012 and I don’t regret having read it.

Would I recommend it?:

Not sure.

Star rating (out of 5):