Name: Ghost Forest
ISBN: 9780593230961

Pik-Shuen Fung

An unforgettable debut that explores love, grief, and forgiveness through the story of a daughter separated from her father by the handover of Hong Kong. In Ghost Forest, the unnamed narrator is the eldest of two daughters who grew up in Vancouver with her mother, away from her father in China, who's now sick. She's twenty-four and realizing she has never told her father that she loves him. The stories and experiences that unfold through his subsequent death and memorialization are lessons and curiosities of intimacy and affection. They are real, raw, and poignant meditations on how life and love can sometimes best be discovered in dying. This is a story of an underrepresented Chinese identity, a transnational identity, one that is neither rootless nor completely uprooted. Told in space and monologue, traveling through present and past, Ghost Forest recounts memories and performs traditions with a weight and tenderness that only family can inspire.

Ghost Forest

azliana aziz

an aching deliberation on the yearning in grief and loss -- packed in a sparse, almost memoir-like 'small' book.

Haritlak Thawikasikam

Family is a topic that I tend to avoid exploring my emotions about or understanding how I feel about it. However, the book caught my attention with the headline, 'How do you grieve if your family doesn't talk about feelings?'

The story partially relates to me in some way, as I lost my father a couple of years ago. He was not the perfect father I had, but who am I to judge someone for their first time being parents? The older I get, the more I find myself understanding or, at the very least, trying to make peace with my parents.

'Sometimes I think about what I would do if my dad were alive today.'

This hits me hard. I may not think much about my dad, but these questions come back to me from time to time. What would happen if? What would we talk about if he were still alive?

Alyanna

“When children want to care for their parents, it’s already too late.”

All I can say is: how intimate, haunting, and relatable (to the extent that I belong in an Asian household, too). 

I wrote a review but it got deleted so I’m sad. I’ll try to write again… but in short this book made me cry many times.

I’m shocked that I’m giving it 5 stars right away but what I loved most about the book is how Fung cohesively (intimately, gently) weaves the generational stories of her family. And the ending still haunts me. I just finished it a few minutes ago so I’m still reeling from the experience.

Honestly I’m biased because I usually love the works of Asian (women) authors, but this is also personally my taste.

More about what I loved: Asian families + dealing with grief. Vibrant lives, characters, stories, worlds. Cantonese proverbs, herbalist medicine, Chinese cuisine/culture. (!!!) Future tellers. Tender, glowy storytelling that transported me to their lives & worlds. Grateful for this painful + truthful + tingly reminder of life & death.

I’m so painfully mindful now about my parents’ relationship with their own parents, and how they deal with grief and show their love.

4.5 
beautiful. great for anyone who loved crying in h-mart.

charisa

short, punchy collection of vignettes exploring grief, love, forgiveness, familial sacrifice, and art! this description of xieyi painting describes the simplicity of the memoir as a whole: “with a single line, you can paint the ocean”.

Anyaconda

I enjoyed this, however it felt a bit disjointed sometimes and not as fluid between chapters. It reminded me a bit of "Crying in Hmart" and I'd recommend it if you enjoyed that novel.

There was a lot between the lines. A lot of unspoken emotion and pain.

3.5 stars ⭐⭐⭐✨

È scritto in maniera particolare e l'ho consumato velocemente nel corso di un lungo viaggio in treno. È stato devastante, anche perché è una tematica che mi tocca sempre nel profondo.

Francesca

A 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 stayed in Hong Kong to work, while the rest of the family immigrated to Vancouver before the 1997 Handover, when the British returned sovereignty over Hong Kong to China. As she revisits memories of her father throughout 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.

A Novel

Fraser Simons

Narrated by the author (very well), the authorial voice is deceptively simple and clean, articulating complex feelings and intricacies in a matter-of-fact way. It’s ethereal at times, despite feeling like nonfiction or autofiction. There is being present in the past, as well as active reflection outside of time, yet within a vignette, which make up the structure of the novel. 

While I was initially a bit put off by the simple prose I came around when it’s clear it’s about memory and mourning, and time becomes malleable. I thought this was often fascinating and moving. It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome and it can be uneven, but I think it’s more than successful; the structural decisions are very smart, in my opinion.

Claudia

real rating: 3.5/5

i like this collection of vignettes. it stands out as a version of its own thing — not quite a novella, not quite a collection of short stories either, but a format that works out quite well for a coming of age/ reconciling with roots story. also a sure fire way to make sure family stories get passed down to the next generation. i’m struggling with a bit of a reading rut too, so this was a light and refreshing read. i almost get pachinko vibes from this — following a family of different generations in canada/hk. 

i have a friend who reads pretty much only reads books she knows the physical surroundings of (e.g. ireland in sally rooney novels) — and this is an experience i’ve only been able to get as i read more in traditional chinese. so being able to visualise the setting here — vancouver’s chinatown, richmond, aberdeen centre, the drive from hk airport + office in kwun tong (typical), doctor’s clinic in central, knowing exactly what snacks they got for dad was really powerful for me. 

other little details: mother’s bad lungs (nod to the TB epidemic in hk during the 60s-70s), learning by imitation in chinese watercolour + fucking up (same girl, same), dealing with stoicism + “we didn’t have time to think about those things” when asking about family history

i wonder if astronaut families will still be a thing during this immigration wave

jiaqi kang

prose poetry! absolutely devastating and very devourable

"Sometimes I think about what I would do if my dad were alive today. I love you, I would say."

Ghost Forest

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