The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry

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"This then is how I come to stave off death, with nothing but my will for weaponry. And it is how, paradoxically, I find myself housed in a sepulchre of death.
My voice might be weaker but still it cries, ‘I am not ready yet. Not yet.’
Then one day the children come. Among them is Alice."

Anne Berry has written an accomplished tale of two beings entwined: one a ghost, one living a ghostlike existence. The Hungry Ghosts covers lives and time, from war ravished Hong Kong to modern day England and Paris. There are many weavings of individual stories, the impact each entity has on the whole, the complexities and levels every member of any group brings to the mix.

There is always a level of dysfunction in a family, but sometimes that dysfunction is more extreme than ‘average’. Such it is in Alice’s family and she, the youngest daughter and second youngest child, is the scapegoat, not only for her family but for her ghosts. She is haunted, but it comes to be her norm, her family, her true reality, one in which there is no place for her real family.

The writing and language in The Hungry Ghosts is almost ethereal at times, adding its own layering to the complex story being told. The descriptions are textured and highly defined, coloured with lyrical language that hypnotises and draws the reader on, deeper and deeper into the haunting and haunted world of Alice and Lin Shui.

Tragedy and pathos are ever present; darkness, despair and familial injustice; but there is humour and beauty, love and questing, and a final knowing of self that is as poignant as it is satisfying.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book for the lover of ghost stories and the lover of good, well told stories alike. I look forward to Anne Berry’s future books with wonder and expectation.

--- Reviewed by Hannah, Guest