Book Reviews

For a story full of apparitions, The Hungry Ghosts (2010, Blue Door, an imprint of HarperCollins, 405 pages) by British author Anne Berry moves at a surprisingly lethargic pace. It may induce unplanned naps, not nightmares.

With problems and emotional scars, many dead-but-not-quite-gone individuals cling to the earthly realm, watching and sometimes interfering in human activities. They're “hungry” in the sense of deep dissatisfaction. “I am unable to accept I have no future. Thus I am static, earthbound, my feet anchored in mud, while my essence, my chi, is being pulled, tugged, drawn towards the ghosts of my ancestors, towards the dominion of death.... This ‘half-death’ does not make for a peaceful spirit.”

The title comes from Chinese superstitions. “For a few weeks in the summer the Chinese believe that hungry ghosts, the ghosts of their dead ancestors, and people who've been murdered, or died at sea, or in a war and haven't had a funeral or been buried properly, will come tearing back to earth. And these ghosts who swarm back down here.... they're not just hungry, they're starving, ravenous even. All the stuff they didn't get in life, like marriage and children and love, and all the money and food and houses and cars, and junk like that, for these few days you see they've just got to have them. You know, like nothing will stand in their way.”

One ghost, that of Lin Shui, a Chinese girl raped and killed by a Japanese soldier during the Second World War in Hong Kong, waits in limbo for a quarter-century before clinging to 12-year-old Alice Safford, the daughter of a British official. “As she listens to echoes of the past, I slide into her and instantly feel my strength returning. I become the scum in her blood. I garland myself with ropes of silver-stranded veins. And in the resonance of each heartbeat I know her every thought, her every memory, her every experience, her every twist and turn of emotion, often before she does, as if they are my own.”

Alice grows up in Hong Kong long before it switches to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. With a mischievous ghost in tow, no wonder her childhood turns turbulent. “She was beset with night terrors, where she roamed the flat in strange trances, sometimes dragging her mattress great distances to find rest.”

In time, more ghosts arrive, notably an aborted baby, a traffic-fatality dog and a cat-chewed canary. When they cause trouble, the blame falls on Alice. “....although I have never caught Alice making mischief we live daily with the consequences of her actions.”

These peculiar ghosts' woes look minor compared to those of Alice, her parents, siblings and neighbors, all living in a prestigious area, the Peak. Family jealousies, secrets and scandals multiply, each prompting more.

Alice suffers abuse from nearly everyone, except her preoccupied father and the mischievous ghosts trailing her. Siblings worsen matters with dubious advice, like this from older sister Nicola, “ ‘Oh, sex is simple. Nothing to it.... You just open your legs and he'll do the rest. Wriggle about a bit, make noises and pretend you're enjoying it. It's easy.’ ”

Finally, Alice leaves home, first seeking refuge with a grandmother in England. Then with the ghosts and emotional turmoil following, Alice vanishes from her family for three decades, even missing her father's funeral. If there's bound to be a reunion, what new turmoil will it bring?

Spanning 65 years, the ambitious plot moves a little too slowly. The ghosts constantly watch and listen, so slow to intercede on Alice's behalf that readers almost forget their presence.

In the background, sometimes affecting the Safford family, political events buffet Hong Kong. Ralph (Alice's father) feels a sense of hopelessness. “I have felt the immense might of China bearing down on me, on this tiny island of Hong Kong. And although this servant of the British Empire stood his ground waving the Union Jack, in reality I know that, like King Canute, trying to halt the rising tide, we never had a chance of holding the colony if China had really wanted to take it.”

Alice's mother, Myrtle, indulges in British arrogance. “And now, as far as I can see, the Chinese are going to do their damnedest to wreck all that we have achieved for them. Oh, they'll skim off the cream, naturally, and take all the credit, while we are made to scurry back to England like whipped dogs. It makes my blood boil just thinking of it.” 

The author advances the tale using many narrators. One character or another steps into that role as each chapter begins. Among them, the ghost of young Lin Shui sees and understands the most.

Born in London in 1956, Berry moved to Hong Kong as a child and knew many of the fictional Alice's haunts. Briefly, she joined the South China Morning Post newspaper before returning to Britain and having a theatre career. The Hungry Ghosts is her first novel.

Compared to more haunting stories of the supernatural, The Hungry Ghosts leaves much to be desired. As a tale about flawed people (and that's everyone), it's much better.

Approval rating: 61 per cent.