Reviews

‘Did I ever get to know who he was becoming?’

Family is a difficult knot of people and emotions to untangle and comprehend, even more so when cultural differences enter the mix. Ghost Forest, the debut novel by Pik-Shuen Fung, seems gossamer thin told through sparse vignettes of the narrator and her families lives. The overall patchwork of stories, however, forms a rather gorgeous portrait of a Chinese ‘astronaut family’— a term invented by the Hong Kong mass media. A family with an astronaut father—flying here, flying there.’—as they attempt to process traumas, distance, cultural hurdles and other hardships. I learned a lot of cultural aspects and found much of the difficult dynamic between the sisters raised in Canada and their Chinese parents to be quite interesting. Central to the book is the strained relationship between the narrator and her father, one they both attempt to reconcile when it is nearly too late as the father is dying in the hospital. This quiet novel examines grief and the difficulties in processing it within a family that keeps their feelings hidden beneath the surface, being a rather gorgeous novel with a touching sentimentality though is perhaps a bit too weightless to ever fully land a lasting emotional impact on the reader.

‘With a single line, you can paint the ocean.’

During college, the narrator studies the traditional Chinese style of xieyi painting, a sparse style that Pik-Sheun marvelously recreates in her prose in the novel.

‘They left large areas of the paper blank because they felt empty space was as important as form, that absence was as important as presence. So what did they seek to capture instead? The artist’s spirit.’

There is much attention to the white space on the page, keeping paragraphs short and spaced apart as well as only depicting fragments of life to capture their singular beauty. There is a weightless quality that is breathtaking, though occasionally it feels like the emotions slip away too fast as the sparse nature novel leads you to cover a lot of territory rather quickly.

The cultural rifts between the narrator and her father were quite interesting to learn about. The father worries the daughter is too Western in her actions and emotions, particularly when the narrator decides to tell her father she loves him. He, and her mother, are both taken aback and made uncomfortable by overt displays of emotions, which is a recurring theme about the difficulty in processing grief when nobody talks about it. When asking the older generation about traumas and why they never dealt with them the answer is always ‘we didn’t have time to think about those things back then.’ Generational differences towards mental health and emotional expression are very much an interesting aspect of the novel and she conveys familial complexity with the most delicate of touches.

Pik-Sheun does an excellent job of showing other ways cultural rifts occur between first-generation immigrants and their families back home, but also takes a look at how difficult immigration is on young children. ‘When I was in preschool in Hong Kong, I always got in trouble for being too loud,’ she tells us, ‘all I remember is that, after moving to Canada, every report card said I was too quiet.’ So much of this story is heartbreaking, but it is so very human and love fills the cracks.

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

Ultimately, this is a novel about living life and loving while you have the time. We watch a daughter realize it is too late to truly connect with her father, but their attempts at being at peace during the final days are truly moving as they watch how it changes each other.

’I learned that it is important to be true to yourself. Many people do whatever society tells them to do. They’ve lost themselves. I grew up with Confucian values, and they are limiting. I focused only on work and making a living. But I’m old now. Remember not to lose who you are.’

Being true to who you are also turns into being true to who your family is in the novel. After her father’s death, she questions her living relatives about their lives to try and better know and understand them. These first person accounts of their lives through war, marriage, childbirth and more are scattered throughout the novel, making this a family story more than simply a story of the narrator’s life.

This is a quick and sparse read, but it is highly beautiful nonetheless. The examinations of cultural and generational divides are rather enlightening as it probes at the ways families can feel pushed apart from each other simply through their separate social norms. This seems to be a work of autofiction and I'd be curious as to how much is autobiographical and how much is fiction, particualrly with the tenderness and relatablility in which she details grief. This is a moving portrait of a family processing grief and a call to give love and live for yourself because life is fleeting. A promising debut.

3.5/5

jaclyncrupi's review against another edition

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4.0

A gentle and beautiful rumination on family, love, identity and grief told in vignettes by our unnamed Chinese Canadian protagonist. These short memories accumulate to form a moving and funny portrait of a family split between Hong Kong and Vancouver. This had echoes of Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong I thought.

lostcupofstars's review against another edition

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3.5

There were parts where my interest waned a little, but overall this was a really well written exploration of grief. I kept having to remind myself that this is fiction.