Micro Review: Pik-Shuen Fung’s 'Ghost Forest'
Nicole Zhao reviews "Ghost Forest"
Ghost Forest is Pik-Shuen Fung’s debut novel. In a series of brief, yet quietly poignant chapters, the narrator reflects on love, grief, and family after her father’s death. As the daughter of an “astronaut father” who spends most of the year working in Hong Kong while she, her mother, and sister live in Canada, the narrator attempts to answer the question, “How do you grieve, if your family doesn’t talk about feelings?”
Micro Review by Nicole Zhao
In Ghost Forest, the narrator excavates memories and oral histories from family members to better understand the father she knew little of: “Why did I remember only his disappointment in me? / Did I ever get to know who he was becoming? Did I try?” (217)
Fung’s prose is matter-of-fact, stoic, and understated. So much is unwritten in the white space of the page, leaving the reader intuiting what’s left unsaid — not unlike the narrator in family conversations.
I was especially struck by painful scenes. Fung’s sparse writing allows the scene’s emotion to speak for itself — with a simple turn of phrase that, on its face, seems bare, but in context, alludes to deep grief.
As much as it’s filled with grief, the novel is also filled with humor, particularly that of immigrant parents’ and grandparents’ stories and observations on life’s absurdities. Ghost Forest is a quick and lovely read that will make you want to call your family (blood or chosen) and ask them all the questions.
Nicole Zhao lives and writes in New York City. Her writing has received support from VONA/Voices and the Sewanee Writers' Conference and has been published in Apogee Journal. Find her online at @nicolegzhao.
You order “Ghost Forest” here.
*Note: Book links are connected to Yu and Me Books’ BookShop affiliate page. If you purchase a book from there, you'll be supporting them