Book description
A novel for those who loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum, The
Poisonwood Bible and The Lovely Bones.
Raped then murdered in Japanese occupied Hong Kong, 1942, Lin Shui's
'Hungry Ghost' clings tenaciously to life. Holing up in a hospital
morgue, destined to become a school, just in time she finds a host off
whom to feed. It is 12-year-old Alice Safford, the deeply-troubled
daughter of a leading figure in government. The parasitic ghost follows
her to her home on the Peak. There, the lethal mix of the two, embroiled
in the family's web of dark secrets and desperate lies, unleashes chaos.
All this unfolds against a background of colonial unrest, riots,
extremes of weather and the countdown to the return of the colony to
China. As successive tragedies engulf Alice, her ghostly entourage
swells alarmingly. She flees to England, then France, in a bid to escape
the past, only to find her portable 'Hungry Ghosts' have accompanied
her. It seems the peace she longs for is to prove far more elusive that
she could ever have imagined.
The Hungy Ghosts is a remarkable tour-de-force of the imagination, full
of instantly memorable characters whose lives intermesh and boil over in
a cauldron of domestic mayhem, unleashing unworldly spirits into the
troubled air. ' [A] stunning debut. A schoolgirl in Hong Kong is
haunted by the ghost of a murdered Chinese girl in this story of broken
family, and its hidden secrets and lies.' Woman and Home
“A stunning debut…Epic in scope and voice…so skilfully crafted, and the
writing so elegant, it's hard to believe it is a first novel.” The Globe
and Mail
'[A] brilliant, brittle portrayal of colonial Hong Kong and vividly
cruel series of first-person narratives' Psychologies
'The vivid, sensory depictions of Hong Kong circa 1970 ignite this
almost unrelentingly sad story, and Berry's easy way of switching
between different narrative voices from chapter to chapter is
impressive.' The List Anne Berry was born in London in 1956, then
spent much of her infancy in Aden, before moving on to Hong Kong at the
age of six, where she was educated. She worked for a short period as a
journalist for the South China Morning Post, before returning to
Britain. After completing a three-year acting course, she embarked on a
career in theatre, playing everything from pantomime to Shakespeare.
She now lives in Surrey with her husband and four children. 'The Hungry
Ghosts' is her first novel
