I don’t read much in the way of horror these days. This is normally the part where the cultural critic decries how THE REAL HORROR IS LIFE or KIDS THESE DAYS and, nah, I’m just not usually in the mood. It’s a me thing, not a Catonian stand against o tempora o mores.
But when Ai Jiang told me her upcoming novella, Linghun, was ghosts among Chinese-Canadians where the real horror is the living…well, how could I say no?
(though reading it over the course of a hospital stay for a double pulmonary embolism may not have been the most copacetic circumstances ever)
Though Ai Jiang switches up viewpoints (and persons – more on that later), the main viewpoint is Wenqi, the Chinese-Canadian teenage daughter of a family that just moved to HOME. HOME is somewhere out in the Plains Provinces, presumably not far from the Fitzgerald sisters’ Bailey Downs, a small town with only one (revolting) realtor where each house is haunted. They aren’t haunted by a specific ghost, but the ghosts that the occupants bring with her. At least, I don’t think they’re house ghosts – there’s some indication that the ghosts are a bit like small gods and take on the form you’re thinking of, but other indicators they really are the shades of the people the families have lost. But there’s only so many houses in HOME, so the charismatic realtor convinces folks to hand her their life savings, sell their earthly possessions, live in their cars or on the lawns of the houses in the fervent hope that one day, they may have a house. One day, they might see their loved ones again.
Wenqi gets the “I” of first person, as her mother (and, to a lesser extent, her father) obsess over her eternally six-year-old older brother, while she herself counts down the days she can graduate high school and split. At risk of another Ginger Snaps reference, “out by eighteen or dead on the scene” is a very apt description of HOME, where the ghosts are more vital than the living. And “together forever” comes in with Liam, son of a couple of technically-living zombies on Wenqi’s front lawn, and Wenqi’s slow …romance?… with him. I won’t spoil, but, well, with this kind of story, it’s no spoiler to say she’s not going to make it out. Not for long.
But Wenqi’s viewpoint isn’t the only one we get. I’ve described Ai Jiang before as a stylist, lyrical and experimental like Bradbury, and in Linghun that comes out in the different persons of the three viewpoint characters. Wenqi is first person. Liam’s sections are a depersonalized, denatured third-person, fitting the boy who’s “been here awhile” and sleepwalking through his few remaining days among the technically living. His parents maneuver and manipulate him into that …romance?… with Wenqi, but he has his own ideas. To start with, escaping with Wenqi, the one other person who seems to want to get out.
Especially after the auction. Most lively I see the living. That’s not a compliment.
The third viewpoint is a character referred to as “Mrs.,” another Chinese immigrant who is housed but unhaunted by her husband’s ghost. Here, Ai Jiang is at her most experimental – actual second person prose, and outside of interactive fiction yet! It is uncomfortably personal and incredibly close. I can’t reveal much about Mrs. without spoiling, and, frankly, I still don’t understand how she fits into the plot and ongoing story of Wenqi and Liam. Except…she does. Her sections are the most lyrical and disturbing, and somehow thematically encapsulate everything else in Linghun in vivid color. I found myself thinking of Mrs. in particular days and weeks later, long after Wenqi and Liam had faded from memory. Mrs. is a ghost that haunts.
She never gets a person-perspective of her own, but I feel like the real protagonist of Linghun is Wenqi’s mother. She uprooted her family from Fujian all the way across a sea to Canada to get away from Tianqi’s ghost…then, a decade later, dragged her family to HOME to worship his shade, cooking him youtiao until they rot in the fridge. What happened to this woman? How did she break this hard? Tianqi was her first and her son…but what made her turn around and bask in his reflected glow? What is her story?
Ai Jiang, based on what I’ve read of her so far, excels at experimental style, at sketches of diverse character, and at sfumato. What other writers would explicitly spell out (as the second-generation sacrifice of heritage in Ken Liu’s “Paper Menagerie” compared to Ai Jiang’s “Give Me English”), Ai Jiang dribbles so slowly you can’t really tell when the horror set in, when it became too late, when one thing became another…if it ever really did. Hers is a world of shadow, at the dappled places at the corners of the Mona Lisa’s mouth or the face of the Madonna in the Meadow. May she continue experimenting in the shadows, those places are her métier.
You may notice this review is a collection of characters and viewpoints within a single conceit. That’s because, essentially, that’s what Linghun is. How different people react to this quietly horrifying town, obsessed with the dead and ghosts. Joss Whedon described Firefly as “nine people looking out into space, and seeing nine different things.” I feel like, more than plot or story, that’s what Linghun is fundamentally about – how we live, or fail to live, with the dead, each person looking into the house and seeing a different ghost. Not even Wenqi and her mother see the same Tianqi, and her father would have to have enough personality to see a ghost at all.
And I wonder…what ghost does Ai Jiang see, when she looks into HOME?
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