222. The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

BOOK REVIEW: The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

Growing up in Malaysia, I was never far away from the many folk tales and superstitions regarding the parallel worlds of the living and the dead. From penanggals (violent ghosts of female heads with entrails hanging from them) to toyols (imps which are used to steal money from households, being fed human blood from the owners themselves), my childhood and adulthood was and always revolves around the inhabitants of the spirit world.

The author, Yangsze Choo, being a Malaysian herself, has masterfully woven an eerie yet beautiful story of the custom of Chinese ghost marriages that will set you rethinking about the boundaries of our world and the afterlife.

In 1890s Malaya, 17-year-old Li Lan receives an unwonted proposal: marriage to the recently departed son of the respected Lim family. Li Lan knows what this means for her impoverished father. She has to appraise it prudently.

The Lims' opulence and splendour is dizzying, but Li Lan has her sights set on another - undoubtedly she has to be certain of her heart's true desire before pledging to a life with a ghost?

Night after night, Li Lan finds herself trawled into another world. One where the thresholds between reality and dreams are hazy, and where the afterlife shows itself to be a place of dread, enticement and delight.

Li Lan must uncover the mysteries of the ghost world, and be united with her true love, before she is confined there for all time. A stirring, eye-catching and passionate ghost story.

Intricately woven throughout the story is Chinese folklore and the Chinese believes of the afterlife, underworld and all things supernatural. There are even snippets of information at the end of the book regarding ghost marriages, Chinese notions of the afterlife, Malaya, Straits-born Chinese, Chinese dialects, Chinese names, meanings of names and Malay spelling.

This book was entirely refreshing from the macabrely scary stories of the spirit world filled with blood and gore. An historical romance set amidst the bushes of the spirit realm, it was a beautiful book from start till the end.