View source for The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry

{{infobox1 
|title=The Hungry Ghosts 
|author=Anne Berry  
|reviewer=Kate Lord Brown 
|genre=Literary Fiction 
|summary=The haunting tale of a colonial childhood.  
|rating=4 
|buy=Yes 
|borrow=Yes 
|pages=400
|publisher= Blue Door
|date=May 2009 
|isbn=978-0007303403 
|sort=  Hungry Ghosts
|cover=0007303408
|aznuk=0007303408
|aznus=0007303408
}}

''All children have nightmares.  The fisherman's daughter I used to be was no exception.''  Lin Shui, the hungry ghost of the title, knows what she is talking about.  When she latches on to her 'host' Alice Safford, the disturbed 12 year old daughter of an important government official in Hong Kong, she brings her nothing but trouble.  For poor Alice, Lin Shui is just the beginning, and she struggles through the tragedies of her life acquiring ghosts as she goes until she too wonders whether this life is worth living.

Anne Berry's impressive debut travels from 1942, when Lin Shui is raped and murdered in the Japanese-occupied colony, to 2007.  When her 'hungry ghost' takes sanctuary in an old hospital morgue, she seizes her chance to prolong her existence on earth when Alice goes exploring.  The hospital has become a colonial school, and most people sensibly give the morgue a wide berth, but not new pupil Alice.  From that moment Lin Shui clings to her, and as Alice navigates the tangled web of the Safford family's life and lies, the ghost goes with her.

Alice's haunted life unfolds against a background of colonial unrest, riots, decadence and privilege.  Berry pulls no punches with her descriptions of physical violence - rape, suicide, murder, or her exploration of psychological cruelty, whether through illness (bulimia, alcoholism) or the everyday casual savagery inflicted by a loveless mother.  The Safford family - father Ralph, mother Myrtle with a permanently chinking glass in hand, and the children Nicola, Jillian, Harry and Alice live in a gilded cage on the Peak in Hong Kong.  Each in their way finds their life devastated by their experiences in the colony.  They lose themselves in sex, food, infidelity - but above all it is Alice that is lost as her young life is destroyed by the ghost feeding on her vitality.  ''When she grows dizzy and black shapes detonate before her eyes, I have to remind myself that she is only human and must eat to live'' Lin Shui says.

Each chapter is narrated by a different character - everyone except Alice has a voice.  Perhaps this was deliberate, to make her a vessel for Lin Shui, but I wanted to know how she felt.  Berry's prose is as lush, beautiful and tropical as the most humid day in Hong Kong, but there was a sense of continual narration between the characters rather than individual voices coming through.  Myrtle is possibly the most interesting character because her hatred of her own child is so devastating and this brings her to life.  When her child's play is reviewed (''Alice Safford ... was electric.  She lit up the stage''), Myrtle's response was ''Actually I thought she rather overdid it''.  

The book is not easy, and you do not warm to the characters - I felt sorry for Alice, but I did not really understand her.  But there are moments of profound beauty - a diary flung across a room ''flies through the air, its pages flapping like the wings of one of the white cockatoos that gather in flocks about the island''.  Equally the moments of savagery are not for the faint hearted.  Alice's moments of happiness are shortlived, her hopes are dashed and you as you reach the end of the book you will find yourself wondering whether she will ever find peace.  Perhaps until she is visited by the angel of death ''not a bleached bone skeleton in a hooded cape ... but a small boy with hair of spun gold'' there will be no rest for her.

This is a dazzling and assured debut from Anne Berry and an encouraging choice from new imprint Blue Door.  I look forward to seeing where this author takes us next.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.

Further reading suggestions: [[The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold]] and [[The Distance Between Us by Maggie O'Farrell]]

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