The Ghost Bride

Author: Yangsze Choo
Series: None
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Release Date: August 5, 2014

"One evening, my father asked me if I would like to become a ghost bride..."

Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.

Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family's only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, a traditional ghost marriage is used to placate a restless spirit. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.

After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lim's handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family's darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.

It's been said before, but "The Ghost Bride" is basically "Spirited Away" if it were a novel and set in colonial Malaysia. Which is not a bad thing. It's been a while since I've done a review, so forgive my rustiness and the major spoilers ahead.

First, the bad. I found myself getting irritated with our main character Li Lan a lot. Whenever it's the right time, she always does the wrong thing, but whenever she does the right thing, it's always at the wrong time. For example, when she has a problem, she generally refrains from telling the people she loves but later on, she readily hands out information to people she knows she shouldn't trust.

When she discovered major revelations about certain characters, they felt very predictable, and I could easily spot them from a mile away. I couldn't help but shake my head at Li Lan for not realizing them any sooner herself. There were so many hints, girl. Should you really be surprised?

I did not appreciate how critical Li Lan was of appearances. If it was Tian Ban that haunted her dreams and not pudgy Liam Tim Ching, I swear Li Lan wouldn't mind. I am not justifying what the latter did—he was entirely spoiled and self-entitled—but really, the way Li Lan saw the whole situation...

Ahh, Er Lang. Er Lang! My darling, my love. The smooth dragon bastard that had me cracking up at every page. I did not expect for there to be a love triangle until Li Lan started ogling him way into the novel. Even then, I thought the romance between them wouldn't actually be serious. As much as I believed her love for Tian Bai was nothing more than a school girl crush, no matter how much she thought otherwise, I really thought Er Lang would amount to nothing more than a side character, forever mooning our heroine from the sidelines.

I loved Old Wong, Chendana, and even the Dutchman, Willem Ganesvoort. I enjoyed the richness of the setting, which has inspired me to do better in my own works. However, I wish we were able to explore more of the spirit world.

The ending, although for the most part, satisfying, was a tad disappointing. It was almost as if the author wanted to breeze through the last chapters and be done with it. I felt the whole plot with corruption in the underworld was wrapped up too neatly, and there were still questions that were left to be answered.

Why was the Second Wife sneaking around? If Li Lan would disappear without notice, wouldn't her father smoke himself into an opium haze while her Amah worried herself to death? I actually wanted Li Lan to spend a lifetime with Tian Bai before moving on to Er Lang, so that her family wouldn't have to experience having a missing daughter.

Orphan Train

Author: Christina Baker Kline
Series: None
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Release Date: April 2, 2013

Orphan Train is a gripping story of friendship and second chances from Christina Baker Kline, author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be.

Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse...

As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life–answers that will ultimately free them both.

Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.

Interesting.

Contemporary has never been my cup of tea but if there was a single word that could sum up my experience reading Orphan Train, it would be... interesting.

The style of writing is superb. Usually, I don't like it when tenses and, heaven forbid, pronouns, are changed between perspectives, but it fits right at home here, making an easy distinction between past and present for the reader. The descriptions just suck you right in, and flow effortlessly from page to page. It distracted from the major problem Orphan Train had, which was the story.

I know it's hard to be original, but the characterization and plotting was just too predictable. There was little the author could add to the misunderstood orphan character. The story relied heavily on tropes, and the formula was all too easy to spot. By the end of the first half, I had to put it down or risk tearing open my lips from yawning so much.

The rage Molly feels is so overwhelming she sees spots before her eyes. For more than four hundred years Indians were deceived, corralled, forced onto small pieces of land and discriminated against, called dirty Indians, injuns, red-skins, savages. They couldn't get jobs or buy homes. Would it compromise her probationary status to strangle this imbecile? 

I'll give points for diversity, especially for showing and taking a stand against discrimination, but I'm not sure about feminism. While both Molly and Vivian are headstrong, they have few positive relationships with the women around them, especially in the first half of the novel. The latter are generally domineering, which is shown in a negative light. The men are portrayed as much nicer, their only faults being scatterbrained and easy to push over.

Three of the kids are in the room with me, huddled like sheep.

Molly and especially Vivian compare people to herds of animals often, such as cows, dogs, and even mice. Honestly, I felt really uncomfortable about the whole thing.

Vivian puts her foot on the first step and stumbles slightly...

"I'm all right!" Vivian says, grasping the rail.

Molly slips an arm around her waist. "Of course you are." she whispers. Her voice is steady, though her heart is so full it aches. "And I'm right here behind you."

Overall, the Orphan Train felt too preachy for me to fully enjoy. There was always one mindless tragedy after another. It ends sort of happily, despite having the characters lose so much throughout the whole thing that they always sound hollow in their narrative. While touching, the conclusion was anti-climactic, and the events leading up to it seemed glossed over, as if the author didn't know how to finish it off. I know it's Vivian's story, but Molly was left high and dry.

Does she break out of her shell? Does Terry, the mother of her boyfriend, ever approve of her? Does she just age out of the foster system, without a family? Does Vivian eventually adopt her?

At least give us some hints to tie up those loose ends!

The Woman Who Had Two Navels

Author: Nick Joaquin
Series: None
Publisher: Bookmark
Release Date: 1991

This novel by Joaquin is a literary assessment of the influence of the past to the time encompassing events in the Philippines after World War II, an examination of an assortment of legacy and heritage and the questions of how can an individual exercise free will and how to deal with the "shock" after experiencing "epiphanic recognition".

After glossing through hundreds of glowing four-to-five star ratings and insightful theme analyses of The Woman With Two Navels, you may be led to believe that I too will conduct this review in an appropriate, almost distant manner, praising Joaquin for such a glorious masterpiece.

You have been sorely mistaken.

There will be no detached observations. There will be no compulsory censoring. I will rant. I will spoil. It will be messy. If you take exception to this, then find another reviewer, because I cannot politely contain the fury of my emotions or thoughts this book has provoked. Classic or not, nothing can change my opinion that The Woman Who Had Two Navels, while not a waste of my time, was one of the worst novellas I ever had to sit through.

The two-naveled woman in question is Connie Escobar, a spoiled, selfish, and delusional Filipina who travels to Hong Kong in search of a treatment for her condition from a horse doctor. Yes, a horse doctor. For a condition which may not actually exist since she refuses to show her deformity to anyone who asks. Note that there is a moment when Connie relents much later in the book, but the author thought it would be more meaningful or some shit to fade-to-black at the last possible moment, since it shouldn't fucking matter whether she actually has two navels or not, and the title is supposed to double as a fucking metaphor. Let the dumb bich be whimsical, I guess.

Now I digress. Her visit sparks a chain reaction, one that effects everyone from her family to a group of childhood friends that she's never met. Each of their lives will never be the same, and they'll be forced to face the actions of the past, present, and future, regardless of whether these actions were, are, or will be theirs to make.

If you beget a monster of a child it could prove you were rather monstrous yourself.

But the story truly begins with Concha Vidal, Connie's flighty mother who's experienced much heartbreak and disillusion throughout each era she experiences. In one of them, she encounters Macho, a younger man who shares her thrill-seeking ways and unexpectedly becomes someone she grows to love. Unfortunately, she's married and he's, well, young. Although her latest husband is one of necessity and they've come to an understanding, Macho and Concha's relationship is frowned upon by society and is the subject of much ridicule among their peers. Concha, not wanting to destroy the boy's life, leaves the country, thus ending their dalliances and breaking his heart. When she returns, she asks him to marry her daughter Connie, in order to obtain the happiness of the two people she cares about most in the world.

"If your hands were not clean, your good actions had grimmer and more relentless consequences than your sins.''

Unbeknownst to anyone, Connie has been corrupted by her mother's past and this very decision, which leads the little girl on the path to insanity, for lack of a better word. In one method of coping with this, she makes friends with the hideous, inanimate idol Biliken. Biliken becomes her anchor, a way of shielding her from the harsh realities lurking beyond her safe little bubble.

After Connie grows up and experiences a few blissful months of marriage with Macho, she finds a stack of letters in the back of his closet. Although they're old, written before she was even born, they contain every excruciating detail of her husband and her mother's past relationship, something they'd kept secret for a very good reason. Upset by this shocking revelation, she runs away to Hong Kong while struggling to gain the courage to face her problems head-on.

The unfortunate victims of the Vidal family's shenanigans are a tight-knit circle of friends who grew up away from their heritage and the country it came from. There's Rita, the likeable, sympathetic leader of the group who pulls all the stops to keep them together; Paco, a poor musician who blames Connie for his unhealthy obsession with her when really, he's just a cheating, victim-blaming scumbag and unforgivable aspiring rapist; Mary, the unfortunate wife to said-scumbag who doesn't grab her kids and leave Paco's ass the moment he tells her of his escapades in the Philippines; and Pepe, a... blank sheet that really only serves to ask Connie questions and inadvertently draw her closer to mess up their lives even further. Following behind is his father Doctor Monson, a demented old man who seeks to go back to the good ol' days by becoming addicted to drugs, and his brother Father Tony, a priest who begins to question if he's cut out for his line of work.

Together, they will unrealistically think and speak in strange riddles and analogies, rife with hidden meanings, as they will, without reason, help this one suicidal stranger—a manic pixie girl who will effectively ruin the lives of each and every one of them to obtain her happy ending without so much as a proper apology. Forget if it might be temporary, necessary, or done unintentionally. That's fucked up.

"But don't you understand, Father? I want to be good. I'm trying to stay good. Does one go mad for trying to do that? Is it that hard?"

"It's very hard indeed. But you, Connie, have taken the easiest way out. You are not trying, you have given up... When you convinced yourself you had two navels, you retreated, not from evil, but only from the struggle against evil. People can't be good unless they know they're free to be bad if they wanted to."

If this whole thing wasn't a mess already, Connie's narratives get confusing as hell towards the end. The hallucinations she experiences are supposed to show her increasingly unstable mental state and how she slowly overcomes her issues, but most of the time I had no clue what was going on or what was really happening. Only until after I had gone through these scenes over and over again for weeks did I finally get that her dreams were, in fact, dreams.

On a matter of personal taste, I have a few more complaints. The last fifty pages were utter crap. Everyone had a chance to be redeemed in my eyes, but any sliver of hope—and I mean for every single character—was kicked to the curb after I crossed that final lap. I found myself cheering when Concha was killed (tbh there was a chapter or two where I thought she was great but damn, girl) yet did Macho have to die too? They were apart of the past and so needed to be left behind, but I wanted Macho and Connie to ride off into the sunset, especially after Macho confesses that he had grown to love his little wife and forgotten all about her mother, which he'd only realized until that moment. And what the fuck was up with Connie and Doctor Monson having some dipshit, meaningful conversation in his final moments? It's past meets future, I know that too! Yet I felt like the honor of his last words shouldn't have been randomly bestowed on our pathetic excuse for a protagonist.

But despite its glaring faults, I couldn't put it down. Like a bystander drawn to the sight of a trainwreck, I couldn't tear my eyes until I reached the last page. I felt a burning hatred for every single character and every one of their stupid actions but still, I couldn't, which leaves me to my next point.

I could label this as a godawful book and leave it at that. But oh no. My feelings, much like this book, are much more complex. (See! I can do this too, Father Tony. You self-righteous piece of shit.) As a work of commentary regarding the Philippine identity and society, it does a brilliant job. Even if I may disagree with the idea that being detached from your culture makes you a broken person, especially from someone who has not experienced this first-hand, it definitely has its effects and generational trauma is certainly a thing. I admit, I will give credit where credit is due. As an enjoyable work of fiction... no. Just no. Joaquin focuses too much on getting a point across than writing a story. Which would fine, since he probably meant for it to be that way, but I wish he could have managed to have balanced both of these elements, so that the reader could be satisfied in the message and the ultimate fate of the cast.

Perhaps their lives needed to be changed. Perhaps Connie needed to go to a veterinarian instead of the psychiatrist she so obviously needs. Perhaps Connie needed to take that idiotic confrontation with Doctor Monson on his deathbed. Perhaps Connie needed to take that *coughs* unconventional step of courage. Perhaps Mary needed for her husband to be stolen away and left with a gaggle of kids to "find herself" *gags* Perhaps Paco shouldn't have gotten his comeuppance. Perhaps Macho needed to shoot Concha and himself in the fucking head instead of Connie starting over with him and living happily ever after. But this does not make me hate these choices any less, and this doesn't make any of these characters less of a dumbass for doing what needed to be done. I end this review with one big fat middle finger to all of them.

P.S. In high school, I wrote an alternate ending where Connie and Paco panic as they are held up at the border by the police and are subsequently arrested. I wish I kept it.