Review: Ghost Town

 

I’m not generally a big literary fiction person, but wow this book was gorgeous and heartbreaking and fascinating. It takes a bit of time for things to really get established, but once they do the multiple overlapping stories are beautiful and compelling. It’s the kind of book I’d actually want to examine for symbolism, because there’s just so much. I imagine to someone more familiar with Taiwanese culture there’s even more to analyze.

I should say that it’s definitely pretty dark at times, discussing rape, abuse, and violence in a very candid manner. It’s quite intense, especially in its depictions of various kinds of violence and cruelty. These scenes are important and they’re never gratuitous, but worth keeping in mind that nothing in this book is romanticized or sugarcoated.

The only things I struggled with were keeping track of everything and the ending. I know there’s a reason for all the sisters’ names starting with the same letter (explained in the translator’s note for those who are curious), but it took me a long time to remember who was who, especially because there would often be long stretches between each sister’s point of view. Not a huge deal, just demanded a bit of extra attention. On the topic of the translator’s note – don’t skip it, it’s very interesting!

The ending, though, was difficult for me to follow. I’ll admit that I don’t love extremely ambiguous endings, and this one definitely was. Perhaps I just wasn’t paying close enough attention throughout the book to pick up on the various subtle threads that made the ending come together? But it felt a bit abrupt, confusing, and out of nowhere. It wasn’t enough to hurt my opinion of the rest of the book, but it certainly wasn’t my favorite, either.

Of course, as suggested by the beginning of this review I still loved this book. And as I said, I’m not a literary fiction person, so it’s entirely possible to someone more comfortable with the genre, these elements are a positive, not a negative. Regardless, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who’s okay with the content.