The Ghost Bride: A Novel (P.S.)

Admittedly, I know little about Chinese history and folklore. But fairy tales are universal, and The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo is infinitely magical. The story is set in the late 1800s in a British colonial town in Malaysia. Like many young women of the time, Li Lan’s only option is to get married. And usually, though the groom may not be the girl’s heartthrob, at least he’s human, right? But a ghost?It would never occur to a Westerner to hitch themselves to a spirit, even if it meant financial security for life. Well, okay, maybe if you’re paying off a student loan… But Li Lan’s family is strapped, and the wealthy Lim family is in a position to get them out of their troubles—if only she agrees to pierce the veil in a creepy wedding ceremony.The Ghost Bride is a heroic tale. And like other heroes’ journeys, the protagonist must change. Li Lan starts out as a relatively unassuming girl, especially when dealing with the Lim family. But there’s a feistiness in her that only manifests after she crosses into the ghost world. Her arduous journey through faux cities and houses is thrilling. And her rejection of the scheming groom, Lim Tian Ching, is vicariously satisfying—like watching a paper funeral offering burn.

I'm very picky about fantasy novels. All of my favorites have some unusual hook or quality that make them stand out from the rest. I knew as soon as I started THE GHOST BRIDE that it was going to be one of these stories. Set in late 19th century Malaysia, it is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl named Li Lian, who lives with her opium-addled father and her caring nurse. She's about the age to be married, but the man she should marry is now bound to someone else, and the rich Lim family wants to secure her as a "ghost bride" for their departed son.Li Lian refuses, and that should be the end of it, but soon she starts seeing the dead son, Lim Tian Ching, in her dreams. As his presence becomes increasingly more menacing, Li Lian takes drastic action to escape him which ends up backfiring horribly. Suddenly, she's half here, half in the spirit world, and in her quest to get back to her body, she'll have to venture into the fringes of the Chinese Underworld, learning more than she ever wanted to know about the Lims' sordid history-- and her own.I freaking loved this book. One of my favorite movies is Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, which I rewatched recently, and I loved it for how affirming it is about life, death, and spiritualism. THE GHOST BRIDE is like the Malaysian version of that, only with more depth: there is vengeance from beyond the grave, love and romance that transcends mortal lifetimes, and magic and wonder, as well as the menacing courts of hell in which the departed must pay their dues, Dante's Inferno style, before journeying towards their final stop. It was dark, wondrous, and fascinating.It helps, of course, that Li Lian is a capable heroine with a lot of agency. She acts seventeen, making the foolish mistakes a seventeen-year-old would. We see her rush to meet her challenges head-on with the brashness of youth, and see her fall in and out of love with the whims of a young woman. It isn't until she ends up in the spiritual in-between that she realizes just how much she has taken her youth-- and her life-- for granted. Even though this isn't young adult, I think it would appeal to a young adult audience because so many of the themes are universal, in my opinion.I was a bit hesitant to read this at first because I was not quite as fond of THE NIGHT TIGER, which was interesting and rich in history but hard to follow. But this is a very different book from THE NIGHT TIGER, and the narrative is much neater. So if you didn't care for her other work, I would strongly urge you to read this one anyway, as they are very different beasts. I would dearly love to see this as an animated story. I think it would make an amazing movie and I hope some enterprising film agent buys up the rights because this is such a great story, and it deserves to be on the big screen.P.S. At least one of those stars is for Er Lang. I'd tell you more, but I don't want to drag on.5 out of 5 stars

This is definitely an original concept, though I found it somewhat hard to follow (on audio anyway).Li Lan is a young Chinese girl whose mother died young, and her impoverished father, struggling to find a husband who can provide for her, one day jokingly asks if she’d like to be a “ghost bride.” This is what it sounds like, and I very much appreciated the author’s “afterword” after the story, explaining the cultural practice. It was very rare, even in Chinese culture, she said, but when it did occur, it typically was when the pair were already in love when one of them passed away, in order to grant rights of a widow to the surviving partner. In this story, however, the offer is from the wealthy family of a deceased son, to grant Li Lan residence in their wealthy home for the rest of her life. She’s not surprisingly horrified by the idea, as it would mean that she’ll never have love or children of her own. Her father only mentioned it half jokingly anyway, because it seems that the marriage he had been attempting to arrange for her (ironically with the cousin of the deceased) had fallen through.But this is where the story turns supernatural. The ghost, whose name doesn’t stick in my mind, saw Li Lan during his life and desired her, and visits her in her dreams. But he’s not only dead, he’s also revolting (reminds me a bit of Beetlejuice). Meanwhile, Li Lan meets Tian Bai, her would-be husband and cousin to the dead suitor, and falls for him instead. In order to exercise her undead suitor, Li Lan visits a medium, obtains some herbs that should keep him from visiting her in her sleep, and then overdoses on them–at which point she herself hovers somewhere between life and death. In this suspended state, she travels through the realms of the dead, learning what she can about the hold the dead suitor has over her, and… this is kind of where I got lost. I wasn’t very clear on what it was that she was trying to accomplish in the land of the dead, though it was all very fantastical and creative.There was a bit of a twist ending, though it wasn’t a huge shocker–we’d been rather set up for it. I don’t think it could really have ended any other way.My rating: ****Language: noneSexual content: noneViolence: noneWoke content: none

'The Ghost Bride', by Yangsze Choo, begins as though it were a piece of historical fiction. However, like the characters involved in the story, it soon begins to cross over between the worlds of the living and the dead, between history and fantasy. Yangsze has blended a well-researched background in the Chinese community of 1890s Malaya, with equally convincing portrayals of parts of the world of the dead, as conceived by the people of that place and time.As she explains in the author's note, these beliefs about the dead differed in certain respects from those held in mainland China, and did not comprise a consistent "theology". Rather like the ancient Egyptian ideas that I am more familiar with, there was a collection of disparate tales and images. These provide windows of insight into a vivid and credible world of experience, but not a systematic attempt to catalogue it. Indeed, I was struck by the many ways in which the Chinese images dovetailed with the much older Egyptian ones: no doubt there is a fascinating field of study there!Back to the story. This combines elements of several different genres, all told in first person perspective. The main character is centrally involved with a detective mystery, a coming of age tale, a gently-sketched romance, and a spiritual hero quest. Of these, I personally found the whodunit aspect the least convincing, and it seemed to rely rather too much for my taste on coincidental discovery and good fortune rather than skill. But in contrast, the personal and spiritual explorations were riveting, and at times beautifully lyrical in their descriptions. I was completely captivated by the images and concepts presented. On first reading I soaked up the text in what seemed to be a thorough baptism by immersion - a second, more sober reading picked up aspects that I had rushed by at first!In terms of influence, there seem to be a great many factors at work here in addition to the traditional Chinese sources. There are similarities with Dante's Divine Comedy in the reliance on various guides, and the overall schematic arrangement of the world of the dead - though in the Chinese conception, a person's place is negotiable rather than fixed. There are echoes of Faust and the bargain he made. Some descriptions remind me of passages in Tolkien's writing. But Yangsze reworks these elements in an imaginative and vivid manner to create something new, and the book does not at all suffer from these points of contact.Yangsze admits in her blog to a love of food, and indeed there would be no prizes for guessing this from her book. Meals and snacks in both worlds are described in considerable detail and delight, with certain key differences between them that maintain a clear separation.Readers who prefer "straight" historical fiction (or for that matter straight fantasy) might be perplexed by the cross-genre nature of this book. And as mentioned before, I feel that some aspects of the whodunit plot sit a little awkwardly. However, I loved 'The Ghost Bride', would very happily recommend it to others, and overall have no hesitation in giving it five stars.

Read The Night Tiger first and loved it so much l wanted to see what else she had written, came across The Ghost Bride, the authors first novel. What l love about her writing is the way she makes you really care about the main characters. You really become invested in them. Very unique story that l loved and like The Night Tiger l did not want it to end

The Ghost Bride is a historical fantasy novel set in a Malaya ruled by the British Empire. Li Lan is a member of the Chinese community there, the daughter of a once prosperous and respected man, who has become bankrupt following the death of his wife. Life seems to hold few opportunities for Li Lan until she learns of an offer to become a ghost bride, the wife of the dead son of the wealthy Lim family. At first she is horrified, but the more she learns about the family and the circumstances surrounding the death of Lim Tian Ching, the more she is drawn into the mystery of the household. Soon she finds herself exploring the spirit world of Malaya, guided by the enigmatic Er Lang, in a quest to find out what really happened and why she has been selected as a ghost bride, before she is trapped forever in the shadowy after-life.I started The Ghost Bride expecting it to be mainly historical fiction, so the amount of fantasy in the novel surprised me. But in a good way. Choo has taken Chinese beliefs about the afterlife and used them to create a fascinating, fully formed fantasy world that is the unreserved star of the show. I just loved the blending of fantasy with traditional beliefs, it lent an authenticity to the whole book. I'm always on the look out for fantasy that isn't set in medieval Europe, and with this book I stumbled across a great example of it accidentally.Another thing I enjoyed about The Ghost Bride was the character of Li Lan herself. She starts off as quite shy and easily led by both her family and the Lim family, but as the book progresses we get to see some strong character development, culminating in an episode towards the end where she's in quite a sticky situation. Rather than hope for someone to come and save her, she's determined to sort things out herself, which I really liked. It would have been easy for Choo to write a passive female, especially considering that Er Lang is technically supernatural, so I liked that she made Li Lan stick up for herself as the book went on.This book does contain a love triangle, but thankfully the romance elements are very light and take a back-seat to the adventure and the exploration of the afterlife itself. I found The Ghost Bride easy to read but yet unlike anything else I've read, a book that I'm sure will stick with me for some time. Recommended for anyone who likes fantasy but is after something a bit different.

Well I don't usually read books that deal and contain Chinese culture, myths and supernatural. But I was pleasantly suprised with this book. So our story starts as though we are reading a piece of history fiction about 1890 malaya. But that soon changes when some of our characters throughout the story start to cross over between the world of the living and the world of the dead. And between historical and fictional aspects of Chinese- Malayan cultures.I thought that the author had done an exceptional job in her research into the background of 1890's Malaya and into the background of the Chinese community. I also found her writing very convincing when she was describing and talking about the "world of the dead"Personally I found the book had started out as a straight forward tale and then very suddenly and quickly we are plunged into something thought provoking and intrugeing. I felt like I had learnt something about the Chinese culture and mythology about the afterlife and Chinese believes.All in all a fantastically written book, that kept me reading until after my usual bedtime.i also found this book to be very well written, and took many twists and turns from start to finish. A must read

I really enjoyed this book. It was unusual in that it deals with Chinese ghost mythology and it was set in late nineteenth century Malaya in the Chinese community, which provided the opportunity for descriptions of what sounded like excellent food, lovely clothes, unusual architecture and a wholly different way of life (I liked the way various religions co-existed – when the heroine Li Lan discovers that her prospective fiancé is a catholic she just – apparently – thinks ‘how interesting’ and not, as I would have done ‘ah – no trouble with junior wives then…’). Of course there is the possibility that, because I know nothing about the period I can’t nit-pick about details… Li Lan is a brave and determined heroine who literally goes to hell to escape her unfortunate entanglement with her ghost bridegroom – and who would have thought this would have involved working in the kitchens of a grand ghost house? There is a nice twist at the end, and – surely – the possibility of a sequel. Thoroughly recommended.