My rating: 5 of 5 stars Genre: immigrant interest; Contemporary Asian fiction
Publication: April 25, 2023; Harper Via
About: Set between the last years of the "Chinese Windrush" in 1966 and Hong Kong's Handover to China in 1997, a mysterious inheritance sees a young woman from London uncovering buried secrets in her late mother's homeland in this captivating, wry debut about family, identity, and the price of belonging.
My comments:
My comments:
I felt I was put through a wringer after reading this book.
The book describes the dramatic and sad life of Sook-Yin in 1966 Hong Kong, beginning with her flying to London to study nursing, pushed out of her home by the jealousy and sibling rivalry of a vengeful older brother. Then we follow the suspenseful search of Sook-Yin's British daughter Lily some 30 years later into her mother's early life in Hong Kong.
I thought it interesting to show how there is discrimination against Westernized Chinese in the use of the terms “ghost” and “banana.” Sook-Yin's half-British daughter Lily is the Ghost Girl, a foreigner in Chinese eyes, as she is part white, and though she looks Chinese, she is also a banana -yellow on the outside, but white on the inside due to her upbringing. The term "banana" may also refer to Lily’s mother Sook-Yin, who married a British man.
The complexities of relationships in Hong Kong spins Lily in circles when she goes to China to get information on the early life of her mother. I sometimes had a hard time jumping timelines from Sook-Yin in the 1960s to Lily in the 1990s and wish the book had a list of the characters that we could refer to. It may be that the final copy will have such a list of the Chinese and British names.
Ghost Girl, Banana deserves much praise for showing us just how complex family and culture can be, especially in terms of marriage, and especially for children.
The ARC of this book was provided by NetGalley
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