Ghost Forest (Pik-Shuen Fung)

I can’t recommend every book I read in this class, because at that point I’m just stealing my professor’s syllabus, but wow, I really loved this one. A debut by Pik-Shuen Fung (next book coming out in 2027!) about family and grief. The story is told in vignettes, and so much of the emotion is communicated through what the writer would call the “empty spaces” (there’s a through line about the Chinese freehand painting style of xieyi). I found the sometimes unchronological, piecemeal quality so effective, and let’s just say it made me cry a lot. Again, a little bit in the zone between prose and poetry, where it hits you somewhere beyond words (this is the truest reason I love writing, that it’s a strictly verbal art-form that can, in this magical alchemical way, effect in a space outside the purely cerebral). Fung’s spare writing style really encouraged me to aim for restraint in a writing assignment for class, and I really like how it turned out.

Though it’s funny and thoughtful and complicated, this is very much a book about grief, so I only recommend reading it if you’re in the right space for that ❤️