Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2010.
The Desmond Elliott Prize is an annual award for a first novel written
in English and published in the UK. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the
prize is named after the literary agent and publisher, Desmond Elliott.
Click here to find out more.
A superb novel from a great new talent. The story unfolds told from the different perspectives of each family member and from Alice’s “Ghost”. Unloved by her mother and at a disadvantage in the family from the start Alice’s ‘possession’ leads to more and more turmoil and tragedy, with Alice herself not truly understanding what is happening to her. Each character is fascinating and the descriptions of Hong Kong and the family’s life there are vivid. This is a wonderful book and highly recommended.
Click the screen below to watch a video of Anne Berry discussing The Hungry Ghosts.
| Primary Genre | Family Drama |
| Recommendations: |
A novel for those who loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum, The Poisonwood Bible and The Lovely Bones.
Raped then murdered in Japanese occupied Hong Kong, 1942, Lin Shui’s ‘Hungry Ghost’ clings tenaciously to life. Holing up in a hospital morgue, destined to become a school, just in time she finds a host off whom to feed. It is 12-year-old Alice Safford, the deeply-troubled daughter of a leading figure in government. The parasitic ghost follows her to her home on the Peak. There, the lethal mix of the two, embroiled in the family’s web of dark secrets and desperate lies, unleashes chaos. All this unfolds against a background of colonial unrest, riots, extremes of weather and the countdown to the return of the colony to China. As successive tragedies engulf Alice, her ghostly entourage swells alarmingly. She flees to England, then France, in a bid to escape the past, only to find her portable ‘Hungry Ghosts’ have accompanied her. It seems the peace she longs for is to prove far more elusive that she could ever have imagined. The Hungy Ghosts is a remarkable tour-de-force of the imagination, full of instantly memorable characters whose lives intermesh and boil over in a cauldron of domestic mayhem, unleashing unworldly spirits into the troubled air.
The Hungry Ghosts features in the following genres: Family Drama, Debut Books of the Month, eBooks of the Month, Fiction, Recommendations
The Hungry Ghosts is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Hungry Ghosts was written by Anne Berry and published by Blue Door an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
The Hungry Ghosts has 405 pages
