Linghun

“Sometimes, dead is better.” 
-Stephen King, Pet Semetary 

Linghun by Ai Jiang is a moving and highly creative haunted house story about grief. Ai was kind enough to provide me an eARC to read and review, all opinions are my own. Set in a mysterious town in Canada known as HOME, residents desperately seek to take advantage of the neighborhood's quirk: the tendency for each house to become haunted by the spirit of the departed. Unlike most conventional haunted houses stories where ghosts are entities inspiring fear, in Linghun the ghosts are vehemently desired. Wenqi's family moves in hoping to reconnect with her brother, but what may happen when a life is haunted by grief to the point of never letting go? Fundamentally, Jiang has written a profound novella exploring a deeply meaningful idea through a unique approach to the concept of a haunted house. I loved the way she revealed information throughout the book and found this work, at times, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Catriona Ward, and yet completely and utterly unlike anything else I had ever read. Jiang's prose is frequently excellent and incredibly readable. This is a fast read that will linger with you after the final page. With that said, I found the plot to be a little bit disjointed, especially toward the end. I kind of felt like this was a book about ideas, symbols, and characters more than plot...though the story was by no means bad. Still, overall this was a very good read that I would recommend. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This was a lovely, meditative read. I know it's been advertised as horror, and ghosts DO tend to fall into that category, but the ghosts in this novella and in the bonus short stories aren't scary in the least. Instead, in these stories, ghosts are a stand-in for a whole host of other things: memory, obligation, promises made and promises broken - all the things that linger and circle when one considers grief.

The titular novella, in particular, really focuses on how one can define the term “haunted”. People are haunted just as much as houses are, and the effects of that haunting can ruin and break the living - individual, yes, but even those around the person affected can catch the edges of it and be affected as well. And it's possible to be haunted by more than just the death of someone one loves. One can be haunted by abuse, by neglect, by the cruelty of the world in general. In that sense, we are all haunted - just maybe not always by the same things, or for the same reasons.

The bonus short stories Y??ngsh?? and Teeter Totter, focus on similar themes as Linghun, but approach them from different angles. Y??ngsh??, for instance, focuses more on the obligations that the death of a person leaves behind; Teeter Totter is more about the power of memories, and how it's how the life you live while alive is what matters most. 

What stands out the most across all three stories, though, is the quality of the author's writing. There is an elegance in Ai Jiang's writing that packs a lot of power in fewer words; Y??ngsh??, in particular, is spectacular in this regard, in my opinion. It makes me look forward to seeing if there'll be a novel anytime soon, horror or otherwise, because I'd really like to experience this writing again in a longer format.

So overall, Linghun definitely lives up to the hype I've been seeing about it online. The stories aren't scary in the traditional sense, but they definitely linger in the back of one's mind and in a corner of one's heart, and absolutely worth reading for that reason.