Details:
- author: Kevin Chen
- full title: Ghost Town
- narrator: Nicky Endres
- genre: literary fiction
- country: Taiwan
- topics: #families, #lgbt
- publisher: HighBridge Audio
- publish date: 30 Jan 2024
- timing: 12:53:00
My Rating of the Audiobook:
- content: 💙💙💙.5
- narration: 💙💙💙💙
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| Goodreads |
Excerpt from the Book:
There were a lot of ghosts in the countryside, living in people’s oral accounts. Folks used to tell him never to go near the copse of bamboo out in front of the townhouse. There was a lady ghost lurking in there, a poor daughter-in-law who was driven out of her husband’s home after her chastity was compromised. She walked into the bamboo and hanged herself. She had haunted the bamboo ever since, hanging in wait for young men to seduce. When the dogs howled at the moon, they were “blowing the dog conch” according to the Taiwanese idiom, meaning the beasts had seen a ghost. So go to sleep, Mother would say, and don’t open your eyes, cause if you do, you’ll see it, too. Even if you see it, you can’t say it. If you see it, run away—try to outrun it if you can. Don’t look when you should not: if you do, you’re gonna get caught. The kids said the most ghosts were to be found in the willow trees that lined the irrigation ditch along the field. Don’t touch the leaves, they used to say, or you’ll get mixed up with a ghostly maiden. You’re certain to get zero on every examination, and the only way out of the mess would be matrimony. The maidens in the willows were actually lonely old spinsters waiting for some unlucky sod to come marry them. There was another ghost in that ditch, a beautiful lady who jumped in a well after she was abused by a Japanese soldier. She was rescued, but then she got raped by the doctor she was taken to. In the end she drowned herself in the Muddy Waters. But instead of being washed out to sea, she ended up stuck in the irrigation network. She floated all the way to Yongjing, where she stopped in the middle of the ditch. There she stayed, no matter how fast the water flowed. A temple in her honor was built on the shore, at the foot of the old town wall. His friends said that the moss along the waterline was fresh green blood from her ghostly body.My Thoughts:
Keith is the youngest son of the Chen family. He grew up in a small Taiwanese town. As an adult, Keith moved to Germany. After many years, after serving a sentence in prison for killing his boyfriend, he returns to Taiwan, to his home village. As the story unfolds, we learn the story of Chen’s family, what happened to Keith in Germany, and how he ended up in prison.Keith’s parents wanted a son, but they first had five daughters in a row. The sixth child, his brother Heith, was a son they were waiting for. Keith was the youngest, the seventh child, and the second son. The parents favored Heith and mistreated his sisters. Keith, as the youngest and the second son, was less favored by his parents.
We learn this story from Multiple POVs, the living and the dead. Ghost town is an interesting story, a sad one. But it eventually becomes quite confusing because of many POVs and sisters’ names - four named with the letter B: Beverly, Betty, Belinda, and Barbie.
This was my second try reading this book. The first try was an ebook. And now I listened to the audiobook. This is one of those novels that is not bad, and I like it, but I like it better in an audiobook form.
About the Author:
Kevin Chen began his artistic career as a cinema actor, starring in the Taiwanese and German films Ghosted, Kung Bao Huhn, and Global Player. Now based in Germany, he is a staff writer for Performing Arts Reviews magazine. He’s published several novels, essays and short story collections, including Attitude, Flowers from Fingernails, Three Ways to Get Rid of Allergies and other titles.
About the Narrator:
Nicky Endres is an adopted Asian-American Non-Binary Transfeminine Queer actor, comic, voice artist, and award-winning audiobook narrator with keen comedic timing and a love for auditorily-naturalistic (but visually-nightmarish) compound sentences, they have long challenged cultural categories to forge their own way.
