The Ghost Bride

I first heard of The Ghost Bride through my book club, though we didn't read it. It would have been interesting to discuss the cultural differences in how we consider death and the afterlife. In The Ghost Bride, spirits walk invisibly among the living, benefit from the generosity and nourishment of their still-living family members, and can invade living people's dreams.

Set in pre-independence Malaysia, Li Lan is the daughter of a poor, opium-addicted father, who - in order to settle his debts with the Lim family - considers the Lims' proposal of a ghost marriage for their son, Tien Ching, a spoiled heir who has recently died (... or been MURDERED, as he believes). Being a ghost bride would mean Li Lan gets to live in luxury as a widow in the Lim house, but also she has to put up with Tien Ching visiting her in her dreams and he's not real pleasant. Plus Li Lan kinda has a crush on Tien Ching's cousin, Tien Bai, who Tien Ching thinks MURDERED him, and so it's weird that she still moons over Tien Bai for the whole book.

Anyway, so Tien Ching doesn't wanna take no for an answer, Li Lan must be his bride! and so he shows up in her dreams and really creeps her out like a creepy stalking weirdo. So Li Lan goes to a medium to get this dude to stop bugging her, and then Li Lan's spirit is separated from her still-living body after an accidental overdose of the tea that was supposed to be used to prevent Tien Ching from haunting her sleep.

There's creepy decaying spirits! Corruption in the nine circles of hell! Also having to live in the same house with all your dead relatives in the land of the dead with all your same pettiness and problems that you had on earth until you pass through the circles to get reincarnated! Apparently there are courtrooms in one or more of those circles of hell because Tien Ching is confident he can get the judges of hell to condemn Tien Bai for MURDER??

Anyway, this was a GREAT October pick, and a really interesting and different story than anything I've read before. 3.5 stars.

Please excuse misspelled names, as I listened to the audio (great, read by the author), and haven't read other reviews yet to see how they're spelled.