Title: Linghun
Author: Ai Jiang
Genre/s: horror
Content/Trigger Warning/s: death, portrayals of grief, violence, homelessness, domestic abuse (offscreen), child neglect
Summary (from publisher's page): Follow Wenqi, Liam, and Mrs. in this modern gothic ghost story by Chinese-Canadian writer and immigrant, Ai Jiang. LINGHUN is set in the mysterious town of HOME, a place where the dead live again as spirits, conjured by the grief-sick population that refuses to let go.
Buy Here: https://darkmattermagazine.shop/products/linghun
Spoiler-Free Review: 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 Yǒngshí and Teeter Totter, focus on similar themes as Linghun, but approach them from different angles. Yǒngshí, 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; Yǒngshí, 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.
Rating: five haunted houses
