Spectral spectacular

Author Jen Sookfong Lee, a B.C.-based acquisitions editor with ECW Press and author of the bestselling essay collection Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart, returns with her first novel since 2016’s The Conjoined in The Hunger We Pass Down, an eerie, claustrophobic exploration of generational trauma experienced by a family of Chinese-Canadian women.

Alice lives in Vancouver. She is divorced with two kids, struggles to keep up with her online boutique cloth diaper service and drinks a lot to cope with her stress. Despite her inability to keep everything afloat and as her pressures continue to mount, Alice awakens one morning to find all her chores are taken care of — the dishes washed, the meals prepped, her orders packed and neatly waiting for pick up on the porch. While she tries to rationalize that she is doing it all in her sleep or while blackout drunk, this explanation doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. But Alice is so exhausted that she’s willing to simply accept the help, no matter the source.

The novel moves through several different time periods, the earliest of which is Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in 1938. Thirteen-year-old Gigi is terrified of the mansion called Nam Koo Terrace. Rumors claim the daughter of a wealthy silk merchant hanged herself inside to avoid being married off to secure her father’s business.

One day on her way home from school, Gigi gathers her courage to look at the house as she passes and is grabbed from behind, a bag pulled over her head. Taken inside, she learns the true horrors of the house; Gigi is only the latest to be kidnapped and forced to serve as a comfort woman for the Japanese soldiers in the occupied city.

While dreaming of her life at home, Gigi begins to see the ghosts of other women who have suffered terribly in the house — a daughter, a mistress, a maid. She struggles to understand what the ghostly women might want: are they warning her, even though she is already trapped? Or do they want something from her and the other women held prisoner in the house?

After years, the occupation of Hong Kong ends, and Gigi finds herself pregnant. She makes a plan for herself and her baby to escape and, just when everything seems to be working out, she sees one of the ghostly women again.

The novel explores the perspectives of five women, from Gigi to her great granddaughter Alice, Alice’s own daughter Luna as well as Pinky, Alice’s Filipino maid who she can no longer afford to hire, but who still lives in the basement suite. While the ghosts who lurk in the shadows offer an eerie and oppressive atmosphere, the characters struggle more directly with worldly issues such as the rapid gentrification of Vancouver, cruel and unfeeling husbands or living in a foreign-occupied city. As each generation of women escape their hardships, their efforts to do better for their children are constantly impacted by the traumas which came before.

Lee’s characters are well-drawn and easy to connect with. This makes it all the more impactful and scary when the ghosts do emerge. With each succession of women, the reader holds out hope that the generational curse has been broken — until, of course, something emerges from the shadows.

The haunting is a beautifully paced slow build; the sense of dread is palpable and remains unbroken by the novel’s end. The traumas and pain passed down cannot simply be outrun.

An unflinching exploration of intergenerational trauma, international diaspora, racism and misogyny, Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Hunger We Pass Down is a novel of excellent literary merit and a pitch-perfect ghost story.

Keith Cadieux is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His latest story collection Donner Parties and Other Anti-Social Gatherings is out now from At Bay Press. He also co-edited the horror anthology What Draws Us Near, published by Little Ghosts Books.