Linghun

Welcome friend! Linghun is a brilliant novella about grief. The setting is a town called HOME where houses are supposed to be haunted. People who want to meet their loved ones move into the house and try to get their ghost to haunt it.

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Linghun – Review

The story begins when Wenqi’s family moves into HOME. Getting a house here is impossible but somehow they manage it. Father continues to go into the city to work while Wenqi joins school in this town and Mother stays home. Over time, it is revealed that Wenqi’s family has moved here to meet her brother. The passage of time since his death, Mother’s treatment of Wenqi, Father’s tenderness and resignation to his wife’s grief are important aspects of the story. There is a tug of war within Wenqi in wanting to meet her long lost brother and wanting to move on. She is stuck here, uprooted from the life she had, unsure of the life ahead of her. At school, she meets other kids who are stuck too. 

One of the most shocking things about this place is that each house has people called lingerers living on the lawn. They have left their lives behind and don’t want to miss the chance of getting a house in HOME. For Liam’s family, it’s been a few years. When Wenqi’s family moves in, his family decides to move to her lawn. They think she can be influenced to make them leave. At school, Liam and Wenqi realize that they are the only ones able to voice the hard truths that no one wants to hear. Their parents don’t want to move on but they themselves do. They make a plan to leave this place that worships and lives for the dead and instead live their own lives. 

Grief comes in many flavours. Some people are completely consumed by it, like Mother. Others like Father are working through grief but their way of coping becomes to help their family like Mother. For Wenqi and Liam, the loss of their sibling is an ache but it’s been so long and they were so little when it happened that the sheer strength of their parents’ pain is hard to relate to. They feel like side characters in their parents’ lives, Wenqi bravely voicing the loss of her place in the family.

The story of Mrs is heartbreaking. She is the longest residing resident in the community and there are many rumours about her. Wenqi’s family lived in the house across from her. She is an immigrant from China who was married off by her family. Her husband was indifferent to her. She doesn’t have a voice in the book and the author narrates hers in second person, making it sound like she is a puppet rather than a free individual because she is indeed trapped in the house with nowhere to go. There is no family to contact and she doesn’t know the language so she is scared to even start afresh. She observes the community, Wenqi and Liam’s growing friendship, and wishes the best for them though she never talks to them.

I loved the author’s inspiration for this story as it beautifully blends in grief as well as immigration. I relate to the grief she feels for her uncle. I have similar feelings about my aunt. 

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Here are three haunting quotes from this book:

• “It’s easier to leave a place of pain rather than stay and mourn.”
• “Here, friendship is more of a quiet understanding that everyone is stuck, whether they chose it or not, in a place not meant for the present, but the past.”
• “HOME—Homecoming Of Missing Entities. It sounds like a joke, but nothing about this place feels worthy of laughter”

I loved this book so much!

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Linghun is not just a story about ghosts, but about the weight of love that can’t move on, and the quiet bravery of those who choose to live again.

If you’re drawn to stories that hold both sorrow and tenderness in equal measure, Linghun is one you’ll want to sit with slowly. I will definitely to returning to it.

Join me in the chat with Ai tomorrow! 🙂

A book I was reminded of: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker