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Jun. 8th, 2021 09:36 pmScenes from grad school friend Zoom the other week --
FRIEND A, WISTFULLY: Has anyone read anything funny recently? My book club really likes multigenerational women's stories and they're all very good ... but none of them are ever funny at all .....
ME, IMMEDIATELY SPRINGING UPRIGHT, EYES FIERY: You should get your book club to read Black Water Sister! It's about a woman who moves back to Malaysia and is becomes haunted by the ghost of her grandmother so it fits your book club's profile exactly and Zen Cho is generally one of the funniest writers I know!
FRIEND B: wait, a ghost story? So is it more like ... realistic fiction, or fantasy, or horror, or ...
ME, EYES SLIGHTLY LESS FIERY: Hmmm well full disclosure our copy hasn't arrived yet so I have not read it yet, but I would guess probably more the former, Zen's stuff isn't usually very horror --
FRIEND B, READING OUT LOUD FROM THE AMAZON REVIEW PAGE: Black Water Sister is a fantasy, and a ghost story, and a horror story --
ME: WELL ALL I KNOW IS IT'S GOING TO BE VERY GOOD AND YOU ALL SHOULD READ IT.
Anyway, now I have at last actually read Black Water Sister and a.) it is definitely a bit more on the horror/thriller than any of Zen's previous novels so Friend B and the anonymous Amazon reviewer were right and I was wrong b.) it is very good and you all should read it!!
"Long-suffering young woman attempts to cope with crotchety supernatural elderly relative" is of course one of the plots that Zen Cho has always done best, but the edges in Black Water Sister are extremely sharp and the stakes extremely high. Jessamyn has to juggle not only with her dead Ah Ma's murderous vendetta against the shady business magnate attempting to do her and her goddess wrong and the goddess' equally murderous vendetta against all the innocent bystanders even moderately involved in the process, but also the twinned traumas of abuse and violence that bound Ah Ma and the goddess together to begin with, rewritten in Jessamyn's mind as Ah Ma and the goddess both attempt to possess her to achieve their ends. And all that is layered over Jessamyn's pre-existing fears, quieter and closer to home and just as cruel as gangsters and murder: that she'll never find a job; that her father's cancer will return; that her parents will need her so much forever that she'll never be able to leave to join her long-distance girlfriend in Singapore; that her parents will find out about said long-distance girlfriend and it will break her family beyond repair.
In addition to generally loving Zen's writing, I am extremely weak to ghost stories and stories about possession, so I never had any doubts that I was going to love Black Water Sister for these reasons alone. But actually most of all what I love about the book is Jessamyn's family, parents and uncles and aunts and all, with their messiness and complications and obligations and secrets and love.
(Also, it is dark but it is still funny.)
FRIEND A, WISTFULLY: Has anyone read anything funny recently? My book club really likes multigenerational women's stories and they're all very good ... but none of them are ever funny at all .....
ME, IMMEDIATELY SPRINGING UPRIGHT, EYES FIERY: You should get your book club to read Black Water Sister! It's about a woman who moves back to Malaysia and is becomes haunted by the ghost of her grandmother so it fits your book club's profile exactly and Zen Cho is generally one of the funniest writers I know!
FRIEND B: wait, a ghost story? So is it more like ... realistic fiction, or fantasy, or horror, or ...
ME, EYES SLIGHTLY LESS FIERY: Hmmm well full disclosure our copy hasn't arrived yet so I have not read it yet, but I would guess probably more the former, Zen's stuff isn't usually very horror --
FRIEND B, READING OUT LOUD FROM THE AMAZON REVIEW PAGE: Black Water Sister is a fantasy, and a ghost story, and a horror story --
ME: WELL ALL I KNOW IS IT'S GOING TO BE VERY GOOD AND YOU ALL SHOULD READ IT.
Anyway, now I have at last actually read Black Water Sister and a.) it is definitely a bit more on the horror/thriller than any of Zen's previous novels so Friend B and the anonymous Amazon reviewer were right and I was wrong b.) it is very good and you all should read it!!
"Long-suffering young woman attempts to cope with crotchety supernatural elderly relative" is of course one of the plots that Zen Cho has always done best, but the edges in Black Water Sister are extremely sharp and the stakes extremely high. Jessamyn has to juggle not only with her dead Ah Ma's murderous vendetta against the shady business magnate attempting to do her and her goddess wrong and the goddess' equally murderous vendetta against all the innocent bystanders even moderately involved in the process, but also the twinned traumas of abuse and violence that bound Ah Ma and the goddess together to begin with, rewritten in Jessamyn's mind as Ah Ma and the goddess both attempt to possess her to achieve their ends. And all that is layered over Jessamyn's pre-existing fears, quieter and closer to home and just as cruel as gangsters and murder: that she'll never find a job; that her father's cancer will return; that her parents will need her so much forever that she'll never be able to leave to join her long-distance girlfriend in Singapore; that her parents will find out about said long-distance girlfriend and it will break her family beyond repair.
In addition to generally loving Zen's writing, I am extremely weak to ghost stories and stories about possession, so I never had any doubts that I was going to love Black Water Sister for these reasons alone. But actually most of all what I love about the book is Jessamyn's family, parents and uncles and aunts and all, with their messiness and complications and obligations and secrets and love.
(Also, it is dark but it is still funny.)
