The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts
A first-time homeowner is haunted by visions and nightmarish property woes in Kim Fu’s riveting novel The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts.
For decades, Eleanor’s domineering and efficient mother, Lele, cleaned her daughter’s apartment, managed her finances, and monitored her social and romantic relationships. After Lele’s death, Eleanor feels mournful and displaced. She also struggles to fulfill Lele’s final wish: that she use her inheritance to buy a house.
Eleanor is persuaded by a canny realtor to purchase a home in a planned yet unfinished community. Entranced by her new house’s modern “angularity,” Eleanor’s happiness wanes after she learns that the project’s bankrupt developer died by suicide. When the sleek yet impractical home is overwhelmed by “biblical” rainfall, a deluge of costly repairs follows.
The book’s tension is coiled and increases as Eleanor becomes consumed by the house and its flood- and mudslide-prone location. A therapist who works via virtual sessions, Eleanor’s own mental health suffers from insomnia and stress. She begins seeing the ghosts of her mother and the deceased property developer and has addled dreams involving her patients.
In an appealing paradox, Eleanor’s sage yet perfunctory therapeutic guidance contrasts with her lack of pragmatic initiative and self-described “uselessness.” Affecting, wry details enhance her supernatural perceptions, as of how her mother’s ghost wears “orange pajamas” with girlish knee-high white compression socks. Though Eleanor is besieged by her fateful home purchase, she forces herself to face the chaotic peril in the book’s turbulent conclusion. Through this emergence, she has a chance to finally live with autonomy––if she can find the will to survive.
Surreal and mundane elements spiral into buyer’s remorse and emotional rebirth in the gripping novel The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts.
Reviewed by
Meg Nola
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