Ghost Town by Kevin Chen is a literary fiction following a man after being released from prison for murdering his boyfriend and the story unfurling after to find out more about his family and the events leading up to the murder of his boyfriend.

This book had a few things that I really enjoyed about the book. One of them being an interesting concept. I really wanted to know more about the main character's life and the relationships that he had with the people around him. However, I do no think that I was really vibing with the writing style and that was really impacting my liking of this novel. Another thing that I liked about this book was that it explored the topics of family and identity really well and that is another thing that kept me going in this novel. I really wanted to see where the characters and story ended up in the end.

All in all, this was a good read, but not something that I would ever reread.

4.5 ⭐️

鬼地方 by Kevin Chen Sihong 陳思宏, published in 2019, won the 2020 Golden Tripod Award and 2020 Taiwan Literature Award (Grand Prize). Europa Editions has released an English translation with translator Darryl Sterk in October 2022. My sincere thanks to Europa Editions and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes in this review have been checked against the published final version.

鬼地方 (translated to Ghost Town by Sterk) as a title functions on a few levels, like the novel. In colloquial slang, it can mean godforsaken or middle of nowhere place. Literally, it translates into 'ghost place.' I was immediately intrigued by Kevin Chen's dedication "For my hometown, a non-existent Yongjing." Reading the first few chapters, my attention is snagged by the overlap between the narrator protagonist Keith Chen Tianhong (whose hometown is also Yongjing) and the author (note the deliberate similarity in names). Keith explains to us that Yongjing has been left behind with Taiwan's rapid development; emptied of its young people, it's become cursedly 'Always Quiet' instead of its original name meaning 'Eternal Peace.' This is a clever allusion to the homophone words 靜 vs 靖, both sounded out as jing. Later on in the novel, Keith notes that he cannot find Taiwan on a world map when in Germany, I wonder if this also contributes to it being a 'ghost place' since it isn't officially recognized internationally.
The entire novel is weighted down by ghosts, secrets and dark history; one of the narrators is in fact deceased and lurking around Yongjing. Keith returns to his hometown during 中元節 Zhongyuan Festival, also known as Hungry Ghost Festival. In the author's note, Kevin Chen shares that when he was a child, he was a crybaby teased to be an 爱哭鬼, literally a ghost who loves to cry but an affectionate teasing term. I've actually never noticed how often the word 鬼 ghost pops up in casual Chinese language such as in the title or 鬼话 (ghost words aka nonsense), another example brought up by the author.

My appreciation of the novel was biphasic, I really savoured the first and last third. With the blurb, of course the reader wants to know what happened to make Keith kill his lover in Berlin. At the beginning, Keith notes that his German lover T always asked him where he was from and wanted to know more about his origins. Keith wonders how to tell him about all the unspeakable things in his hometown. The lag to me occurred when we were given the backstory of each of Keith's five sisters in dizzying turns (Beverly, Betty, Belinda, Barbie, Ciao/Plenty)*. I had difficulty keeping them straight in my mind initially but toward the end, they crystallized in my mind. As 'unwanted' girls in the family as opposed to Keith and his brother Heath, their struggles and fates are a sorrowful reminder of gender inequality.

*At this point, I'd like to mention a point of contention with Darryl Sterk's translation. The sisters in the original Taiwanese novel are named Shumei, Shuli, Shuqing, Sujie and Qiaomei which Sterk has changed to English names. Keith's parents, Achan and Ashan, have been translated to Cicada and Cliff respectively. Keith's older brother Tianyi became Heath and Tianhong is Keith. In his translator's note, Sterk shows he is aware of Chinese naming traditions and explains his translation choices. I've read his translation of Wu Ming Yi's novel
[book:The Stolen Bicycle|36208444] and I thought he got the essence of Taiwaness. In this case, personally I wish he had left the names in Chinese pinyin. I also appreciated how he had the names of Taiwanese food left in Minnan like mī-suànn and bah-uân.

The settings of the novel are in Yongjing and Taipei in Taiwan, as well as Berlin and Laboe in Germany. Kevin Chen writes with such vividness, I can picture Yongjing, then and now. Some places that are haunted by ghosts and memories; the bamboo grove, the bookstore, the cistern, the White House, the swimming pool, Kevin Chen returns to them assiduously each time layering on new information and meaning. Germany is of course haunted by its own ghosts, I am shocked and saddened by what happened between T and Keith. The early development of their relationship in Berlin with realistic language communication difficulties and enjoyment of simple pleasures was a highlight. I also enjoyed the depiction of the sisters' squabbling and spoiling of baby brother (adult) Keith. Some things change and yet some things never change. Like one's hometown.

Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia

Moderate: Suicide and Torture

Minor: Domestic abuse

This book really hits on so many levels: it's the rare family saga where most every member of the family gets time to shine, it has multiple mysteries going at once, and it's a black comedy as well as having many moments of poignancy. It's able to accomplish all this mainly by virtue of the meticulous way Chen sets this story up, moving backward and forward in time and going from POV to POV (some expected, some reveals unto themselves) to ultimately give a clear picture of the most crucial events in the lives of this family. This allows for there to be some genuinely shocking reveals towards the end, most of which I really loved.

As for the ones - or rather, one - I didn't...well. It just kind of felt like it raised more questions than answers, and not in a provocative, interesting way like what ultimately happens with Cicada. We never really get all that much insight into T - certainly not the way we do with basically every other character - so what ends up being revealed about him left me more "wait, what?" than anything else. It's not that it was unrealistic, it just felt kind of abrupt.

Likewise abrupt was the ending! I was so sure we were going to get to see something a little more conclusive (not happy, just...maybe more complete, so to speak) so not getting that did put me out a little, but honestly other than these two things this has to be one of the most compelling family dramas I've ever read. It's beautifully written, it's excellently paced, and every character is sharp and well-rendered. I would definitely recommend this.

While the premise and complexity of this read was very intriguing and even though I loved all the different voices, the writing - or maybe the translation - just didn't really work for me. The text felt clunky and made it really difficult to get into the story. The cultural aspect of it was -as always- extremely interesting to me but again the writing just really made it difficult for me to fully immerse myself. My biggest peeve was the "translation" of the names instead of the romanisation of them. Translating the characters names into ones like Betty, Beverly, Barbie, etc. in a Taiwanese story set in Taiwan, around a Taiwanese village just didn't make any sense to me and completely took me out of the story. Overall had potential but just didn't work for me.

Although I didn’t overly enjoy this book, I feel as though it may have been due to the timing and mood I was in so I don’t want my thoughts to sway anyone else who’s considering reading this book.

Told in a myriad of voices―both living and dead―and moving through time with deceptive ease, Ghost Town is a mesmerizing story of family secrets, countryside superstitions, and the search for identity amid a clash of cultures.

Ghost Town is aptly named in that Kevin, our protagonist recently released from prison, returns to his home town to visit his siblings just in time for the annual Ghost Festival – a spooky event that celebrates the opening of the nearby Gate of Hell by which long-gone spirits return to mingle amongst the living. But as Kevin reminisces, it becomes clear that he and his family members are victims of a dysfunctional childhood filled with trauma that “haunts” and negatively affects their adult lives. The bad decisions, mental anguish, bouts of depression (and many other acts of violence and cruelty) permeate the pages leaving the reader with a pall of darkness and despair.

This book is somewhat heavy and clunky to get through and it took me a few starts/stops and a forced determination to get through it. I found Kevin’s reflections about his sexuality very insightful and understandable (given his environment and upbringing), I thought the depictions of his government’s suppressive history and the rather unique scenarios (featuring equally unique characters) that showcased his cultural beliefs and customs (some are quite “alarming” per Western standards) rather enlightening and more enjoyable than other aspects of the novel.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an opportunity to review.

This book is truly amazing, it's about trauma and how people cope with it or not. It's also about the distance between motivation and perception, between what one means to do and how it is seen.
It's about coming "home" and all the ghosts that we are and that we carry with us, and as someone who has a very fraught relationship with their hometown my did it hit close to home.
It's also a character study in which the story reveals itself slowly, removing one layer of veil at a time. Small details turn out to be important so that every word fells both natural and deliberate. The story is told from multiple point of view going back and forth through time which gives it a somewhat ethereal feeling, like you're the ghost in it.
The characters are fantastic, if you carry any trauma with you, you are sure to relate or resonate with at least one of them, for me it was Betty.
The notes from the translator at the end were great for me too because I was a bit weirded out by the decision to give some of the characters such typically English names (though I did like how it shows just how universal the heart of the story really was).

the switching of perspectives and prolonged acts of introspections really made reading this into a bit of a chore which is a pity as the setting and themes had potential.

Objectively, GHOST TOWN is an excellent book from a literary standpoint. Subjectively, however, I did not enjoy this as much as I should have, owing to its much-darker-than-expected content and inadequate focus on the main character.

The factor that determines a reader's enjoyment of this book, in my opinion, boils down to their expectations of it. I think the current English edition is quite misleading: the cover does not do it justice, with both the art and font looking too juvenile for the book's tone and subject matter. I also wish I knew beforehand that the novel does not focus as much on the supposed main character as his family and the town he comes from. If I had had more accurate knowledge about the book before diving in, my feelings would be more positive, rather than feeling its 'lack' or being a little taken aback by its dark themes.

The novel itself, however, is mostly commendable, its structure and plot akin to an onion with layers on top of layers to be discovered the more one reads on. It is tightly plotted, with constant reveals and surprises throughout, shedding more light not only on the story itself but also the characters. The rural Taiwan setting is also great, the atmosphere, sense of place and culture so distinct and palpable one is immediately transported. The themes are deftly explored as well.

Nevertheless, there are parts that read like fillers and could be trimmed, as they endlessly meander and slow down the pace. I also wish more focus was on Keith; there is so much about the family - both in the past and present - to wade through, that Keith feels like a bystander at times, let alone the main character. I think his constant rumination in the present and the sense of detachment in his narrative voice also distance him from the reader, thus it is quite difficult to feel connected to him. But then again, maybe this is Chen's way of saying that Keith is now no different from a ghost.

This is a well-plotted book packed with details not only about the characters but also the Taiwan setting. If only the reader's expectations were better managed, their enjoyment would be less affected by its content and dark tone, and the lacking focus on the main character.

“Ghost Town” – Kevin Chen (translated by Darryl Sterk)

Thanks to @netgalley and @europaeditions for my copy of this book.

The “ghost town” in the title is Yongjing, a small rural town in Taiwan:

Yongling at that time couldn’t be described as barren, but the meadows were weedy, the roads muddy, the snakes fat, the mosquitoes nasty.

Yongling is home to the Chen family, and this book tells their stories across several fractured narratives, narrator and time shifting continuously and rapidly, links often only becoming apparent towards the end.

At the heart of the story is Keith, the youngest of 7 children - the first five “useless daughters”, the youngest both boys. Keith leaves his town for Germany when it becomes clear that his sexuality will not be accepted, only to spend several years in jail for killing his lover. Released, he returns home in time for the annual Ghost festival to pick through what remains of his former life there and the family he left behind. As the locals burn envelopes of money for the dead, old memories and other ghosts of the past return to the old family home, the “White House”, and various hauntings must be addressed.

Chen’s book slowly unravels the lives of his family members and the reasons why Keith kills his lover, peeling an onion of jealousies, traditions, broken hopes and prejudices, unaddressed trauma. It’s a dense and rich family saga covering all manner of topics and issues in a humane and thought-provoking way. This book won prizes in its native Taiwan, and it’s obvious to see why.

Don’t want to say too much more, I’ll just say that this is well worth your time, and a definite recommendation from me.

I actually first started reading this book about a month ago. I read a few pages, decided I wasn't in the mood for it and probably wasn't going to like it, and set it aside in favor of something else. A couple of days ago I brought it back up and decided I needed to give it another try.

So that was a good idea.

Ghost Town is a beautiful book. Told from multiple points of view, swimming back and forth in time, with twists and turns unexpected, this is a remarkable novel that follows the members of a Taiwanese family dealing with the events of their lives.

Kevin Chen slowly builds the world of the Chen and Wang families and their various and sundry dramas. There's a patina of magic realism over the novel that works well with the way Chen weaves the stories of his characters to and fro in time. And they are poignant and interesting characters.

Really enjoyed this. Definitely would recommend for fans of people like Haruki Murakami.

What a haunting story from start to finish. Left me reeling at moments, and it hits home. Powerful and will be sure to keep this author on my radar!

Kudos to Darryl Sterk for what seems like a bold rendering of Kevin Chen’s quirky writing style, giving this novel the kind of verve I imagine it has in Chinese. Europa Editions also deserves praise for publishing one of the few translated novels I’ve seen from Taiwan.

Keith Chen returns to his home village in rural Taiwan after serving a sentence in Berlin for killing his German lover. He arrives on Ghost Festival, when the Gate of Hell opens and ghosts roam the earth and in this town, it’s more than a folk tradition. He never thought he’d return to Yongjing, where he spent a miserable childhood being bullied because he’s gay. Ghost Festival is taken very seriously by his family, which has lots of ghosts to manage, and his sisters are struggling with them as well as with myriad other problems. Through a number of points of view, we learn about Yongjing and how Keith ended up in Berlin in a relationship that ends with death.

Reading this book is like peeling away an onion, with abuse at its core. “Ghost Town” unravels very slowly, and it takes patience to stick with it. Kevin Chen is an exciting writer, and I look forward to what he comes up with next.

This book was beautiful and devastating, the prose was magnetic and I was heartbroken in the best possible way. When we talk about queer pain we always mean queer tragedies told to make cishet people feel sympathy and this was not that story, this was for and about queer people in all our potentially messy mistakes.

A literary, complex novel with intervening plots, storylines -- all of them a different thread in the fabric of one family's life. Ghost Town starts with a very intriguing premise; but then it loses sight of this mystery and wanders a bit as the protagonist returns to his hometown in Taiwan and becomes lost in his own past. This element of the novel lacked the necessary context -- historical, cultural, familial -- for me to invest in the character's flaws and struggles to be a family. The characters lacked necessary depth for me to recognize; all I could see were their flaws. I needed more interiority into the the reasons for the behavior. Despite these absences, the novel did engage through its prose; the language felt authentic, it was accessible, it did propel the story forward at a good pace.

A forty-something writer returns to his rural hometown in Taiwan, after his release from a three-year prison sentence for killing his German husband. His homecoming coincides with the region’s annual Ghost Festival, when hell’s gate opens and villagers burn envelopes of money as offerings to the dead. In his afterward, the author says he always wanted to write a ghost story, and with Ghost Town, he indeed achieves an eerie atmosphere of spiritual possibilities, particularly through the telling of folk traditions such as hanged cats in bamboo groves. But more so, his characters are haunted by real world horrors, and it’s a family saga rather than a paranormal encounter.

One finds often that literary fiction takes inspiration from the author’s life experiences. In that, Chen’s work is transparent. Like the author, the main character Keith is a Taiwanese writer who emigrated to Germany. He even has the same family name, and “Keith” is not a far cry from Kevin. I mention this to say that Chen’s novel is a very personal story about Taiwanese families and their troubles. Only the author can say how much of the material came from his family and childhood, but his book has that daring quality of good autobiography, letting the reader in on something deeply personal.

The main plot is Keith’s relationship with a troubled street performer in Berlin, who he only refers to as T, Keith imagines describing his hometown to his deceased partner, and gradually, memories of T’s mental breakdown surface, culminating in the night of terror that led to Keith’s incarceration. Woven into that drama are stories from the points-of-view of his mother, sisters, and other supporting characters, some of which relate to Keith and some do not (at least directly).

I struggled early on with the question of whether this is a novel or a collection of short stories, closely connected thematically? By the end, one sees Chen’s purposes. He glues together collective family memories and individual journeys to construct Keith’s story, as an artist creates a collage, and it requires standing back from the work to recognize the greater whole. Each “piece” or story is so striking, it demands the reader’s focus and thereby challenges one to pause and consider what one is seeing in its entirety.

Keith is the youngest child in the Chen family and born at a time when Taiwan was transforming from a cash-crop economy into the manufacturing powerhouse it has come to be known. To stay with the collage comparison, imagery of Keith’s hometown of Yongjing fills the gaps and borders of his narrative canvas with a melancholy mixture of moods and textures: irrigation ditches with dead dogs that overflow into the streets during seasonal rains; concrete townhouses overtaking the lush countryside; ripened, bright orange betel nuts being harvested for sale; an abandoned soy sauce factory that was once the town’s main employer; walls placarded with faded campaign posters of disgraced politicians; and an ancient temple to the Lady at the Foot of the Wall that served as both a slaughterhouse and a nightly cinema in Keith’s youth. Many will relate to Keith’s sense of dissonance upon returning to one’s hometown, but I would venture to say that few of those locales contain such complexity and contradictions, owing to past Chinese and Japanese colonialism, steadfast folk beliefs, decades of authoritarian government, and rapid economic development that turned many farm-based workers into get-rich-quick entrepreneurs, sometimes through corrupt schemes.

Keith’s father Cliff aspired to be an entrepreneur, but he was more unsuccessful than not. He and Keith’s mother Cicada had five girls before his older brother Heath came along, an unlucky circumstance in Taiwanese families of the time. Girls were a family burden, only good when they married well, and not worth sending to school. Chen subverts that narrative by having each sister tell her story. Their chapters captivate with wit and heartbreak and leave the reader curious about the possibility of breaking off into novels of their own.

The eldest sister Beverly marries a hapless schemer, not unlike her father, and, not unlike her mother, she takes on the role of keeping a broken family together in spite of her miserable marriage. The next, Betty, becomes a government clerk and is embroiled in a trend of our times: a cruel, social media prank that ruins her reputation. Belinda, the favored daughter, marries a handsome TV anchor who provides an enviable lifestyle at the price of degradation and abuse. Barbie marries the son of the town’s prominent Wang family, but they’re a loveless couple, and Barbie descends into madness, locking herself in one room of their mansion and living as a packrat. Each woman searches for a way to privately rebel against a society that offers spare opportunity to make their own choices. Plenty, the youngest, does so openly, mutilating her body with a razor. Betty sneaks off to a motel to watch gay porn videos, inspired by her brother’s fearless way of living. Their mother, a harsh and domineering presence, has secrets of her own that allow her to achieve a measure of autonomy.

Keith’s ability to be himself was thwarted, too. In secondary school, he was discovered fooling around with an older boy and faced ridicule and violence from his teachers, classmates, and his mother. His gift for writing leads to an eventual escape, and after some success in Taiwan, he grabs an offer for a fellowship in Germany.

There, he finds love and marriage with the mysterious T, but their relationship turns nightmarish and leaves Keith on his own to rebuild his life in a town that reviles him even more than when he left. Chen creates quite a dark collage for Keith, and it’s not a tale that ends with hopeful resolution for him or his sisters. Though perhaps through

their refusal to give up in spite of what society thinks of them, Chen suggests that a bartered life is better than the alternative.

Reviewed for Out in Print

Ghost Town is atmospheric, poetic and painful.

I'll be honest, I wasn't too sure about it at first. I didn't find myself connecting to any of the (many) characters, but suddenly something within the story clicked with me and I found it difficult to put down. I hope to read more by this author in the future!