Spirits Abroad
By
Zen Cho
2020 • 338 pages
Ratings6
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings6
Average rating4.3
Winner of the LA Times/Ray Bradbury Prize Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award winning debut collection with nine added stories including Hugo Award winner “If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again.” A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people. An earth spirit gets entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord, and Chang E spins off into outer space, the ultimate metaphor for the Chinese diaspora.
Reviews with the most likes.
4.5 stars
a nice collection of short stories from zen cho. i really enjoy her prose, it's very... practical.
my favourites:
- The House of Aunts ♥
- Odette
- One Day Travelcard for Fairyland
- Prudence and the Dragon ♥
- The Earth Spirit's Favorite Anecdote ♥
- Monkey King, Faerie Queen ♥
- The Terra-cotta Bride ♥
Zen Cho is my new favourite short story writer. Generally I find magic realism exhausting and irrelevant (García Márquez). Spirits Abroad is the first work I've read whose magical elements complement the stories—which pulse with inventiveness and humour.
I'll admit that I only picked this up because it was on a list of books by authors from Southeast Asia (which I needed for the Read Harder challenge), was fantasy related, and was cheap as an ebook, but it was really good! I really want to read her other stuff now. All of the stories touched on something Malay, even if it was just in the way people spoke, and she wrote little commentaries for each story. I liked that she also put in possible trigger warnings and a link to skip to the next story if wanted. It was a nice touch for people who might be sensitive to certain things.
I'm usually not a fan of short stories, but this collection was a delight.
The only thing I wish it had is more background information, maybe in form of footnotes or introductions to stories. They are heavy on local lore and mythology which were totally alien for me going into the book. Even after having read the book and googled a lot of stuff along the way, I still feel that I missed a lot of nuances and it's sad.
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