The Girl with a Thousand Faces
1942–1975: Chen Mei Chi, a young girl, washes up on a beach near Hong Kong during the Second World War. She remembers nothing of her past except the name scratched in bloody characters on her arm. Troubled by recurring dreams of a strange “Sea Sister,” a mysterious island, and a crumbling temple, she determinedly builds a life for herself in the walled city of Kowloon, a city inhabited not just by humans but also by a ghostly population of bitter and angry spirits. Mei Chi, eventually taking the name of Mercy, has an ability to communicate with these spirits and finds work as a “ghost talker” with Cobra Lily, boss of a powerful gang in Kowloon.
In 1975, a series of water-related murders take place in Kowloon, mysterious killings that developers are determined to use as an excuse to demolish the area. Cobra Lily orders Mercy to investigate these slayings, and Mercy soon finds her relatively stable world and identity dissolving, bringing past and present crashing together with the force of a typhoon—allowing Mercy the opportunity to fully remember and confront her bewildering past and all that it entails.
The novel spirits the reader away to a vividly realized world in which the living and the dead are not far apart. Themes of abandonment, grief, loss, revenge, fury, and compassion suffuse the book, bringing satisfying depth to the narrative. The intertwining timelines flow together as the story unfolds.
An entertaining and engrossing fantasy read, The Girl with a Thousand Faces is also a profoundly moving tale of the haunting power of the past and the way forward. Recommended, indeed.
