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Chargement... She Is a Haunting (édition 2023)par Trang Thanh Tran (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreShe Is a Haunting par Trang Thanh Tran
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. She is a Haunting follows the story of seventeen-year-old Jade Nguyen, who is spending the summer in Vietnam with her estranged father while he fixes up the family's old colonial house, in the hopes of gaining income by renting the home out to vacationers in the future. We learn very early on in the book that Jade has somewhat of an exhausting life; she constantly has to pretend to be what she's not depending on where she is and who is around. For example, when it comes to her family, she needs to pretend she's straight; when home in America she needs to be as "Americanized" as possible, and vice versa when she's in Vietnam. Even though she and her father have a strained relationship, Jade keeps reminding herself to "play nice and play house" in order to convince her dad to pay for her college tuition. In midst of Jade playing pretend to satisfy those around her, she begins to experience supernatural things in the house; she suffers from sleep paralysis, finds bug parts all over the house, sees ghosts and endures warnings from her ancestors. This book was interesting, in that the "horror" aspect was creepy enough to keep me reading, but the fleshing out of the main character, and character development in general, wasn't exactly stellar. I think this book would be enjoyable for high school students who are fans of the horror genre, and I do think that a great selling point to this story is Jade's bisexuality and the pressure that her Vietnamese heritage puts on her to be a certain way. ( ) Jade agrees to go to Vietnam to help her estranged Dad open up a new house he is renovating on the promise of some funds for college. But the house is haunted by two ghosts. One Vietnamese woman and one a colonial woman and with the help of Florence, jade is determined to stop her Dad opening the House and its possession of him and her sister. There are creepy insects, visions and twists - is the friendly ghost actually friendly? in this foreboding tale of stifling colonial takeover, racism and haunting in the oppressive heat of Vietnam. A top notch horror read for anyone who has been to Asia and experienced the unfriendly horrors of its past. Great reading. I didn't realise this was a YA novel before I started reading, or I would have mentally prepared myself for the whiny teenage first person narration and heavy-handed themes. Other than that, She Is A Haunting is the Vietnamese-American baby sister of Mexican Gothic and doesn't come off well in comparison. Jade Nguyen is nearly eighteen and wants to go to university, but like everything in America, the fees are astronomical, and being the responsible, emotionally-overburdened eldest child, she doesn't want to make her single mother work harder to pay for her tuition. Her father, who abandoned his family and returned to his native Vietnam four years ago, has an alternative offer - if Jade and her younger sister Lily will visit him in Vietnam for five weeks and help to get his French colonial hotel up and running, he will pay for Jade's first year at college. Which sounded funky to me, but Americans gotta do what they can to live the dream. The hotel in Da Lat, built by a wealthy French family when Vietnam was a European colony (Colonialization being a Big Theme), was also where Jade's paternal family lived, viewed as 'parasites' by the Dumonts. The history of the house continues to haunt the beautiful property, which is surrounded by hydrangeas and decorated in a French theme, yet is decaying from the inside out. But do the 'hungry ghosts' reaching out to Jade mean to help or harm? The horror elements of the story work well - the spirits of Marion Dumont and her Vietnamese sister-in-law Cam, who offer up memories of the past to Jade, and the house itself, which is hungry for new 'parasites'. I even liked the bugs being fed to the family, and the zombie ants in the woodland beyond the house. However, the take on Vietnam's history was a bit simplistic - 'But who am I to say? I wasn’t colonized. I’m not Vietnamese enough to have an opinion on anything' - and Jade, and the parasitic chip on her shoulder, was a melodramatic, moaning narrator more interested in sniping at her father and snogging the teenage daughter of her father's business partner than surviving five weeks in Vietnam and then moving on with her life. I mean, if you're going to let your own family bribe you to make contact, then at least do it with style. And the narration was like a flashback to Sweet Valley at times: 'For instance: I like girls. I like boys. Still sometimes more girls than boys. I like people who aren’t either' and 'I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I do have a penchant for sweet people.' I actively wanted the house to claim her by the final chapters. I'm clearly not the target demographic, but this would have been a better book with a more mature narrator - and maybe a Vietnamese one at that - and a deeper dive into the history of the country. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
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This house eats and is eaten . . . "A riveting debut from a remarkable new voice! Trang Thanh Tran weaves an impressive gothic mystery in which Jade's father is determined to restore a decrepit home to its former glory and Jade is the only person who feels the soul-crushing devastation of colonialism lingering within its walls." —Angeline Boulley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Firekeeper's Daughter A House with a terrifying appetite haunts a broken family in this atmospheric horror, perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic . When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She's always lied to fit in, so if she's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised. But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don't belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can't ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves cryptic warnings: Don't eat. Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house—the home they have always wanted—will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house's rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.00Literature English (North America) American fiction By typeClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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