She Is a Haunting

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The brightest lights for me was the love and respect that Jade had for her Mom, as well as the investigation Jade started into the history of the house.

She Is a Haunting is exactly the kind of book I love—gorgeous prose, a deliciously terrifying atmosphere, incisive thematic resonance, and a gloriously complex heroine. Jade is an unforgettable character, all tender longings and sharp edges, and readers everywhere will root for her just as hard as I did. Put it on your shelf next to Rebecca and The Haunting of Hill House . An incredible, riveting debut.” — Claire Legrand, New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn and Sawkill GirlsWhat is your relationship to the horror genre? Did you go into this book being familiar with the horror genre, and how did that inform your expectation? The invaders emerging from the mist like pale ghosts, taking and building, and taking. Latching on and draining you dry. Then calling you a savage."

In a time of typewriters and steam engines, Iris Winnow awaits word from her older brother, who has enlisted on the side of Enva the Skyward goddess. Alcohol abuse led to her mother’s losing her job, and Iris has dropped out of school and found work utilizing her writing skills at the Oath Gazette. Hiding the stress of her home issues behind a brave face, Iris competes for valuable assignments that may one day earn her the coveted columnist position. Her rival for the job is handsome and wealthy Roman Kitt, whose prose entrances her so much she avoids reading his articles. At home, she writes cathartic letters to her brother, never posting them but instead placing them in her wardrobe, where they vanish overnight. One day Iris receives a reply, which, along with other events, pushes her to make dramatic life decisions. Magic plays a quiet role in this story, and readers may for a time forget there is anything supernatural going on. This is more of a wartime tale of broken families, inspired youths, and higher powers using people as pawns. It flirts with clichéd tropes but also takes some startling turns. Main characters are assumed White; same-sex marriages and gender equality at the warfront appear to be the norm in this world. Settling at a table pushed against the wall, I stir the nuoc cham so the garlic and sliced chili peppers swirl throughout. After shooting another look that very clearly said, “No fighting or I’ll kill you,” Lily heads to the bathroom. My little sister’s sweet, until she’s not. Ba moves at the corner of a glance, the paint smeared on his jeans crinkling. The two business partners are oblivious to our awkwardness as they talk about upcoming repairs before the house’s grand opening. While Lily fidgets at our dad’s side, Florence is close to me at the top of the steps, her brown eyes clever and wrinkling as though we share a secret. She slides down the railing. Part of me is pulled along, wanting to learn how her perfect mouth moves between our languages. It’s the sound of Ba’s laughter that drives me indoors. I’d thought only Mom could coax that joy out, but I am wrong, as always, about him. Mistakes take one moment to unravel, and I’ve nearly made several just now. Too much is riding on these next five weeks to entangle myself in the false hopes of reconciling with Ba or knowing this girl. And when Jade says she doesn’t feel Vietnamese enough to have an opinion on anything other than what makes a good bánh mì or phở, I think about how food is the most easily reachable part of a distant identity. For diaspora kids–or cultures that have gone through such rapid change between generations that we may as well be, like in Singapore–food is often the biggest part of the culture that does get brought across. Even when you barely share the same languages or land, your tongues know the same tastes. Food forms a speculative identity in itself, a cultural imagination. You eat therefore you are.But soon Jade begins waking up every morning certain that something has clawed down her throat. . . from the inside. Then the ghost of a beautiful bride visits her with a cryptic warning: DON'T EAT. We eat in silence. The house surrounds us like a cocoon, and I wonder if Ba believed it would birth us as something new andprecious. No, that gives me too much weight. 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. Beside me, Ba introduces his business partner Ông Sáu, who joined us from the other parked car. The bald man waves. “This is my niece, B—” Who is eating whom? Jade asks. She and her father both hunger to be hungered for; even the house wants to be intimately known. It’s a vicious desire that starts changing them all from the inside. But there’s the dispossessed and the possessive: like the fungus Jade finds bursting through the heads of the ant colony outside, the French came in and only devoured.