BookBrowse Reviews Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton

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A young English woman travels to Hong Kong to receive a mysterious inheritance and learn about her mother in this dual-timeline novel.

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Lily Miller is 25 years old, still grieving from the recent death of her father and struggling toward normalcy after a suicide attempt, when she receives a letter in the mail stating that a Hong Kong man named Hei-Fong Lee has died and left her a £500,000 inheritance. The money is contingent upon Lily traveling to Hong Kong to receive it, and other than that, details are sparse. Lily assumes Lee must have known her mother, Sook-Yin, who died when Lily was five, and who her older sister Maya and their father Julian rarely spoke of. Determined to learn something about her mother, and perhaps make a fortune in the process, Lily sets out from her home in London for Hong Kong. It is 1997, the year the United Kingdom handed over rule of its former colony to China (see Beyond the Book).

Interspersed with Lily's narrative is that of Sook-Yin, unfolding over the course of the late 1960s-1970s. She arrives in London in 1966, having emigrated from Kowloon in hopes of a career in nursing. When she is unable to pass a written exam, she ends up working as a nanny instead. At the restaurant owned by the family she works for, Sook-Yin meets Englishman Julian Miller, and after a romantic dalliance, ends up pregnant with Maya, resulting in a quick marriage followed a few years later by the birth of Lily (Li-Li). Julian is unfaithful and terrible with money, and in an effort to get out of debt, Sook-Yin brings her family back to Kowloon, where she is hired to work at a bank run by her childhood friend, Hei-Fong Lee. Unfortunately, Julian's poor judgment follows the family to Hong Kong, and their problems are exacerbated by Sook-Yin's cruel older brother.

Though not the most novel, the dual-timeline device is very effective here; the details Lily uncovers about her mother add depth to Sook-Yin's story, and through Sook-Yin's chapters we see Lily's mother's influence on her. They are both headstrong, determined to accomplish whatever they set out to do. They both know the significance of family; both understand that knowing where you come from is as important as knowing where you're going.

While there is a mystery element involving the provenance of the inheritance, and dramatic tension heightened by betrayals, tragedy and threats of violence, Ghost Girl, Banana shines in the quieter moments of familial connection across decades and the fissure of life and death. It succeeds on the strengths of its characters. Sook-Yin is clever, ambitious, in some ways (the best ways) ferocious. Lily is funny, caustic to hide her vulnerability, loyal, relatably searching for meaning through a story she has been excluded from.

In Hong Kong, Lily meets Hei-Fong Lee's son Daniel, and there is a hint of romance between them, despite Daniel being engaged. This storyline seems somewhat contrived; the book feels overstuffed, and would have benefited from streamlining some tangential plot points. The symbolism of setting this story at the time of the handover is smart, if perhaps a little simplistic; it captures the tension for Lily between the place she has always felt she belonged and the place that represents her mother, and the life Lily might have had if Sook-Yin had not died.

Author Wiz Wharton explains in her acknowledgments that Sook-Yin's story is based on her own mother's, developed from her journals. She discovered in them, "a poignant tale of displacement and grief, of losing her identity and of finding a different one amidst the challenges of a strange new world." She captures that experience acutely and memorably through Sook-Yin, subverting typical narratives about immigration. Sook-Yin goes to England with expectations about better prospects, only to discover she had more options at home. She meets and falls in love (or something like it) with a local who, far from rescuing her from a life of drudgery and hardship as an unskilled immigrant laborer, is an unreliable presence who saddles her with debt.

Lily's story is likewise nuanced. She meets family and friends, but she doesn't find a homeland in Hong Kong. She comes to understand Sook-Yin better through the people she encounters, but there are details she will never know. What she finds is closure, and a sense of confidence in herself and her place in the world. This is a belated inheritance from her mother, and one that is more valuable than Hei-Fong Lee's £500,000.

This review first ran in the June 7, 2023 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.