- Paperback: 423 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster (29 April 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743437772
- ISBN-13: 978-0743437776
- Product Dimensions: 20.9 x 13.6 x 2.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 35,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
"Who Weekly" A novel that combines emotional power with assured artistic polish.
Product Description
At once a love story, a riveting tale of suspense, and an illumination of the artist's psyche, this searing novel introduces one of Australia's most acclaimed authors to American readers. A seductive work of vast geographical and psychological scope, "Hungry Ghosts" follows two young painters from Sydney to London to Hong Kong, probing the raw terrain between love and friendship, creativity and madness.
Emerging from Susan Johnson's hallucinatory evocation of late twentieth-century Hong Kong -- a fading colony bathed in neon, teeming with political and emotional refugees and evaporating dreams -- are the overlapping stories of two best friends and the man who comes between them. Rachel Gallagher is careful, inhibited, and achingly self-conscious. Anne-Louise Buchan is fearless, charismatic, and intent on wresting meaning from life's chaos. Polar opposites, they are bound together as artists hungering for experience. Martin James Bannister, exceptionally handsome, is a futures dealer with a talent for reinvention and a menacing hunger of his own.
Through this trio, Johnson explores the fragility of the unquiet mind and love's capacity to glean redemption from even the darkest malignancies. In "Hungry Ghosts" she presents a vision of life that is eerie, passionate, and affecting.
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First Sentence
SOMEWHERE in a room in the colony, a pile of stones is growing ever damper. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
SOMEWHERE in a room in the colony, a pile of stones is growing ever damper. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bought this book solely by the recommendation on the jacket cover based on the quote from the UK Guardian "The best thing to come out of Australia since Peter Carey". Another positive statement on the inside cover, from the Who Weekly, "...combines emotional power with assured artistic polish", that clinched my decision to buy the book. Interested in other cultures, I had no idea, *not* a clue ... about the deeply disturbing subject matter of this book. A word to this wise, there are a few explicit disturbing descriptions of s*x*al perversion. Frankly, I would not have read this book had I known. Nothing in the title or cover descriptions (inside or outside) leads one to suspect. While I give it 5 stars for drama, suspense, characterization, artisic and creative writing, the author's extraordinairy ability to write about deep psychological problems ... still, I feel I was tricked into reading the book. However, as a reviewer, to new readers, I am upfront about its contents. Oddly enough, I do highly recommend this book,if one does not mind reading about this topic.
Rachel Gallagher and Anne-Louise Buchanan, two very different personalities who were born and raised in Brisbane, Australia, become best friends as they share similar artistic careers at a fashion magazine. They escape their mundane existence in Brisaben, to explore artistic career options in London, UK. Each gets odd jobs, one in a women's clothing store; the other as a waitress. They dreams of making it big in the world as famous artists. Oddly enough for one of these two, the dream comes true. The author alternates the stories and lives of each main character in subsequent chapters. We are first introduced to Martin James Bannister, a handsome stock broker and trader in Hong Kong. We learn of his career climb after graduating from the London School of Economics. He kept his social background suitably vague so that although he was from a working class background, no one knew or suspected. The author reveals and explores different psycholiogcal aspects of the main characters by reviewing how they were raised and the impact of key familial relationships on their personalities. This clever writing device gives the unsuspecting reader clues to future problems, however innocent the early life experiences sound, they carry the seeds of destruction ... in the future. The book is riveting and eerie ... the bonds of friendship link these two friends and pull them down deeper and deepr into a whirling abysss of unusual life experiences of chaotic and destructive proportions.
Only in subsequent chapters does the reader connect early developmental experiences and family relationships that lead to personality and behavioral patterns. These culminate into major problems that are woven as the main themes of this book. These three lives are trapped because of their past ... not by lies ... but somehow their life experiences and personalities interlink and hook in the most twisted ways ... unimaginable except by the author. Uniquely interesting book. Erika Borsos (Bakonyvilla)
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Deep and intense story of human nature.
28 July 2004
Format:Paperback
A Fabulous book. I totally enjoyed the intense depth of this book. Initially, I was a bit taken aback by the sexual preverseness of one the characters but it was very well handled without being too graphic and matched the painful confusion of the novel's political setting and characters' personal conflicts. The author's style of writing was easy to read, very realistic yet, almost poetic and at the same time ... taking you on an emotional sweeping journey with the characters and through the recent political transitions of Hong Kong.
A Great style of writing not easily found in much of today's fiction; this should have been on the Best seller's list.
Looking forward to more of the same intensity and depth from this author. A must Read!
A Great style of writing not easily found in much of today's fiction; this should have been on the Best seller's list.
Looking forward to more of the same intensity and depth from this author. A must Read!
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Friendships and Deep Hidden Secrets of the Psyche
29 May 2004
Format:Paperback
Bought this book solely by the recommendation on the jacket cover based on the quote from the UK Guardian "The best thing to come out of Australia since Peter Carey". Another positive statement on the inside cover, from the Who Weekly, "...combines emotional power with assured artistic polish", that clinched my decision to buy the book. Interested in other cultures, I had no idea, *not* a clue ... about the deeply disturbing subject matter of this book. A word to this wise, there are a few explicit disturbing descriptions of s*x*al perversion. Frankly, I would not have read this book had I known. Nothing in the title or cover descriptions (inside or outside) leads one to suspect. While I give it 5 stars for drama, suspense, characterization, artisic and creative writing, the author's extraordinairy ability to write about deep psychological problems ... still, I feel I was tricked into reading the book. However, as a reviewer, to new readers, I am upfront about its contents. Oddly enough, I do highly recommend this book,if one does not mind reading about this topic.
Rachel Gallagher and Anne-Louise Buchanan, two very different personalities who were born and raised in Brisbane, Australia, become best friends as they share similar artistic careers at a fashion magazine. They escape their mundane existence in Brisaben, to explore artistic career options in London, UK. Each gets odd jobs, one in a women's clothing store; the other as a waitress. They dreams of making it big in the world as famous artists. Oddly enough for one of these two, the dream comes true. The author alternates the stories and lives of each main character in subsequent chapters. We are first introduced to Martin James Bannister, a handsome stock broker and trader in Hong Kong. We learn of his career climb after graduating from the London School of Economics. He kept his social background suitably vague so that although he was from a working class background, no one knew or suspected. The author reveals and explores different psycholiogcal aspects of the main characters by reviewing how they were raised and the impact of key familial relationships on their personalities. This clever writing device gives the unsuspecting reader clues to future problems, however innocent the early life experiences sound, they carry the seeds of destruction ... in the future. The book is riveting and eerie ... the bonds of friendship link these two friends and pull them down deeper and deepr into a whirling abysss of unusual life experiences of chaotic and destructive proportions. Only in later chapters does the reader connect early developmental experiences and family relationships that lead to personality and behavioral patterns. These culminate into major problems that are woven as the main themes of this book. These three lives are trapped because of their past ... not by lies ... but somehow their life experiences and personalities interlink and hook in the most twisted ways ... unimaginable except by the author. Uniquely interesting book. Erika Borsos (erikab93)
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