Good but slight ( )

Nostalgia. Before you fall into the rhythm of wistful recollection, you really have to give your readers something to reference back to as a touchstone. Starting with the dolorousness, insisting that the foreshadowed heartbreak is already palpable—that feels artificial. The protagonist's projected nostalgia onto her father's beloved place—Saigon during the Vietnam War, which she has never seen in the way that I have never seen the villages outside of Hong Kong—at least parallels this weird obsession-for-something-unseen. Sweaty and threatening female adolescence. Strong autobiographical bent.

More a series of vignettes than a novel. ( )

What struck me most about this novel is, that it's so very sad.
Usually I can handle sad, but for some odd reason I found it very hard in this book.
I loved the descriptions of the scenery, the country, the way a potret was made of all characters, big and small. But I'm very happy I'm done with this book! ( )

Very engrossing story: This is a short book that can be read in a day or two. It is very well written with an interesting setting and plot line. You can see, hear and smell the authors description of Hong Kong, and the references to Viet Nam during the war are very haunting. This book would make a good gift.

It was c1967, the Vietnam War was raging and the unrest caused by Mao’s Cultural Revolution was creeping across the boarder into Hong Kong. This was the summer that Kate turned 13, and her life changed forever.

Her father was away for weeks at a time, photographing the horrors of the Vietnam War for Time magazine, and even when he was home his thoughts were back in ‘Nam. Her mother lives in a naïve, idealistic utopia which exists nowhere except in her mind and her art as she waits for her absent husband to return. Kate and her older sister Frankie are left to run wild. Only their amah Ah Bing looks out for them, in her own gruff, foul-mouthed way.

Kate is our narrator, and that fateful summer was filled with swimming, trips to Ah Bing’s temple, floating in sampans, picnicking on the shores of unspoilt bays and discovering boys for the first time. But the fun of this summer is slowly leached away as Frankie’s need for love and attention starts to create resentment in Kate and drives a wedge between the close sisters. Kate’s eyes are opened to her sister’s behaviour following the ‘Lychee Incident’ involving Communist protesters after which Frankie ignored her sister’s discomfort and fear, and at the same time refused Kate the comfort of confiding in her parents with her attention stealing ways.

In her bid for any attention from her disengaged parents, Frankie’s behaviour becomes increasingly reckless and self destructive as Kate, thinking to protect her sister, keeps her secrets, unintentionally denying Frankie the attention she craves – even if that attention is a well earned telling off. Frankie’s behaviour forces Kate to observe the dysfunctional dynamics in her family’s relationships.

When eventually Frankie’s selfishness has disastrous consequences Kate is robbed of her sister, their father of his passion for photography and Vietnam and their mother of her idealism. All of them lost the Hong Kong home that they loved.

Greenway’s prose is beautiful and dreamy, but understated. A number of traumatic events occur that summer, but the very short chapters mean the descriptions of events are brief and creates the sense of distance, as Kate remembers this long ago summer, any lingering horror is diluted by time.
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This is Greenway’s debut novel, and it was deservedly long listed for the Orange Prize. White Ghost Girls is a haunting coming of age story, where the need for love destroyed a vibrant young life, and completely altered the lives of those left to pick up the pieces. ( )