A Descent into Taiwan's Kooky Horror Realms - Reviewing Chang Yu-Ko's "Whisper"

Chang Yu-Ko's first novel that has been translated into English, Whisper, is a very fascinating dive into the darker and scarier sides of Taiwanese folklore and history.

The story starts off with Hsiang-ying, a middle aged woman who leads a miserable life; she works for bad conditions and endures domestic violence from her useless husband Shih-sheng who feels nothing but contempt for her. After an accident at her workplace she starts experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations about a little Japanese girl and is institutionalized. Going back and forth between rage at his wife's clumsiness leading to the accident (the compensation of which will be a financial strain) and his alcohol excesses induced and worsened by financial problems, inferiority complexes due to his ethnic origin and his daughter who refuses any contact with him, Shih-sheng does not realize the gravity of the situation until Hsiang-ying dies under really curious circumstances. Her death means that it is now up to him to find the roots of these hallucinations, or else whatever it was that killed his wife will kill him too.

His search will lead him through the ruins of the Japanese invasion of Taiwan right to the top of Mount Jade, where a little Japanese girl named Minako is rumored to have been lost and have stayed with the indigenous Bunun people.

I don't really know how to review this book as I was totally awed by this different kind of horror and its fascinating components spread in front of me; the hanitu, the good (mashia) and bad (makwan) spirits which possess every human; the moxina, child-like ghosts which lure people away into forests or mountains and finally the extremely creepy xiaogui, baby demons, summoned into the bodies of dead fetuses, which need to be fed with blood and who otherwise will turn against you. And a very frightening priestess who has seen things in her lifetime.

Although the story starts with a focus on Shih-sheng, there are various storylines and characters, even main characters, which are introduced later in the book. There is, for instance, Hu Jui-yi, a social worker who is responsible for the care of an indigenous girl pushed into prostitution. She and her husband who is of Japanese descent and something of an expert for the local folklore, travel to Mount Jade and talk to the local people while trying to solve the puzzle of Hsiang-ying's death, providing a detailed and multi-layered picture of Taiwanese history and social structure. Furthermore, we follow the story of Kuo Chen-shan, Hsiang-ying's sister. A social climber, she suspects and proves her husband is unfaithful to her and not wanting to lose her social status resorts to black magic, which, as you might guess, isn't a very good idea.

I was grateful that there are many main characters as Shih-sheng never really was redeemed for me after how he treated his wife. Even though I saw where he came from and followed his character arc, which led him to a completely different place in the end, I never warmed up to him. The technique of introducing characters later in the book is not necessarily my favorite, although it's not something that renders the book completely non-enjoyable for me either. I still prefer to know my main characters from the beginning, though. I also have to admit that I found the language a little clunky and often needed to read sentences twice, especially in the beginning. After the first couple of chapters I felt I got used to the style, though.

Ultimately, I loved particularly the varied and truly terrifying take on horror and the many layers the story has to offer in terms of Taiwanese background and folkloric elements, I'd love to read more about this.