The Ghost Years

by Nghi Vo

PodCastle episode 434.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy

Audiobook

First published September 20, 2016

About the author

Nghi Vo is the author of the acclaimed novellas The Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind. The Chosen and the Beautiful is her debut novel.

Reviews

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can be read or listened to at: https://podcastle.org/2016/09/20/podc...

Vo is such an excellent writer:
‘My father’s hand crashed into my face.’

After someone dies, there are stories told. When my father’s father died, I was only a little child, but we traveled all the way to Thanh Hóa in cars drawn by the steam engines. I remember that the engine itself was sculpted to look like dragons, fierce cat heads and long crocodilian bodies. I thought that they ate up the distance between Thăng Long and Thanh Hóa so that we got there before the day was out.

My father and his siblings told stories about his father for three days straight over enormous plates of burnished duck and roasted pork. I ate the crunchy pork skin that my mother peeled off of her meat for me, and I ate up the stories as well.

Last one:

My family exists in the stories we tell each other about each other, and in that, we are very much like our country. The Vietnamese were born from the marriage of a dragon from the sea and a goddess from the mountain. They lived together long enough to have one hundred children, but upon realizing that he craved the water, and she her mountains, they split their family in half and went their separate ways.

I first encountered Vo through The Empress of Salt and Fortune and I’m glad I found this short story of hers.

[Manal · Rating 4 out of 5]

we keep this love in a photograph

[scvrdinko · Rating 4 out of 5]

finishing each of nghi vo’s lovely works with a thought that i do believe in the power of stories too!