Black Water Sister, by Zen Cho

[sophia_sol]

Zen Cho is brilliant at writing difficult older relatives who think they know what's best for you, and she takes it to new heights here with Jess who is haunted by the strong-minded spirit of her dead grandmother, not to mention all the OTHER relatives in town who have their own ideas for Jess's life.

Cho is ALSO brilliant at writing stories imbued with magic that feel terribly grounded in mundanity, which feels like it should be an insult but it's not, her characters are just all running around having extremely understandable reactions to things whether they're magic things or not.

Anyway this is the story of a worried lesbian zillennial who grew up in the US but has to move back to Malaysia with her parents, and is trying to figure out what she's going to do with her life, but her dead grandma needs her to help out with some revenge first. It's GREAT.

Also lots of content about religion and the various ways people choose to engage with it to different levels and in different ways. Loved all the different gods in this book, the ones that showed up in person and the ones who didn't. Including of course the titular Black Water Sister. The way Cho wrote the emotional reaction of people to her presence was really effective at making her vibes come to life for the reader!

Comments

[dolorosa_12]

Zen Cho is brilliant at writing difficult older relatives who think they know what's best for you

This — and the way she writes about food — are my absolute favourite things about Zen Cho's writing!

[sophia_sol]

it probably says something about me and the way I read that I have never paid much attention to how authors do and don't write food! When Cho's food is plot-relevant I notice it, but that's about as far as I can say. It's nice to hear that she's good at it though :)

[michelel72]

This sounds super engaging and I have now requested it from my library network!

[sophia_sol]

oh yay I hope you like it!

[chestnut_pod]

Cho just goes from strength to strength; this book was such a fabulous, fun ride with real stuff under the surface! I definitely agree with Dolorosa; this book make me terribly hungry too :)

I also think its ending was very suitable and tied the book together well, making sure all us readers knew where the emotional heart was. (I have to say, I feel like the girlfriend was maybe not going to last all that much longer, though… Not sure if I was meant to have that takeaway!)

[sophia_sol]

Yes, I agree with you about the ending! And about the girlfriend -- this relationship has clearly been important to Jess in this stage of her experience of growing up, but I do not see much sign that it's a relationship that has what it takes to last. Which is fine! Sometimes you gotta thank a relationship for what it's given you and let it go when it's time.

[lirazel]

I'm looking forward to this one! Everyone I've talked to has loved it!

[sophia_sol]

It's so great! I hope you love it too :)

[cahn]

Haha now that I have finally read this I must say that I was kind of annoyed by Jess keeping Everything in Her Life a secret from her girlfriend the entire book. I mean, I see why, Doylistically, this had to happen, and tbh if I had a girlfriend who was like "uh I've been possessed by my dead grandma" I'd be like "um, and are you getting treated for mental health yet?" so yeah. But it's something I really really do not like in real life and so it irked me in the book too! So I was actually kind of relieved that the end was not "we're going to live happily ever after" but "okay, we'll give this another shot and maybe it will work but it probably won't long-term"

Anyway, I also really liked the ending (and the book in general)!

[sophia_sol]

to me it felt like it was one of those signs that Jess is growing out of this relationship, or that the relationship wasn't working for her anymore at least for that time, so it seemed very like....reasonable and understandable a choice for her to be making in the context of what the relationship was, even beyond the "and are you getting treated for mental health yet" part of that kind of disclosure. Is keeping major secrets from your partner a bad idea in relationships? ABSOLUTELY. But people do things that are bad ideas all the time, and in this particular case I felt like it fit what we'd been shown of the character and the relationship, rather than shoehorned in for narrative reasons

[cahn]

and in this particular case I felt like it fit what we'd been shown of the character and the relationship, rather than shoehorned in for narrative reasons

Oh yes, I should have said that, Watsonially it also made complete sense given both her character and the milieu around her (I mean, it's not exactly unrelated that her entire family is also keeping secrets from her and each other). And one of the reasons it irked me is that I definitely went through that period myself for much the same reasons, and it sucked, and so I kept wanting to be all "please fast forward ten years!"

[sophia_sol]

ah yeah, very fair!