The Hungry Ghosts

Anne Berry. Photo / Supplied

According to Martin Amis, J.G. Ballard "gave shape to what shaped him" in his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun, inspired by his childhood in colonial Shanghai. The same can be said of Anne Berry's The Hungry Ghosts. The London-born writer's debut is mostly set in Hong Kong, where she spent many of her formative years. However, she believes immigrants to other former British colonies like New Zealand will also relate to her experiences.

"The wealth, the social whirl, the feeling of being part of a powerful insular community beyond reproach, will be recognised by many," says Berry, who lives in Surrey. "I suspect that the sense of living in a shrinking world and finally toppling off it as the British Empire crumbled will also strike a chord. It was a wonderful place to grow up. So beautiful with such a lot of extremes and a fascinating melting pot of different cultures."

The novel begins in 1965 and moves forward to the present day, taking in the return of the island settlement to the Chinese in 1997.

"It was really peculiar living somewhere which effectively disappeared," recalls Berry. "Hong Kong is still there and it's a lovely thriving island but everything has changed. It became such a strange place to live as the handback was getting closer and closer. There's no point pretending that the balance of power wasn't heavily weighted in favour of the colonials and that the Chinese had a hard time. They tried to adjust this in later years but nevertheless it became a really bizarre outpost of the British Empire. It really could not have been more ludicrous, trying to have Britain on this tiny little island on the doorstep of China."

The story centres around Alice Safford, the daughter of a British diplomat, who is possessed by the spirit of Lin Shui, a young Chinese peasant girl murdered by the Japanese occupiers during World War II.

"She has her beginnings in real life," says Berry, who knew a family apparently haunted by a poltergeist. "She threw things around the house. It really stuck in the mind because it was said in a casual throwaway manner; it wasn't someone saying, 'I'm going to tell you something spooky'. You could almost say she has been growing inside me all these years as a character."

As Alice gets older, Lin Shui is joined by several other phantoms including that of her dead dog and, most disturbingly, the foetus of her aborted child. "They arrived of their own volition, I didn't plan them," says Berry. "They just came along while I was writing. I love the visual image of this little motley band always following her around."

But are they real or a figment of Alice's imagination? "The ghost of Lin Shui is the ghost of a person who lived and died but clung on to life. But the other ghosts that come along are really a product of Alice's unhappy mind — they disappear when she is happy. They are a good indicator of whether things are going well or not, their appearance marks absolute tragedies in Alice's life that she can't let go of. They're not just ghosts but all the baggage that comes with the tragedies."

Crucially the reader gets to know Alice only through Lin Shui and the various members of her family. Unlike all the other main characters, no chapter is told from her perspective.

"It was one of the first things that came to me when I was writing the book and thinking about all these voices," says Berry. "It was a really strong instinct not to give Alice a direct voice, although you hear about her from others. It means that everyone can have their own Alice."

Featuring the restless spirit of a slain young female who refuses to relinquish her hold on life, The Hungry Ghosts has been compared to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. "Both books feature multiple narrators and a family web of secrets and lies that result in tragic consequences," says Berry, who believes that her book is very different to the American best-seller, which is being filmed by Peter Jackson.

"Lin Shui is a more malignant presence, whose quirky commentary on unfolding events gives a unique insight into colonial life. And in Hong Kong death is very much a part of life. Your ancestors don't just fall off the end of a pier as they do in England, they continue being a big part of the family. You have picnics on the graves and you talk to them and make offerings. That is something that has stayed with me. If anything, Lin Shui has quite a strong voice of common sense, she is almost more sensible than the people she is living with."

Berry plans to eventually explore Hong Kong again but will set her next two novels a bit closer to home, in Britain.

"I want to leave quite a big gap before I set another book there. I want it to be completely fresh and totally different. But my work will always have that curious balance of flesh and blood realism and a kind of magical element because that's something that's in me.

"I don't make it happen, it just happens. But that's the only way to write: to write from the heart, to write what you feel."

The Hungry Ghosts (Blue Door/HarperCollins $36.99)