Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2022
242 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
With an unforgettable voice and exuberant wit, She Is Haunted is a masterful debut exploring issues of identity, connection, and loss, told with remarkable grace and assurance by Chinese/American/Australian author, Paige Clark.
In stories charged by the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, grief, exes, and the profundities of friendship, She Is Haunted features injured ballerinas, cloned dogs, and competitive call centers in settings as far ranging as future and present Australia, New York City's Chinatown, and suburban California. A mother cuts her daughter's hair because her own hair begins falling out; a woman attempts to physically transform into her dead husband so that she does not have to grieve; a woman undergoes brain surgery in order to live more comfortably in extreme temperatures.
Braiding the real and the surreal, both playfully witty and deeply insightful, these stories show us characters striving to make sense of the grand themes of family, love, death, and our changing world. She Is Haunted flags Paige Clark as a wondrous and wise new literary talent.
"In turns devastating and hilarious, Clark's exceptional debut collection cuts right to the emotional core of its characters and their conflicts in stories that examine Asian identity, familial relationships, climate anxiety, and gender with an astonishing sense of nuance and clarity...With a striking style, Clark consistently hits her mark, sticking each landing with breathtaking poignancy. This will not disappoint." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Clark's debut collection of 18 stories gives keen insight into the transnational Chinese experience and the often relatable struggles and fears these characters face...Clark's stories explore trauma, mother-daughter relationships, female friendships, identity, and grief with humor and an incredible wit that will capture readers." - Booklist
"Many Elizabeths appear in Paige Clark's collection. They are zany, tender, slyly wise, and always enchanting. I laughed! I cried! And I winced knowingly along as they plunge into the mysteries of diasporic identity, intimacy, and loss. Mothers and daughters come together, fall apart. Lovers charm and feint. They haunt me, in the best possible way." - Entertainment Weekly
"Debut books of short stories can follow something of a pattern: some pyrotechnics to show range, potentially autobiographical elements, a singular perspective or worldview that separates the author from the pack. But while all of this is true of She Is Haunted, this book is a true original, with skilled, delicate power and an unforgettable mix of raw humour, fantastical digressions and melancholy insight...This is one of the most enjoyable, memorable Australian books of this year." - The Guardian (UK)
"Aching and disquieted, urbane and oblique, Clark's is a humorous, wiry voice: a mix of high and low culture, boppy registers and jibes and sudden intrusions of seriousness; epiphanies (occasional); poignancy (often frustrated). Many of the Asian characters are only nominally so – they are hyphenated, diasporic…She Is Haunted is the strongest fiction debut I have read all year." - The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
"Paige Clark's stories in She is Haunted illuminate all of the corners of the heart — she examines her characters' journeys through grief, envy, connection, and love, across nations, identity and trauma. Her work has the deep honesty and precision of writers like Amy Hempel, Yoko Ogawa, and Alice Munro. A stunning collection." - Karen E. Bender, author of The New Order and Refund
This information about She Is Haunted was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paige Clark is a Chinese/American/Australian fiction writer, researcher and teacher from Los Angeles. Her fiction has appeared in Meanjin, Meniscus and New World Writing. In 2019, she was runner-up for the Peter Carey Short Story Award and shortlisted for the David Harold Tribe Fiction Award. She has a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communication Theory from Boston University and a Master of Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing from the University of Melbourne, where she is currently at work on her PhD. Her research addresses the relationship between race, craft and the teaching of creative writing. She lives in Melbourne with her partner, Alex, and their dog, Freddie.
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