Sunyi Dean’s sophomore novel, The Girl with a Thousand Faces, unfurls a tapestry of interwoven lives, predominantly female, across several decades in East Asia, centering on themes of memory, trauma, and the enduring echoes of war. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of the Second World War and its protracted repercussions, Dean masterfully navigates the spectral and the corporeal realms, offering a nuanced exploration of how history shapes individual destinies and collective consciousness.
A City of Shadows and Spirits: Kowloon Walled City, 1975
The narrative’s most arresting present-day thread follows Mercy Chan in the labyrinthine Kowloon Walled City of 1975. This densely packed, largely lawless territory, unofficially governed by crime syndicates, serves as a potent metaphor for the unaddressed socio-political and spiritual disarray of post-war Hong Kong. Mercy, a woman in her fifties, possesses the extraordinary ability to communicate with ghosts, a talent she leverages as an exorcist. However, her approach deviates from conventional banishment. Dean portrays Mercy as an empathetic conduit, one who seeks to understand the deceased’s grievances and guide them towards peace, rather than forcibly evicting them. This philosophical stance often leads to a form of spectral justice, where vengeful spirits, empowered by Mercy’s understanding, exact retribution on those who wronged them.
"There are many kinds of waiting-women ghosts," the novel describes, "from wives pining for dead or unfaithful husbands to mothers wasting away as they hoped for the return of a child, to young girls with broken hearts, and so on. She felt sorry for them, but also annoyed by them. Bad enough to spend your life waiting on other people; even worse to spend the afterlife doing it, too." Mercy’s pragmatic yet compassionate approach stems from her own fractured past. She has no recollection of her life before 1942, the year she washed ashore in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, a period marked by pervasive death and destruction.
The Scars of Occupation: Hong Kong, 1940s
The stark imagery of Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in 1942 is vividly rendered: "the corpses are the first thing she sees here. Corpses in the streets and alleys, corpses on the boardwalks and slumping against doorframes. Corpses piled on corpses in wagons, in great stinking mounds of flesh. War has left its mark." The unsettling lack of aversion to this grim spectacle in Mercy hints at a deeper, perhaps pre-existing connection to the realm of the dead, or a profound psychic scarring. Her survival in the Kowloon Walled City, a place described as "the city of darkness," where "China and Britain uncomfortably dodged the responsibility for its poverty and spirit infestations," allowed her to navigate the immediate post-war landscape. Initially involved in the resistance, Mercy eventually found her calling among the city’s criminal elements as a "ghost talker," a role that allowed her to offer a unique brand of justice. Her willingness to facilitate revenge for the wronged dead underscores a potent, almost primal, sense of equilibrium.
Echoes from the Island: A Fragmented Past
Mercy’s present existence is haunted by visions of a "monstrous, ocean-drenched young woman, wearing the same ragged clothes," who relentlessly urges her to remember "the island." This spectral figure, identified as Sea Sister, represents a more formidable and terrifying aspect of the spirit world, capable of violence and drowning, hinting at a lineage of supernatural power and perhaps a darker history than Mercy can currently comprehend.
The 1920s: A Village’s Shadow
Further excavating the past, Dean transports readers to a remote island village off the coast of Hong Kong in the 1920s. Here, a woman and her two young daughters face ostracization from villagers who perceive one of the girls as an ill omen. A tragic accident, involving a fall into a cave once home to an ancient temple, separates the family. This incident is crucial, as one of the daughters eventually relocates to Hong Kong, setting in motion the events that lead to Mercy’s existence.
The 1940s: Survival and the Unseen
Thirty-three years prior to Mercy’s 1975 narrative, on a remote island off Hong Kong’s coast, a young Siu Yin and her mother are hiding from the Japanese invasion. They find refuge on her mother’s ancestral island, a place teeming with spirits. The island’s original inhabitants, wiped out by a storm decades earlier, still linger. While most are benign, a presence in the surrounding waters calls to Siu Yin, a siren-like allure that she cannot resist, hinting at a connection to the Sea Sister apparition.
A Deeper Understanding of Grief and Legacy
The novel’s intricate narrative structure, weaving these disparate timelines, demands reader engagement. While Mercy’s story often commands the spotlight, the interconnectedness of the narratives becomes clear as the plot unfolds. Dean challenges conventional notions of protagonist and antagonist, suggesting that guilt is a complex product of environment, experience, and inherited trauma. This philosophy is starkly illustrated when Siu Yin struggles to understand the nature of the island’s ghosts. Her mother explains, "you are thinking like a Westerner, like one of the white nuns at your school. To them, ghosts are just a pest, a villain, a monster to kill. British people… they do not love their ghosts, as they do not love their ancestors. When their dead return, they are banished, When their souls cling, they are forced onwards… Ghosts are driven by hurt, and cannot help themselves. Do you think a storm is evil, because it pours rain on your head?" This dialogue highlights a core cultural tenet: that ancestral spirits are not inherently malevolent but are extensions of lived experience, as natural and vital as the elements, and integral to understanding identity and heritage.
The Unseen Scars of War
Dean posits that the true antagonist is not a character, but war itself. "war does not finish… It is not a game that stops when enough players quit. It is a wound, sinking into flesh, leaving scars and rot that cause pain for a long time." The pervasive trauma of war, the atrocities of the Japanese occupation, and the generational grief it engenders are the macrocosm of the story. The detonation of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima is felt not just physically but spiritually: "she feels it, oh so clearly. Every ghost and shaman from here to China to Russia, to Guam and all the places in between—they feel the spiritual energy of a hundred thousand souls being blasted from flesh into spirit. It is like a portal to hell has opened." This profound connection illustrates how human actions, even in their destructive capacity, can ripple into the spirit world. Dean offers a unique perspective on ghosts participating in resistance, born from or embraced by the very conflict that created them, emphasizing that war’s impact is all-encompassing, affecting history, culture, legacy, and stories.
Narrative Ambition and the Cycle of Healing
The Girl with a Thousand Faces is a complex work, not only in its plot but also in its narrative architecture. Dean’s frequent shifts in perspective (third and second person POV), timelines, and locations require the reader to fully immerse themselves in each distinct facet of the story. This ambitious approach allows for a profound exploration of the endless cycle of trauma and grief. The novel poses a fundamental question: how can this cycle be broken? Dean suggests that the answer lies not in seeking justice, but in choosing peace and forgiveness. The path to healing involves confronting and accepting one’s inner demons, recognizing them as integral parts of the self. While the novel can evoke a sense of bleakness, it is punctuated by moments of grace, love, friendship, and ultimately, the profound possibility of forgiveness.
The Girl with a Thousand Faces is published by Tor Books.
