Finches

by A. M. Muffaz

Overview

Every family has a ghost story.

This gorgeous and lyrical debut by A.M. Muffaz shares a family's story about their ghosts in an abandoned house in a Malaysian village. Grandmother Jah is determined to return to her estranged husband's house years after a brutal murder. Her children and her granddaughter work together to clear out the remnants of the former residents. But, they're still there, lingering in the dead garden and musty, old rooms. 

Grandmother Jah will not surrender her home to the man that did so much harm in life. Her son, his boyfriend, her daughter, and granddaughter, all must join her in the effort to cleanse the old family home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798218224004
Publisher:	Afifah Lindberg
Publication date:	10/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	120
File size:	447 KB

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/23/2021

Muffaz’s debut novella explores ghosts of the heart and the home through gorgeous prose. Grandmother Jah finally returns to her small Malaysian village after the deaths of her husband and his other, much younger wife. Despite social expectations, Grandmother Jah refuses to mourn the couple, accept her departed husband’s bigamy, or move on from the fact that their relationship uprooted her from her home. As her son, her granddaughter, and their respective boyfriends help her to relieve the house of the couple’s belongings, specters and visions appear to them, unable to move on from the traumatic events that led to their deaths. As the story unfurls, sympathetic family members and anxious strangers have increasingly distressing run-ins with beings both seen and unseen and the family comes to question all they thought they knew about those who passed on. Muffaz writes with such beautiful prose that the efficient story takes on a timeless feel, moving effortlessly between magic and horror. Woven with a fine silk, this is a story that begs to be reread. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2021-08-31
A woman attempts to reclaim a haunted Malaysian house in this debut novella.

Grandmother Jah has returned to her former residence in a small village at the edge of Kuala Lumpur. It is the house she shared with her husband, Ghani, before she left him for taking a second, younger wife. She has returned only now that Ghani and the second wife are dead and the building stands empty. Jah is sure she can feel their continued presence—footsteps, breathing, even the sensation of being grabbed—but she merely curses them and demands that they leave the house to her. With the help of her granddaughter Khatijah and the girl’s boyfriend, Loong, Jah brings in a Buddhist nun and a Malay shaman to purify the house, but the spirits persist. Jah’s family wants her to forget the house and move on, but she insists on salvaging what she believes to be hers. As the story is told and retold from the perspectives of several characters—including Khatijah; her mother, Fatimah; her uncle Rahim; and Ghani himself—the haunting slowly comes into focus, along with the causes of Jah’s obstinacy. Can a broken home ever be cleared of its ghosts, or will the events of the past continue to haunt a place long after the participants have gone? Muffaz writes claustrophobic prose that draws attention to the story’s creepy details, as here where Rahim observes the trees outside the house that Jah has ordered him to chop down: “Rahim looked up at his father’s mango trees, each approaching twenty years old. The tallest trees soared above the house, with the smallest among them double his height and triple his girth. Fire ants blanketed the overripe fruit, so the mangoes appeared to bleed without spilling a drop.” The shifts in time and perspective add to the story’s unease, which is less interested in spooking readers than analyzing the deeper fault lines of the family’s drama. The author explains in her (mostly unnecessary) introduction that her goal was to explore the grief caused by Malaysia’s tolerance of polygamy, and the result is a captivating tale that should please fans of American gothic while introducing rich new elements.

A surprising and insightful horror tale.

Kirkus Reviews