Behold the Many
A Novel
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5.0 • 9 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Behold the Many is the eerily beautiful story of three young sisters, Anah, Aki, and Leah. In 1913, they are sent away from their family for treatment for tuberculosis to an orphanage in Hawaii's Kalihi Valley. Of the three, two will die there, in spite of the nuns' best efforts to save them, and only Anah, the eldest, will grow to adulthood.
But the ghosts of the dead children are afraid to leave the grounds of St. Joseph's, which is the only place they have known as home, and as Anah prepares to begin married life away from the orphanage, these ghost children grow angry. Desperate for the love of this girl who has communicated with them since her childhood, jealous of her ability to live in the physical world, and terrified of losing her, the ghosts are determined to thwart Anah's happiness. One of them places a curse on her that will reverberate through her future and that of her new family. As Anah struggles to appease the dead and to quiet her own guilt for living, it becomes apparent that only through one of her own daughters can redemption be attained.
Poignant, lyrical, and utterly compelling, Behold the Many is a stunning new novel from the critically acclaimed author Lois-Ann Yamanaka.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Taking up her familiar themes family, guilt, abandonment and the curses invoked by the dead on the living Yamanaka's latest novel builds nicely on her previous, Father of the Four Passages. In 1913, sisters Anah, Aki and Leah are sent to an orphanage on the Hawaiian island of Oahu when they fall ill with tuberculosis. Their family, headed by their hard-drinking Portuguese father who abuses their Japanese mother, is already strained before their departure. Anah promises her sisters that their mother and brother, Charles, will rescue them from the orphanage, but she is wrong: Leah and Aki die. As vengeful ghosts, Anah's sisters taunt and torture her for surviving and for what Aki terms her "lie" to them. With their parents' deaths and the disappearance of Charles, Anah remains cursed even as she attempts to go on. When Anah eventually finds happiness and marries, the chorus of voices from the dead extends the curse to her children. Only many years later following much suffering and one horrifying event does Anah find a way to appease the ghosts and to forgive herself. A cacophony of voices both living and dead who speak a variety of Hawaiian dialects spikes the narrative, but Yamanaka's beautiful, harsh prose and thematic vision unify this intense novel.
Customer Reviews
Stunning
Haunting, achingly beautiful with so much sadness. Broke my heart with every chapter. Yamanaka’s poetic writing is not something you can just learn, it has to be lived and felt before bringing pen to paper. Her writing is astounding.