Being Pink’s friend was like dancing on the edge of a precipice; it was fun, and you were on solid ground as long as you didn’t slip, but you worried about that line separating you from the darkness all the time. Being friends with Jing, by contrast, was like . . . just dancing, with a partner who matched your every move. [loc. 777]
Suraya is only a toddler when she inherits a pelesit, a ghost-demon, from her grandmother. When she's five, he makes himself known to her, and she decides that he must have a name. The pelesit, henceforth, is called Pink.
Pink has his work cut out preserving Suraya from the consequences of her own curiosity and adventurous nature. Her mother is emotionally distant, and Suraya runs more or less wild. Life is good for the two of them: but then Suraya goes to school, and Pink has to protect her from bullies and mean girls. Possibly he goes a bit too far: possibly he becomes as much of a bully as the girls he torments. And when Suraya makes friends with Chinese-Malaysian Jing Wei -- who introduces her to the joys of Star Wars -- Pink becomes fearsomely jealous, and Suraya realises she has to seek help, for both their sakes.
I was surprised by just how dark this book was: it would have given me nightmares as a child. It's not so much about threats to Suraya (though there are some) as about the supernatural elements, especially Pink's own history. As Jing Wei tells Suraya, “Have you learned nothing from Star Wars? The only way Luke could defeat Darth Vader was by knowing how he became Darth Vader. When he knew that, he could figure out how to defeat him, by tapping into the person he used to be... So we need to know where ... Pink ... came from.” [loc. 1535] Pink is fearsome, and his love for Suraya borders on obsession, but his origin story is extremely unsettling -- as is the climactic scene where Suraya and Pink face off with the villain.
The Girl and the Ghost, despite being written for a younger audience and set half a world away from the San Diego of The Library of Lost Things, is remarkably similar in some of its themes: a lonely daughter, an awesome best friend, judgmental / hostile schoolmates, a dysfunctional mother who's keeping a dreadful secret, an absent father (Suraya's father is dead). When Suraya tells her mother that "broken mothers raise broken daughters", it felt like a line that could have belonged in either novel (or, of course, in real life). And, as in Namey's novel, it's the telling of secrets that opens up the possibility of healing.
The similarities aren't exact, of course. The Girl and the Ghost also deals with obsessive, toxic friendship, and the importance of setting boundaries. Suraya's friendship with Jing is wholesome, but her codependent relationship with Pink ... well, for both their sakes she has to let go.
Fulfils the 'A Muslim Middle Grade Novel' rubric of the Reading Women 2021 Challenge. Suraya's faith is a part of her life, though it's intermixed with (justified) belief in the creatures of Malaysian folklore.
I liked this a lot, though found it deeply unsettling in parts. “There are good books which are only for adults… but there are no good books which are only for children.” [W H Auden]
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