Ghost Girls (Cath Ferla, Echo)

Ghost Girls is a promising debut that defies easy categorisation. Set in the sometimes sketchy world of adult English-language colleges in inner Sydney—a scene the author clearly knows very well—it is told mainly through the eyes of Sophie, a young Chinese-Australian ESL teacher who is deeply divided between her two cultures. When a female student at her college commits suicide and other Asian women go missing, Sophie starts investigating. It soon becomes clear that there’s a sinister side to life as a foreign student: exploited workers, visa fraud, illegal brothels and worse. As she gets deeper into the mystery, the ghosts of her own past return. There’s a very strong sense of place to the novel—the colleges, student bars and restaurants behind Chinatown’s tourist facade—and a powerful feeling of the separation between the ‘western’ world and the other, darker side of Sydney. Ghost Girls displays some of the weaknesses of debuts—occasional overwriting and over-explanation—but in general it’s a strong novel. Equal parts mystery, thriller, romance and journey of self-discovery, it will appeal to anyone who has taught a foreign language or spent time as a language student, or who has ever felt like a foreigner.

Lachlan Jobbins is a freelance editor. In a previous life he taught ESL at an English college in Sydney

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