... Chow’s memoir is a memorial to her mother delivered in a graceful, captivating voice. Like several acts of tribute to the dead in this book about grief and family, immigration and ancestors, it’s accomplished long after the loss that it marks.

The book reads like a memory album, of enduring images of Chow's mother and of family treks and private jokes.

... magnificent.

... while Seeing Ghosts would not exist without Chow's grief — while Chow would not be the person she is now without that grief — her project here aims for more than just mapping her primal anguish.

... undeniably one of the best books you will read this year. Not one of the best nonfiction new releases, not one of the best memoirs; but one of the best books, period.

Chow recounts both her own youth and episodes from the lives of her parents, immigrants who met and married in Connecticut and whom Chow portrays with love and candor.

The book is a tribute to Chow’s spirited mother, but it’s also a revealing portrait of three daughters trying to negotiate a complicated relationship with their father.

The ghosts Chow writes about in her elegiac memoir are both literal and metaphorical. In lyrical and probing vignettes, she explores the spaces left behind when someone dies and how the loss reverberates through generations.

The poignancy of journalist Chow’s debut memoir can be felt instantly when she confesses that she still struggles to comprehend her mother’s death in 2004 and finds herself often rushing to glimpse her memorial.

Chow writes longingly about her mother, who died from cancer, in this intimate debut about a life shaped by loss.