I Am the Ghost Here
Stories
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- 1,49 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
“The debut by Pushcart-winning short story writer Kim Samek blends subversive humor with the absurd in a memorable collection of stories. . . . Recommended for fans of Ben Loory and Aimee Bender.”—Los Angeles Times (20 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2026)
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: Alta, The Millions, Debutiful, Lit Hub, The Seattle Times
A woman's limbs disappear into “the cloud” during wildfire-induced power outages. A lonely DoorDasher accidentally becomes the star of someone else's reality show, forced to resolve her fraught relationship with her immigrant mother for the narrative. Succumbing to a widely denied pandemic, a gymnastics coach must carry her heart around in a Mason jar, using her disability to become an influencer. Two chronically single, chronically ill people become soulmates, only to discover their meeting was algorithmically orchestrated by ad tech. Other dramas unfold as icebergs melt and island-sized trash heaps burn.
Threaded with sharp social commentary, these stories question the engineering of human connection through technology, social media, and reality television. Warm, endlessly strange, and filled with dark yet hopeful humor, I Am the Ghost Here casts familiar crises of contemporary life in a wholly unique light, offering a pathway towards our shared humanity even as reality comes crumbling down.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Samek debuts with a striking collection of fantastical and speculative stories about conformity, technology, and the limits of bodily autonomy. The unnamed narrator of the title entry, a Thai woman who works at a hair salon, learns that her older brother, Jeff, a Stanford graduate and tech entrepreneur, owes his success to a "puppeteer" named Michelle, a self-described "empath" who tells him how to act and what to say. In "The Sharpest Knife," patients infected by a strange virus have major organs removed. The narrator, a former gymnastics coach, carries her heart around in a mason jar while it functions via Bluetooth. Adopting a growth mindset, she becomes a popular influencer, while her husband flounders following the removal of his brain. After an exhausted new mother turns into scrambled eggs in "Egg Mother," her husband encourages her to see a therapist, who presses her to open up about her past. "The Cloud" depicts a phenomenon in which women temporarily lose body parts during rolling blackouts. When the narrator reports her missing arm to the power company, she's told it's safe in "the cloud" and she'll get it back once power is restored. Throughout, Samek elicits genuine pathos and offers astute social commentary. This dazzles.
