All the Beloved Ghosts
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARDS
Acutely observed, evocative collection of short stories from the Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of Unexploded, blending fiction, biography and memoir
Hovering on the border of life and death, these stories form a ground-shifting collection, taking us into history, literature and the hidden lives of iconic figures.
In 1920s Nova Scotia, as winter begins to thaw, a woman emerges from mourning and wears a new fur coat to a dance that will change everything. A teenager searches for his lover on a charged summer evening in 2011, as around him London erupts in anger. A cardiac specialist lingers on the edge of consciousness as he awaits a new heart – and is transported to an attic room half a century ago. In an ancient Yorkshire churchyard, the author visits Sylvia Plath's grave and makes an unexpected connection across time. On a trip to Brighton, reluctant jihadists face the ultimate spiritual test. And at Charleston, Angelica Garnett, child of the Bloomsbury Group, is overcome by the past, all the beloved ghosts that spring to life before her eyes.
Precise, playful and evocative, these exquisitely crafted stories explore memory, the media and mortality, unfolding at the line between reality and fiction. Written with vigorous intelligence and delicate insight, this collection captures the surprising joys, small tragedies and profound truths of existence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MacLeod's (Unexploded) collection of stories deftly blends fiction and facts, memory and biography, to delve into the precarious nature of human life. The ghosts here are not literal except, perhaps, in the mind of one elderly character from the title story and one brief appearance by the late Sylvia Plath. Instead, the visitations of supernatural and fantastic beings in MacLeod's hands are suggestive of haunting memories and the traces that harrowing experiences leave behind. In "The Thaw," a girl attends a town dance and on that night of horrific tragedy, has the time of her life. In "The Heart of Denis Noble" a cardiovascular surgeon prepping for heart surgery has flashbacks to his younger days, his first breakthrough research on heart conditions, and the hard lessons he has learned about the vagaries of love. In "There Are Precious Things" the lives of people traveling in a subway car a single mother worried about her job, a nun on leave to get a hearing aid, a man with Alzheimer's, among others are examined. In "Dreaming Diana: Twelve Frames," the short life and widely controversial death of Princess Diana are revisited by a fan. Finely layered and often teasingly opaque, MacLeod's captivating book of stories presents a diverse array of voices, each as particular as the last.
