Ezra's Ghosts
Stories
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Award-winning author Darcy Tamayose returns with Ezra’s Ghosts, a collection of fantastical stories linked by a complex mingling of language and culture, as well as a deep understanding of grief and what it makes of us. Within these pages a scholar writes home from the Ryukyu Islands, not knowing that his hometown will soon face a deadly calamity of its own. Another seeker of truth is trapped in Ezra after her violent death, and must watch how her family—and her killer—alter in her absence. The oldest man in town, an immigrant who came to Canada to escape imperial hardships, sprouts wings, and a wounded journalist bears witness to his transformation. Finally, past and present collide as a researcher reflects on the recent skinwars that have completely altered the world’s topography. Binding the stories together is an intersection of arrival and departure—in a quiet prairie town called Ezra.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tamayose (Odori) is not likely to find lukewarm readers for her challenging debut collection of four stories all circling the prairie town of Ezra; it will either baffle or dazzle, largely due to the idiosyncratic prose ("Great Wall. Grand. Old. Crumbly. Hard to believe humans built it. Walked. Sketched."). In "The Thesis," a student, Nick, works on his thesis but gets distracted by doodling and marginalia. The tale itself is a patchwork of storytelling methods, including gorgeous prose passages, epistolary email exchanges that hint at calamity, and images of Nick's drawings. The result is brilliant but requires multiple readings to untangle. The denser but more traditionally structured "Ghostfly" offers an immersive and intelligent page turner, as a ghost narrates the story of her own murder amidst research into attacks on Indigenous women. "The Ryukyuan," about a third-generation Polish Canadian immigrant, reads like a compact novel, merging the protagonist's struggles in academia with well-wrought explorations of geographic history and heritage. In the propulsive but melodramatic "Redux," an agoraphobic academic embarks on a research project with her son against a backdrop of global wars, internment camps, and economic depression. Tamayose's experimental story structures and tight focus on academia make for a collection that will likely put off casual readers. For those willing to put in the work, this is a treasure.
