Swallow the Ghost
A Novel
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
This "intricate" and "remarkable" debut novel traces the impact of a violent event on three different lives, each interconnected story further complicating the truth. (Laura van den Berg)
• NEW YORK TIMES BEST CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR •
Things are going well for Jane Murphy, or so it seems. She’s making it in New York, a sort of wunderkind at the social media marketing startup where she works. She’s put an experimental writer, Jeremy Miller, on the map by helping him concoct a viral internet novel, told in fragments through various fake social media accounts. But privately, Jane feels trapped, ruled by her routines and her compulsions with food and social media, caught up in an endless cycle of soothing and punishing herself. There is so much that she has to keep hidden, especially from Jeremy as their professional relationship transforms into something more.
But then, tragedy strikes, and the story changes track. As the perspective shifts, so too does our image of Jane and those in her orbit as what we think we know begins to unravel.
Audacious, emotionally precise and head-spinning in its ingenuity, Swallow the Ghost interrogates our public identities and private realities through the kaleidoscopic portrait of one woman's life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this bold and bewitching debut, Montague explores the complex construction of public and private identities in three interlocking narratives. The first part comprises a deceptively traditional mystery centered on burned-out marketer Jane Murphy, who's building buzz for the next novel from experimental crime author Jeremy Miller by managing multiple fake social media accounts that tell the story of a fictional girl's disappearance. After Jane is murdered, Montague's story morphs into a true crime pastiche narrated by the PI investigating her death, who's wrestling with an identity crisis brought on by his career change from journalist to detective. In the final section, Miller describes his life after Jane's death—including the ways he dealt with rumors that he killed her—in a podcast interview, which shrewdly transforms him from secondary character to self-obsessed protagonist and underscores the novel's themes about the slipperiness of self-conception. Montague navigates the perspective switches with prose so distinctive that each segment feels almost as if it were written by a different author, which makes for thrilling reading while enhancing the narrative's Rashomon-like structure. The result is a brain-teasing triumph that will reward multiple readings.
