Product Description

When Agatha and Paddy decide to leave London and buy a house on the coast, they are full of hope for themselves and their growing family – baby Max and a new child on the way. Three months later, when the builders move out and they move in, things look very different. A personal tragedy threatens to destroy all they have carefully built up and only a small miracle, it seems, will save them. . . Ghost Story is a book both haunted and haunting, which asks how we can ever mourn something that hasn’t lived. Emotionally resonant, beautifully crafted and ultimately redemptive, it will take you to the heart of suffering and desire.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58617 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Toby Litt was born in 1968. He is the author of Adventures in Capitalism, Beatniks, Corpsing, deadkidsongs, Exhibitionism and Finding Myself.

Customer Reviews

Confusing, boring take on this emotive topic
It's rare for me to dislike a book as much as I did this one. Admittedly, it's got to be hard to write a novel about miscarriage, let alone a novel that's readable, interesting and engaging. But this one was really quite dire. Not only would I never recommend this to a friend, but I'd actively suggest not reading this!

Split into two parts, the first takes the form of a short story that's an apparently autobiographical take on the author's own experience of his partner's miscarriages. It veers between an almost unreadably literary style and a poignant, more personal take on the situation. It's upsetting stuff, moving and well-written in parts. Having read the blurb on the back cover, I found myself confused by what this first section of the book was. It wasn't clear whether we were launching into the main part of the novel (not the case) or reading something else (in which case, what was it meant to be and why was it there?).

Finally, the book gets to the main story: the tale of a couple (Paddy and Aggie) who have bought their perfect house, planning to bring up their family in it - only to find that it becomes a spooky, lonely trap because Aggie has lost the baby. As they both go slowly mad in their own unique ways, the house begins to haunt Aggie and becomes a symbol of their failing, haunted relationship. It's all pretty grim, upsetting stuff - yet I found it strangely boring and with little plot. I guess that is always the danger of a novel that centres largely around the main characters' mental states. Over-written and under-developed, Ghost Story is a novel that has taken an enormous, emotive topic - and has made it dull and distasteful. All in all, an awful book. I wish I hadn't read it.

Moving to the point of tears
I found the author's preface extremely moving, having suffered a recent miscarriage myself; it made me cry to the extent that I had to stop reading it! The book was worth buying just for the preface.

Ghost Story itself was also extremely well written and very poignant. It was a simple story, which felt very real and raw. This book isn't an easy read but the writing is so good and so intelligent that I couldn't put it down.

It's books like that this that make clear the distinction between people who write for a living (of which there are a lot) and good writers.

Brilliant writing but emotionally lacking...
Before the main part of this book, there's a brilliantly-written short story, and a (presumably) autobiographical account of Toby Litt's experience of his girlfriend's miscarriages. This I found harrowing and moving, along the lines of the outstanding Love Life by Ray Kluum. Then we get into the main fictional story, that of Paddy and Aggie, who have bought their dream house, but can not be happy there because Aggie has lost her baby and the bereavement is destroying their relationship. I admit to being prejudiced against men who try to write about specifically female issues from a woman's perspective. It hardly ever works and it didn't here. Because I couldn't believe in Aggie for a moment as a woman, the story wasn't worth reading.
Toby Litt is brilliant, but when writing about subjects as intimate and personal as this, I really think he should stick to the male perspective.