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: #323128 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

A perceptive study of bereavement.
A skilled narrative depicting the disintegration of a personality and relationship following bereavement. Accurately observed, perceptive prose.

A chilling look at motherhood and bereavement
Agatha and Paddy move into a new house on the south coast. They have a two-year-old son called Max, but Max doesn't live with them. Instead, he is being cared for by Agatha's mother. Why? Because Agatha is grieving for the loss of her daughter Rose, who died in-utero, and is having trouble coping with day-to-day life.

While Paddy commutes to London each day to work, Agatha stays at home and begins to go slightly mad. The bereavement, which is a kind of unspoken pain between the couple, is the cause of Agatha's mental anguish. And in a Yellow Wallpaper type of way, she begins to think that the house is breathing...

Ghost Story is a harrowing read. It's a dark, brooding novel with little light or joy to be found within its 226 pages. But its perfect prose, it's clear-eyed portrayal of a married couple's relationship and it's realistic analysis of how bereavement can overshadow life, makes it worth the effort.

Coupled with the book's preface -- Litt's non-fiction account of his girlfriend's miscarriages -- this tale of love and loss is a particularly heartfelt one.

I wouldn't, however, recommend this to anyone thinking of starting a family or if you are recently bereaved: the pain in these pages might just be too realistic to bear.

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.