As we edge into autumn, publishers begin to drop their spooky new releases. It can be a very busy and exciting time for book reviewers and I always enjoy reading new drops and sending my reviews and feedback to the editors. So as it has been raining all weekend I have been curled up on the chaise-longue, listening to the raindrops pattering on the windowpane, completely absorbed in a new novel, an ARC which was very kindly sent to me by the publisher, Headline.
Broken Ghosts is a wonderful novel about the effects of grief and how people mourn their dead. It isn't exactly spooky, but it is full of ghosts, in one way or another. This isn't one of those eerie ghost stories you might reach for on Halloween night. Nothing goes bump in the night here. It isn't a scary read. Instead, the ghosts in this book are the gentle spirits of the past, the long-time dead but never forgotten, or the recently dead and currently mourned.
The story begins in 1985, when twelve-year-old Phoebe returns late from a school trip to find her house in flames and both her parents dead. She is quickly taken under the wing of her uncle, her new legal guardian, who spirits her away from her life in Scotland, to live with him and his partner, Maude, in the Welsh valleys. This is a move that Phoebe isn't happy about at all, but she has no choice. In this respect, the novel perfectly illustrates the powerlessness of children, who are often pushed from pillar to post when the worst happens and they find themselves without parents, for whatever reason.
Uncle Louis and Aunt Maude are a kind, if rather eccentric couple, and Phoebe finds herself swept into their quiet rural world of gardening and bee-keeping. With the closest school miles away and her guardians' approach to home-schooling being sporadic, Phoebe is often left to her own devices, so she begins to explore the local woods. It is there that she meets a girl of her own age, called Gwyneth, - a girl who wears old-fashioned clothes and who appears and disappears without warning. When Phoebe asks her aunt about Gwyneth, she is told that no such person exists in the village. Her aunt gently suggests that perhaps Gwyneth is an imaginary friend, someone Phoebe dreamed up to console herself in her loneliness and grief, but Phoebe knows that Gwyneth is real enough and so she sets about trying to discover who she is.
The thing I liked most about this novel is that it explores all the many ways in which people can be haunted. Haunted by memories, by the past, by grief, by a lost love, by a crime unpunished, by a lost child, a lost future or opportunity, haunted by madness even. There are ghosts all around us all the time, when you think about it, its just that not everyone can see them. All of these ghosts are explored here. Two of the main characters earn their living as ghost writers, which is a rather clever play on the theme of ghosts and what they may or may not be. And yes, there is an actual spirit at the heart of the novel, so it is certainly a ghost story, but it's so much more than that too.
In some ways, the novel reads like a mystery, with Phoebe turning detective and heading to the library archives to see if she can discover more about the valley in which she lives and the people who have lived there in the past. I had never read any of J D Oswalds work before, but after reading this book it came as no surprise that he generally writes detective novels! If this is his first foray into ghostly fiction, then he's done a good job of it and I hope that he will continue to write more ghostly tales in future, perhaps with more spookiness.
Although the book is set in Wales, I found myself thinking about Strathpeffer in Scotland as I read, because there are similarities between the fictional village and the small Highland town, where nothing is forgotten and the dead can be felt in the air. No-one ever fully leaves Strathpeffer, not even me, and a part of the soul always remains behind to walk the town with ghostly steps. This novel had that same atmosphere and yearning quality about it. It's a very moving story.
Broken Ghosts has a duel narrative, so we get to see both the Phoebe of the past in 1985 and the adult version of her in 2023. Each time-jump leads neatly from the last chapter and smoothly into the next, so this isn't jarring in any way. The duel timeline has been clearly thought out and it is well executed. I very much enjoyed reading this novel, which is a moving tale of endurance, resilience and recovery from grief.
At its core, Broken Ghosts is about what happens to the ghost of the whole-heart, after that heart has been broken. How does it survive the loss, the damage, the pain? How does it recover? And how many ghostly encounters does it take to heal a heart?
Broken Ghosts is released on Thursday and is up for Pre-Order now. Happy Haunting!
Marie x
AD: This book was sent to me by the publisher, Headline, and is released on 12th September 2024 in all formats.
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