Poor Ghost!

Poor Ghost! is a compulsive, razor-sharp and deeply tender novel about dislocation, belonging and authenticity; the past beating away beneath it all the while. -- Lara Williams, author of <i>Supper Club</i> Gabriel Flynn's work, rich with insight and wit, makes the world newly vivid. I'm always interested to read what he writes. -- Claire Messud, author of <i>This Strange Eventful History</i> Sharp and coolly beautiful . . . The morph back and forth between tenderness and horror, between love-as-duty and love-as-cannibalism put me in a vivid, immersive vertigo -- Tim MacGabhann, author of <i>Call Him Mine</i> In this story of two strangers struggling to tell one another the stories of their respective lives, Gabriel Flynn creates a kind of laboratory for examining miscommunication. At the heart of his novel there is a brilliantly simple idea and there are compellingly complicated characters. What results is a microscopic, forensic examination of the knottiness and involution of human relationships -- Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, author of <i>The End of Nightwork</i> Poor Ghost! is a darkly funny and deeply intelligent novel about literature, class, and how to tell a good story. With echoes of Ben Lerner, Flynn skillfully explores a young man's struggle to make sense of both his family's legacy and his Manchester hometown. Beautifully wise, sad, and witty -- Julianne Pachico, author of <i>Jungle House</i> Poor Ghost! is unostentatiously beautiful and plainly brilliant. Flynn's vivid characters come alive off the page in this propulsive, deeply enjoyable, perfectly unsettling story of motive and motivation, desire and ambition. Intimate, clever, unforgettable. -- Elvia Wilk , author of <i>Oval</i> Laconic and darkly poignant, Poor Ghost tackles class, grief and narrative perplexity with distinctive dry wit -- Leon Craig, author of <i>Parallel Hells</i> Place, belonging, failure, ambition: this beguilingly readable novel has interesting, fresh things to say on them all. The complex business of the stories people tell is explored by Gabriel Flynn in compelling, unexpected ways -- Wendy Erskine, author of <i>The Benefactors</i>