All tagged ghost stories

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Many people have spoken of the power in Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), but nothing can prepare its reader for the heart-wrenching narrative held within its pages. This story, told in alternating, first-person perspective, is a story of place. A native of the Mississippi Delta, Ward knows Sing, Unburied, Sing’s setting intimately. The delta, and its many unburied spirits, come to life in this moving coming-of-age story rich with themes of belonging, loss, addiction, and so much more.

Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

George Saunders’ first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), is an astonishingly genre-bending tale set primarily in the in-between space that follows death and precedes whatever comes after. As the novel’s dust jacket explains, “bardo” is a Tibetan Buddhist term for the place souls occupy between death and reincarnation. Saunders is a master of written word (called the greatest American short story writer of our time by many), but this is his first foray into longer form fiction; and he dazzles.

Plain Bad Heroines

Plain Bad Heroines

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Emily Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines (2020) is an unsettling read; one replete with ghosts, curses, nightmarish yellow jackets, and plenty of the uncanny. Yet, in addition to the horror—a genre Danforth clearly plays with on multiple levels in PBH—the reader meets the witty, modern narrator, with her references to social media posts and snide humor. Plain Bad Heroines explores the lives and loves of women, both contemporary and early twentieth-century, as they unapologetically make their own ways. Plain Bad Heroines, like Danforth’s first novel, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, is LGBTQ fiction.