Springtime : A Ghost Story
Description:
“This is a gorgeous, delicately surprising piece of writing. . . . It's like spirit photography, all fuzzy outlines and unaccountable light: a snapshot of something that may or may not exist.” —Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Book Review When Frances met Charlie at a party in Melbourne, he was married with a young son. Now that the couple has moved to subtropical Sydney, a lusher and more chaotic city, Frances has an unshakable sense that the world has tipped on its axis. Everything seems alien, and exotic—and Frances is haunted by the unknowability of Charlie's previous life. A young art historian studying the objects in paintings––the material world––Frances takes mind–clearing walks around her neighborhood with her dog. Behind the fence of one garden, she thinks she sees a woman in an old–fashioned gown, but something is not right. It's as if the garden exists in a vacuum suspended in time, "at an angle to life." Springtime is a ghost story that doesn't conform to the genre's traditions of dark and stormy nights, graveyards and ruins. It breaks new ground by unfolding in sunny, suburban Australia, and the realism of the characters and events make the story's ambiguities and eeriness all the more disquieting. The richness of observation here is immediately recognizable as Michelle de Kretser's, a writer who has been praised by Hilary Mantel as a master of ""the sharp, almost hallucinatory detail."
Reviews:
(4 days ago) |
02 Jan, 2025
I was seduced by this little novella's lovely cover, the Ursula K. LeGuin blurb, and the author's identity as a Sri Lankan-Australian. It has been ages since I've read a story set in Australia. And as I read this, it became clear just how little I still know about Australia. Major cities on the coasts, bloody big desert in the middle, some big red rocks in there, opal mining, all the animals want to and can kill you. That's what I know about Australia.
ANYWAY. I wonder how this story is served by putting "A Ghost Story" on the front cover. Although the back warns us that this is probably not your conventional ghost story, it definitely brings certain expectations to the table. Expectations that are not exactly met. But does setting up and then side-stepping those expectations subvert them in an interesting way? Or just frustrate them? I suspect it depends on how invested the reader is in this being a traditional ghost story.
Me? I found this story charming. Even though I'm not a dog person, and a lot of this story revolves around two dogs. The protagonist wasn't easy to relate to, but I found her research interesting, her long walks along the river. Her observations on cultural behavior at airports. And I didn't mind the light touch of the ghost story aspect.
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Challenge:
Read Around Asia Challenge
Country:
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Language:
EN
Genre:
Contemporary fiction Short story
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