A writer of great descriptive power says the blurb on the front. Okay. Description. Except I don’t really enjoy reading description. Description reads heavy and unnecessary. From the name of one of the stories — Sylvia Wears Pink in the Underworld — I knew immediately it would be about Sylvia Plath, so much description is extraneous. A story with Diana in the title would be about Princess Diana. I think the titles do more than the stories, since they are short and snappy. The stories are pretty, but as I said, heavy. There’s no overall theme, except when there is (which we’ll say is beloved ghosts, like Diana and Sylvia and a great aunt who drowned in Cape Breton and Chekov and Angelica Garnett), and then the stories that don’t fit in with this theme (like In Praise of Radical Fish) are, like all the description, extraneous.
I liked the bits I liked. But then most of it is going to fade away like an empty spirit.
All The Beloved Ghosts by Alison MacLeod went on sale May 30, 2017.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.