From the Costa First Novel Award shortlisted author of An Unremarkable Body
She came to write, but the island has its own story . . .
Off the windswept coast of Scotland lies Finish Island, rugged and remote. Once a home, it now stands abandoned, a place of dark history and deep memory, a place that holds its stories close. Unable to write since her daughter's death, it's here that Seren comes to work, hoping that the solitude and silence will inspire her next novel.
But the island holds memories of its own, restless and unwilling to stay buried. As unsettling occurrences become even more bizarre and frightening, Seren starts seeing uncanny resonances between her past and the island's history. There is something on this island, something ancient and unforgiving.
Will Seren discover its secrets, before it's too late?
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An intriguing and unusual novel, GHOST STORY begins with an email exchange between Jamie Doughty and his late ex-wife, Seren’s publishers. It appears that Seren has passed away ‘on that island’ while writing the novel commissioned by the publishers and whose manuscript they would now like to publish. Jamie refuses, arguing that the manuscript in his possession is ‘not a work of fiction’ and it is apparent he holds the publishers responsible for whatever has happed to Seren.
What then follows appears to be that manuscript and tells Seren's story as she does indeed travel to remote Scottish Hebridean Ireland, inspired by the story of a massacre that took place there hundreds of years before and hoping that the location will reignite her creative spark. It's quickly evident that Seren’s manuscript is not a novel, at least not a conventional novel, but rather a memoir telling of the events that brought her to travel to the island and later when she gets to the island it takes the form of journal entries and dispersed with chapters of her intended novel. The prose is melancholy, and slow-moving, and utterly engrossing. Seren’s first novel was a huge success, her second a comparative failure. Her daughter and sister were murdered in an arson attack carried out by her sister’s deranged partner, and Seren’s marriage, to Jamie, did not survive the tragedy. Contacted by her publisher with an offer for a story about ‘“Ghosts…not ghosts that go bump-in-the-night but the inner demon, you know”’ Seren decides to visit the Western Isles, where she spent holidays as a child, Finish Island, uninhabited since 1912 but whose population had been massacred by clansmen centuries before. Seren hopes the location, and the solitude, will inspire her but the reader can’t help but feel that she is trying to escape the grief which which she has been living, grief which, perhaps quiet at times, never leaves.
It would be unfair to reveal any more of the plot, suffice to say I found it gripping and intensely moving. Elisa Lodato is a talented writer. Her prose is exquisite, her dialog modern and realistic. Sadness and grief are present on every page but the book is never gloomy and GHOST STORY lives up to its title as a feeling of increasing dread takes hold in the latter stages. It is chilling and atmospheric. It doesn’t tie everything up in a neat bow, and I liked that. For days after finishing the novel I was still thinking about it - did things happen as they appeared to, as Seren had recorded them? Did the remoteness of the island take a toll on Seren’s sanity? Were the ghosts real or ‘inner demons’, or both? I don’t know but the questions will stay for some time.
