The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories
Author: Kevin Brockmeier
Publisher: Pantheon
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Cover Description
Ghost stories tap into our most primal emotions as they encourage us to confront the timeless question: What comes after death? Here, in tales that are by turn scary, funny, philosophic, and touching, you'll find that question sharpened, split, reconsidered—and met with a multitude of answers.
A spirit who is fated to spend eternity reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, ghostly trees that haunt the occupant of a wooden house, specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead: these are just a few of the characters in this extraordinary compendium of one hundred ghost stories. Kevin Brockmeier's fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive—or, as it happens, not to be.
TL;DR Review
The Ghost Variations is a fun and imaginative set of 100 flash fiction ghost stories. I read a few each day in October and loved it. Brockmeier has created something really creative here.
For you if: You like or want to read more flash fiction!
Full Review
“In April, the U.S. secretary of philology held a press conference to announce the discovery of a twenty-seventh letter, dead for some centuries, that had been haunting the alphabet at least since the time of Cervantes.”
I received a gifted copy of this from Pantheon earlier this year, when the book was first published (thank you!) and saved it for October and ghost story season. It’s a collection of flash fiction ghost stories, and I read three or four each day throughout the month. It was such a fun reading experience, and I really really enjoyed my time with this book.
The book itself is exactly what it sounds like: 100 ghost stories, each exactly two pages long, about a whole variety of topics. The stories themselves are imaginative and thought-provoking rather than spooky, which is exactly my style. Basically, Brockmeier just said to himself, “What if X were ghosts?!?” 100 times. (What if the world ran out of songs and the radio static was ghost music? What if there were a dead, ghost letter of the alphabet? What if someone grew older in both directions forever? What if someone who was not actually a ghost snuck into the afterworld?) Then he uses that premise, that constraint, to look more closely at what makes us human — which is where the book’s magic really lies.
I found this collection to be delightful and funny, moving and thought-provoking, and just very creative and smart overall. I definitely recommend picking it up, but definitely spreading it across a longer period of time rather than reading it cover to cover in one go. If you were to rush through it, I don’t think you’d be able to get the full effect.