102 pages
Published 2017
Read October 29
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Writing a story, particularly a supernatural story laden with tragedy and the specific indignities of impoverished childhood, from a child’s point of view can go wrong in so many ways. It could be treacly, or patronizing, or heavy-handed.
This novella of a father’s ghost and the ripple effects it has on his family takes that risk, and crafts a stunning miniature masterpiece from it. Jones’s sharply observed prose catalogs the powerlessness and sympathetic magic of a marginalized childhood; the ghosts at its edges seem no less real, or unreal, than drifts of cigarette smoke in the car on the way to a clinic. Heartbreaking and superb.
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