Poor Ghost!: 'Place, belonging, failure, ambition . . . beguilingly readable' Wendy Erskine - Softcover

Flynn, Gabriel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1399740741 ISBN 13: 9781399740746

Publisher: Sceptre, 2025

Synopsis

'Gabriel Flynn's work, rich with insight and wit, makes the world newly vivid'
Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History

'A clear-eyed, deadpan-funny novel about the present'
Lauren Oyler, author of Fake Accounts

'Place, belonging, failure, ambition: this beguilingly readable novel has interesting, fresh things to say on them all'
Wendy Erskine, author of The Benefactors

'A moving meditation on inheritance and home'
Esquire

'A brilliantly simple idea . . . compellingly complicated characters'
Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, author of The End of Nightwork

When Luca drops out of his prestigious PhD programme and moves back home to Manchester, he thinks he'll take some time to consider his life choices: the failed love affair that ended in a disastrous holiday and embarrassing exit, the pursuit of an academic life that gave him nothing but a strong sense of failure.

In need of money, and still convinced the literary life might be for him, Luca takes on a job as a ghost writer: Andy, who has progressive MS, wants Luca to write his life story. Luca's own father had MS and eventually took his own life - making the assignment a full immersion in the dark parts of his childhood Luca has never really dealt with. Luca has his own ideas about what Andy's book should be like - but he'll have to learn how to curb his dreaming, if he ever wants to get paid.

While his love of literature and intellectual ambition might have got him so far away from his childhood in Manchester, Luca is grappling with what it means to try to go home again - how far where you're from shapes you, and how difficult your parent's past is to shake off.

'Laconic and darkly poignant, Poor Ghost! tackles class, grief and narrative perplexity with distinctive dry wit'
Leon Craig, author of Parallel Hells

About this title

About the Author

Gabriel Flynn was born in Seattle, Washington, 1991 and grew up in Manchester. He was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize in 2020, and and his work has appeared in Five Dials, Minor Literature[s], and Best British Short Stories. Poor Ghost! is his first novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sceptre
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1399740741
• ISBN 13: 9781399740746
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272