​A SUGGESTION OF GHOSTS EDITED BY JA MAINS

KIT POWER

 
I’m friends with the editor, just to get that out of the way. That said, I paid for the hardback myself, and I’m only writing about it because I actually enjoyed it.
 
A Suggestion Of Ghosts has the subtitle ‘supernatural fiction by women 1854-1900’. Editor Mains has scoured obscure publications and library archives to assemble 15 ghost stories, the vast majority of which have never been reprinted since initial publication. It’s a fascinating premise, and certainly a worthy project. I have to confess that after picking it up, I did find myself wondering to what degree this collection would work, beyond the obvious and considerable value as a cultural artifact. Or to put it more bluntly; beyond the obvious and intrinsic value of the book as a window into a previously neglected world, would the book actually be any kind of fun to read?
 
I really should know better, by now. Mains has assembled and curated with exquisite care a collection that covers a huge range of styles, cultural backgrounds and themes. Sure there’s melodrama here, as you’d expect from the era, but there’s also pathos, meditations on faith, and on a couple of occasions (as mentioned in Linda Rucker’s tour de force of an introduction) actual honest-to-God Scooby Doo endings.
 
I think what struck me most were the characters - victorian women written by actual victorian women are a very different proposition to those written by victorian men, for the most part, as you might expect. There’s a huge variety here, even from within the considerable constraints that ‘respectability’ places on the characters and the authors, and that’s also reflected in the approaches - there’s some surprising use of present tense in a couple of tales, and one spiritual piece written entirely in dialect that’s just stunning, but emotionally and technically.
 
Some of the pieces display the trappings of their time in other ways - one, a piece written by a woman who ran a confederate hospital during the American civil war, is notable for both it’s brilliant evocation of location and it’s shockingly casual racism, while elsewhere, reputations are made and lost over the slightest social infraction. It’s also interesting how often the ghosts are benign, even benevolent, serving to either redress mistakes made while alive, or redress injustices wrought on later generations.
 
In short, while this is an important social document in it’s own right, bringing stories slipping into the mist of time back to life, and putting them before a modern audience (in a beautifully formatted and produced book, I must add), it is also a cracking collection of ghost stories that more than stands on its own merits. The women authors of this book are centre stage, speaking in their many different voices and from their many perspectives, and I was wowed.
 
Volume 2 is up for pre-order. Mine’s already paid for.
 
 
KP
29/6/18




 


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LUNCH LADIES- WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY CLARISSA JACOBSON