These Ghosts Are Family
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
*An Entertainment Weekly and LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2020 Pick and Buzz Magazine's Top New Book of the New Decade*
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*An Entertainment Weekly and LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2020 Pick and Buzz Magazine's Top New Book of the New Decade*
Klappentext zu „These Ghosts Are Family “
Longlisted for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel PrizeA "rich, ambitious debut novel" (The New York Times Book Review) that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations, in the tradition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
*An Entertainment Weekly, Millions, and LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2020 Pick and Buzz Magazine's Top New Book of the New Decade*
Stanford Solomon's shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley.
And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.
These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel's decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of a single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the houseboy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley's actions.
This "rich and layered story" (Kirkus Reviews) explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is a "beguiling...vividly drawn, and compelling" (BookPage, starred review) portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret.
Lese-Probe zu „These Ghosts Are Family “
1. The True Death of Abel Paisley THE TRUE DEATH OF ABEL PAISLEY Harlem, 2005
Let's say that you are a sixty-nine-year-old Jamaican man called Stanford, or Stan for short, who once faked your own death. Though you have never used those words to describe what you did. At the time you'd thought of it as seizing an opportunity placed before you by God, but since your wife, Adele, died a month ago, you've convinced yourself her heart attack was retribution for your sin. So today you have gathered three of your female descendants in one house, even the daughter who has thought you dead all these years, and decided that you will finally tell them the truth: you are not who you say you are.
You have spent the last twenty years of your second life living in a brownstone in Harlem, running a West Indian grocery store. Recently, you shuttered the store. You have given up on fighting your arthritis pain and are finally sitting in the wheelchair Adele picked out. You are looking out of your parlor window, waiting for your daughter, the one who thinks you are dead, to arrive. It's been thirty-five years since you've seen her, so you study each woman who passes your house for reflections of yourself. You haven't bothered to shave, press your clothes, or comb your hair.
You are ready to be still and rot. You imagine the death of Stanford Solomon, unlike the abrupt end of Abel Paisley, will be achingly slow; already it feels like you are losing small pieces of yourself daily. To you, old age is the torture you deserve, a slow, insignificant death, your matter dispersing into the air like dandelion seeds until the day there's nothing left.
When you died the first time, you were still a young man in your thirties and had been working in England for less than a year. It wasn't easy for an immigrant, especially a black man, to find a decent job back then, but through a boy you'd known back in primary school, Stanford, you'd gotten a room and a job on a ship. You had
... mehr
no idea it was just the beginning of your streak of good luck.
You and Stanford were the chosen wogs they allowed to work alongside the white men. Stanford complained often about London. He hated the cold. He missed his grandmother and the tiny village, Harold Town, where you'd both grown up back in Jamaica. You'd already escaped the countryside for Kingston, and from there, London. You felt free. That sense of freedom and joy only dampened when you thought of the family you left behind. Your first wife, Vera, wrote you long letters weekly about how you'd abandoned her and left her to become a dried-up old spinster. But you both knew perfectly well that it was her idea for you to go to England, where she thought you'd somehow become a better provider. Your son, Vincent, was still in Vera's womb when you sailed off. Your daughter, Irene, a stumbling toddler. You had barely settled in when Vera's first letter arrived, with the list of things she wanted you to buy and send to them. With every letter the list grew longer, and you worried that you would never be enough.
The day you died, you were running along the dock because you were late for work while a container was being lowered onto the ship. You stopped short when the container fell, dropped from the crane, and thundered against the deck. You were close enough to hear the screaming.
"Who was it?" you heard someone shout.
"One of the wogs!" another answered. "It's Abel!"
For a moment you were confused, hearing yourself pronounced dead. It was like one of those movies where the dead person's spirit stands by watching as a crowd gathers around his body. But no, you were certain, it wasn't your body, so you boarded the ship. The captain approached you immediately and sa
You and Stanford were the chosen wogs they allowed to work alongside the white men. Stanford complained often about London. He hated the cold. He missed his grandmother and the tiny village, Harold Town, where you'd both grown up back in Jamaica. You'd already escaped the countryside for Kingston, and from there, London. You felt free. That sense of freedom and joy only dampened when you thought of the family you left behind. Your first wife, Vera, wrote you long letters weekly about how you'd abandoned her and left her to become a dried-up old spinster. But you both knew perfectly well that it was her idea for you to go to England, where she thought you'd somehow become a better provider. Your son, Vincent, was still in Vera's womb when you sailed off. Your daughter, Irene, a stumbling toddler. You had barely settled in when Vera's first letter arrived, with the list of things she wanted you to buy and send to them. With every letter the list grew longer, and you worried that you would never be enough.
The day you died, you were running along the dock because you were late for work while a container was being lowered onto the ship. You stopped short when the container fell, dropped from the crane, and thundered against the deck. You were close enough to hear the screaming.
"Who was it?" you heard someone shout.
"One of the wogs!" another answered. "It's Abel!"
For a moment you were confused, hearing yourself pronounced dead. It was like one of those movies where the dead person's spirit stands by watching as a crowd gathers around his body. But no, you were certain, it wasn't your body, so you boarded the ship. The captain approached you immediately and sa
... weniger
Autoren-Porträt von Maisy Card
Maisy Card holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College and is a public librarian. Her writing has appeared in Lenny Letter, School Library Journal, Agni, Sycamore Review, Liars' League NYC, and Ampersand Review. Maisy was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, but was raised in Queens, New York. Maisy earned an MLIS from Rutgers University and a BA in English and American Studies from Wesleyan University. She is the author of These Ghosts Are Family.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Maisy Card
- 2021, 304 Seiten, Maße: 13,3 x 20,3 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Simon & Schuster US
- ISBN-10: 1982117443
- ISBN-13: 9781982117443
- Erscheinungsdatum: 01.11.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
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