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An acutely observed, evocative collection of short stories blending fiction, biography, and memoir - from a Booker-longlisted author.
Evocative, sensual, and tender, these stories confront our reality culture and interrogate our relationship with iconic figures, coming to life at the boundary between reality and fiction.
A woman emerging from mourning spends her savings on a fur coat, a coat she will wear to a dance that will change her life. A professor of cardiovascular physiology lingers on the cusp of consciousness as he waits for his new heart to be delivered, still beating, from another body - and is carried on a tidal wave of memories to an attic room half a century ago. Visiting Sylvia Plath's grave in Yorkshire, the author imagines a conversation with the poet, a fellow North American who settled in grey England. She reflects on the treasured photograph of Princess Diana she took as a teenager, one of a multitude taken during a life cut short. And at Charleston, Angelica Garnett, child of the Bloomsbury group, is overpowered by echoes of the past; by all the beloved ghosts that spring to life before her eyes.
MacLeod's characters hover on the border of life and death, where memory is most vivid and the present most elusive. Moving from the London riots of 2011 to 1920s Nova Scotia, from Oscar Wilde's grave to the Brighton Pier, these exquisitely formed stories capture the small tragedies and profound truths of existence.
"Starred Review. A uniquely cohesive collection of short examinations of aging, death, and living, these stories are subtly moving and thoroughly engaging." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. A problem can occur in a reader's consciousness while proceeding through a collection of stories by the same author. Given that all the stories spring from the same sensibilities, style, and practiced subject matter, a sense of sameness can arise; not really a feeling of redundancy but one of a familiarity that may or may not feel comfortable, depending on the reader's sensitivity to repetition. No reader needs to worry about Booker long-lister MacLeod's (Unexploded, 2013) brilliant gathering of short fiction." - Booklist
"Finely layered and often teasingly opaque, MacLeod's captivating book of stories presents a diverse array of voices, each as particular as the last. " - Publishers Weekly
This information about All the Beloved Ghosts was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alison MacLeod is the author of three novels – The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels and Unexploded, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013 – and two story collections. She is the joint winner of the Eccles British Library Writer's Award 2016 and was a finalist for the 2017 Governor General's Award. She was Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester until 2018, when she became Visiting Professor to write full-time. She lives in Brighton.
Author Interview
Link to Alison Macleod's Website
Name Pronunciation
Alison Macleod: Mac-loud
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