These Ghosts are Family by Maisy Card– 288 pages
ARC provided by Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for an honest review.
Book Blurb:
Stanford Solomon has a shocking, thirty-year-old secret. And it’s about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley, a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. 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 single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the house boy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions.
My Review: 3.5 stars
These Ghosts are Family ticked off a lot of boxes that make a book special. This is a multi-generational family saga told in just under three-hundred pages, which is really hard to do. The story is completely threaded together by secrets, starting with a man who traded identities with the only black man he worked with. He alludes to this favorable situation as “the one time racism worked”.
There are many women he unleashes his truth to and the book explores each of their circumstance and follow-up reaction to the unveiling of his true identity. Their stories were expertly drawn. Honestly though, it did take a while for me to get into the story. I surmise that it was the strong dialect of the characters. It was so far from anything I’ve read before, and I’m usually a fan of reading with the dialogue for the place and time intact. This definitely bogged down my start until I found its rhythm.
There’s an incredible amount of Jamaican history in these pages and also a lot of recurring themes such as slavery, abuse, addiction, infidelity, trauma and love. I was surprised how easily the “other-worldly” aspect of the book fit in.
With a ton of characters and the movement between present day Harlem and Jamaica in the past, this is a book you have to pay attention to. Perhaps if it was written as threaded short stories it would’ve been an easier read for me.
Quotes I liked:
She had been running away from her mother her whole life, and in the end it was her mother who left her.”
“Other people are so desperate to make a better life that they are willing to steal one, while your mother is fine with throwing hers away.”
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