Jason’s last novel, The Last Days of Jack Sparks (reviewed here) was a best-seller here in the UK. I liked it a lot – as a fictional story of demonic possession it was admirably creepy yet disarmingly natural, until a very weird ending that wouldn’t have been out of place in Black Mirror. (Which may be appropriate, as one of Jason’s other jobs has been to write a book about the television series.)
His new book is very much of this time, socially relevant and in the end definitely creepy.
His lead character, from whose perspective this tale is told, couldn’t be more different than Jack, the rock-star-like celebrity of The Last Days of Jack Sparks. In contrast, Kate Collins is a young woman in her thirties who sees herself as nothing special. She has one friend, Izzy Clarke, who she works with as a paramedic in Leeds. Like most of her age and background she is addicted to using her phone and social media. Facebook, WhatsApp, putting up pictures of cats, food, memes – she’s done it all.
Still single and in a bit of a rut, Kate turns to Tinder to try and meet someone. She discovers a young man named Scott Palmer who she gets on well with, but he lives in Brighton, hundreds of miles away. Nevertheless, they meet at a digital detox retreat and build up a relationship, usually on shared weekends. When Scott asks her to move into his nice flat in Brighton, Kate doesn’t hesitate. She arranges to transfer her job and packs up all her belongings to move to Brighton.
Except that when she gets there, the flat is empty of furniture, and also missing Scott. Phone messages and texts to him go unanswered. Frantically worried that something has happened to him, Kate begins a frantic search. She finds that Scott may not have been the person she thought he was and moreover appears to have ‘ghosted’ her. Staying in the flat, trying to come to terms with what has happened, its then that things get really weird for Kate. She finds Scott’s phone at the flat and then starts to receive strange messages…
Now you could argue that as an old white man in his mid-fifties, I may not be able to relate to this story. I must admit that I wasn’t sure whether it would work for me. But Jason managed to attract my attention and drag me in.
Unlike Jack Sparks, Kate is a personable young woman without pretentions or attitude. She tells her story with humour and with appreciable matter-of-fact-ness. Her voice is what I would expect someone of her age to speak like. She’s funny and judgemental but lacks self-confidence and clearly aware of today’s culture, Kardashians and all. She clearly cares about her work but isn’t afraid to mention issues, often with that gallows humour that you need to cope when working in such professions. There are a number of weird but funny stories about being a paramedic, some of which Jason in his Afterword says are true.
What is new to me is that we also get a glimpse into the post-millennial social world of texting, sexting and social hook-ups, mixed with enough contemporary cultural references (the inevitable Kardachians, Marie Kondo, Ariana Grande, Beyonce) to make her world seem real.
But, of course, what this is really doing is setting the scene for weird stuff. Amongst all the romance, comedy and sex, we discover that there’s more to the characters than we realised at first. We discover the reason for Kate’s bff Izzy being hospitalised whilst at work, which Kate blames herself for, and the fact that she has obsessive tendencies, not only with her phone but possibly also with her relationships, all of which begin to cast doubt on her narrative.
When strange things start to happen in the Brighton flat, the reader is not sure whether they are actually real, hallucinations or the result of an overactive imagination, caused by stress. Jason manages to keep the reader guessing: is Kate going mad? Or is it something else? This is a book that plays with your perceptions, that gets you to think one way and then goes another.
Readers will either love or hate the ending. The ending works better for me than Jack Spark did. I thought it was good, although there’s still a lot unexplained. On finishing I was immediately hit with the thought wondering who was going to clean up this mess– I expect that in a Horror story, to an extent. However, it is one that makes you think about the bigger picture…
There’s the odd plot point that doesn’t bear dwelling on (would anyone really move such a distance knowing so little about their partner? And where are the neighbours, for example), but I was contented with the point that people are strange and such things are not totally unknown. Some of Kate’s actions are questionable but understandable, especially when things fall apart later in the book.
The book scores a lot of hit points by making perceptive comments on the modern dating lifestyle and social media. It’s not all positive…
So: to sum up, then, Ghoster is a fast-paced book for our modern times that is as good as Jack Sparks, if not better. It shines a salutary light on modern relationships and raises concerns over our dependency on social media and mobile technology, as well as giving the odd chill along the way.
It should be another huge success.
Ghoster by Jason Arnopp
Published by Orbit, October 2019
ISBN: 978-0356506883
480 pages
Review by Mark Yon
