Jenn Ashworth

One ordinary morning, after 15 years of marriage, Laurie's husband Mark vanishes, leaving behind his phone and wallet. For weeks, Laurie covers up his disappearance and carries on working as a cleaner at the local university, visiting the father she was estranged from for 15 years who now has dementia, and drinking industrial quantities of cheap wine. When she finally reports him as missing, the police are suspicious. Why did she take so long? This is just one of the questions this intriguing novel poses. Why did the normally peaceable Mark get into a fight at work and lose his job? What made Laurie fall out with the woman in the flat above, one of her few friends? Why didn't she speak to her father for such a long time? Is she right to be suspicious about the carer who seems to have taken over his life and what has any of this got to do with a years old murder of a local child? And is Mark dead or alive?

A Love Story

Ghosted

Raphaëlle

Beth Bartholomew

I can see why people would enjoy this very dark and macabre book, but it was not the one for me. I found the main character profoundly dislikable and not in a way that felt endearing or like I was invested in her development - of which there was very little. She was a horrible person, wholly selfish and unaware of anything going on around her, of using people, of being morally just, or anything that would make her a good person. 

We're meeting our main character five weeks into her husband's disappearance when she finally reports it to the police. She is still experiencing the effects of her trauma and this event digs that back up in her again. You'd expect to find some sort of resolution given the circumstances she finds herself in, but the plot for this book felt as bland as she was. I didn't feel fulfilled by the ending, I just felt even madder at men and the main character.

Obviously, this is all deliberate to make the reader feel some pained sense of realisation (of what I don't know) when reading this book. But for me, the main character was simply too dislikable to enjoy any of this book. 

A deeply affecting and unconventional love story, shot through with anger, black humour and grief. One ordinary morning, Laurie's husband Mark vanishes, leaving behind his phone and wallet. For weeks, she tells no one, carrying on her job as a cleaner at the local university, visiting her tricky, dementia-suffering father and holing up in her tower-block flat with a bottle to hand. When she finally reports Mark as missing, the police are suspicious. Why did she take so long? Wasn't she worried? It turns out there are many more mysteries in Laurie's account of events, though not just because she glosses over the facts. At the time, she couldn't explain much of her behaviour herself. But as she looks back on the ensuing wreckage - the friendships broken, the wild accusations she made, the one-night stand - she can see more clearly what lay behind it. And if it's not too late, she can see how she might repair the damage and, most of all, forgive herself.

Ghosted A Love Story

Reviews