Tag: anyone’s ghost

Anyone’s Ghost is a love story about destruction and the people who change your life. Theron David Alden is fifteen and spending the summer with his dad in New Hampshire when he meets Jake, who is older but likes the same things—bands, drugs—as him. They return to their separate lives, but over the next two decades, Theron is haunted by his love for Jake and how much he’s always hoped for Jake to want him too.

This is a novel about character and relationships rather than plot, a fact that’s made clear by the opening basically giving you the key turning points in the narrative at the start: three car crashes. That out of the way, there’s space to focus on Theron, and Jake, and a few others around them, and the impact of love and depression and a desire for oblivion, but also a hope of something. The first part of the book centres around Theron’s coming of age story, trying to avoid his own queerness and rationalise how he feels about Jake whilst they spend all of their time drinking and doing drugs, and then the second part moves to a twentysomething Theron, not long out of college and in New York looking for something, when that something becomes Jake suddenly visiting. This becomes a bittersweet story of growing up and still hoping to get what you’ve dreamed of.

The other main relationship for Theron in the book, with Lou, isn’t mentioned in the blurb, but is also central to the book, as they explore open relationships and what feelings you might burden a partner with, seeming in contrast in some ways to Jake’s relationship throughout the book with Jess, who as readers from Theron’s perspective, we know little about. There is a richness of queer relationships and ways of navigating the world, even when they are, as they are often in the book, melancholy ones and messy ones.

The third part brings the book to nearly the present day, and the tragedy already set up in the opening, by way of a speed through Theron’s life for a while. This part does feel a lot more rushed than the rest of the book, but does have a nice ending scene between two characters that feels like it rounds off the story well, whilst continuing the sense of ‘haunting’ pervading the whole thing.

Anyone’s Ghost is a bittersweet queer love story and an exploration of oblivion. I found the middle part in particular hard to put down, with its memorable image of New York City in a storm and two characters trying to find who they might be together, even briefly.