Opening with an arresting image that literally haunts him, Matthew Gavin Frank unstrings history and reweaves a narrative from its threads, from fiction and news reporting and his own life, to remind us that every experience is a story braid. “ Preparing the Ghost is the most original book I have read in years.
In this original book, Frank weaves his imagination through history’s gaps, and keeps the reader riveted with the lure of the unknown and dark, sultry prose." - Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise A mysterious but seductive mix of history, creative non-fiction, memoir, and poetry, Preparing the Ghost is written with contagious passion. "Matthew Gavin Frank has made a book into a curiosity cabinet, one dedicated to the storied giant squid. Though Frank is armed with impressive research, what he can't know about Harvey he fictionalizes, quite explicitly, as a way of both illuminating the scene and exploring his central theme: the big, beautiful human impulse to obsess. In a full-hearted, lyrical style reminiscent of Geoff Dyer, Frank weaves in playful forays about his research trip to Moses's Newfoundland home, Frank's own childhood and family history, and a catalog of bizarre facts and lists that recall Melville's story of obsession with another deep-sea dwelling leviathan.
In Preparing the Ghost, what begins as Moses's story becomes much more, as fellow squid-enthusiast Matthew Gavin Frank boldly winds his narrative tentacles around history, creative nonfiction, science, memoir, and meditations about the interrelated nature of them all. Moses Harvey was the eccentric Newfoundland reverend and amateur naturalist who first photographed the near-mythic giant squid in 1874, draping it over a shower curtain rod to display its magnitude. "Charmingly eccentric and utterly unforgettable.with hand on heart I can truly say that I also loved every word of it.”-Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
0 kommentar(er)
