Description

* SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZE 2022 *

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.

Publisher Review

Ghosted is fresh, darkly funny and exceptionally moving . . . Ashworth folds grief and anger and love into every line. -- Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground (April 2021) Ghosted is deeply unsettling - Laurie is such a believable complex person, I couldn't look away from her life. It's also just so utterly compelling and funny. The writing is impeccable and the dark heart of the novel is uncomfortably human and relatable. -- Evie Wyld, author of The Bass Rock (April 2021) Dark, funny, thrilling and deeply human, Ghosted is a book that will haunt you forever, and you'll be glad. Jenn Ashworth is a master of modern storytelling. -- Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Adults (April 2021) Ghosted is a marvellous novel; thrumming with the absences and presences that can haunt a life, and shot through with flashes of great sadness and joy. If you don't know Jenn Ashworth's work already - which you should - this is a great place to start. -- Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13 (April 2021) Ghosted perfectly captures the claustrophobia of living in your own mind. Ashworth's writing is both acerbic and insightful. She has created a protagonist who is as flawed and as interesting as most memorable people are. -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days (April 2021) A vivid, blackly funny and heartbreaking portrait of a marriage and the tiny and large hurts within it, how they wear at us and haunt us despite everything, but I found it beautifully hopeful too. -- Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure (April 2021) There are dark and alluring undercurrents to everything that Jenn Ashworth produces, and she has a brilliantly uncanny ability to unnerve at every turn. To me, her psychologically driven work ranks alongside such singular spiritual ancestors as Muriel Spark, Jean Rhys and Shirley Jackson. -- Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing (April 2021)