Description

‘This new novel is a real heart-squeezer. Beautiful, one of a kind and perfectly titled’ – Matt Berninger of The National

‘An overwhelmingly beautiful love story. This book will make you cry’ – Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated

‘Genuinely powerful’ – The Irish Times

A gorgeous modern love story about the lives that change us, and the loves that haunt us. Set over twenty years, August Thompson’s debut Anyone’s Ghost will break your heart.

It took three car crashes to kill Jake.

The lonely life of fifteen-year-old Theron David Alden is transformed when he meets Jake. Older, cooler, more confident and startlingly beautiful, Jake likes the same bands, the same drugs, and has the same drive to oblivion.

Over the course of two decades, Theron and Jake get high, drift apart, and are brought hurtling back together, until a final collision tears them apart forever.

Theron wants Jake, and he wants to be Jake. But is Jake brave enough to want him back?

‘You know those books that you take with you everywhere? That you won’t stop talking about to your friends? That bring it all back? That change you? Anyone’s Ghost is that book’ – Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Perfect for fans of A Little Life and One Day.

Publisher Review

Anyone’s Ghost is about so very many things: the pains of growing up, friendship and pining, drugs, sex, the frustrations of masculinity and the thrill of testing death itself. But more than any of that, it is an overwhelmingly beautiful love story. This book will make you cry — Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated This book is a monster: the magnificent writing, the gallery of characters, the fascinating glimpse into the right now make it stand about twenty feet tall among new books I’ve read — Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life You know those books that you take with you everywhere? That you won’t stop talking about to your friends? That bring it all back? That change you? Anyone’s Ghost is that book. Thompson has fired a literary flare into the black night of the universe and the illumination is spectacular. — Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Anyone’s Ghost is a ferocious novel of erotic friendship, uncategorizable love, and vexed masculinity, voiced by a narrator as winning and largehearted as any character I’ve recently met. With its psychedelic prose and fierce moral intelligence, this is one of those books that makes you want to keep living. To read it is to fall more deeply in love with the world. — Maggie Millner, author of Couplets: A Love Story