Ghosted - Softcover

Bishop-Stall, Shaughnessy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159376295X ISBN 13: 9781593762957

Publisher: Soft Skull Press, 2010

Synopsis

Growing up, Mason Dubisee had a hundred future selves: Jedi. Cowboy. Jedi-cowboy. Explorer. Rock star. Sandinista-Gandhi-Hemingway-Indiana-Jones type thing. But at thirty, he must finally face the truth: He’s a drug-addled drifter, an aspiring novelist unable to move beyond lists of titles and themes.

Desperate, he takes a job as The Dogfather” a downtown hot dog vendor. When a mysterious customer hires him to write a very personal letter, he stumbles into a shadow career, ghostwriting suicide notes for the despondent. The gig helps cover his gambling debts but takes an emotional toll. The trouble is, Mason is hardwired to rescue people, and no one needs rescuing more than the suicidal. Except maybe Willy, the heroin-addicted beauty he’s falling for.

What happens when someone wrestling with his own demons immerses himself in other people’s tragedies? Quite a lot: A hotdog cart is totaled, a convict sprung, a funeral faked, a head scalped, a horse stolen. As Mason’s professional and personal lives become entangled, his sanity is tested as is the line between suicide and murder.

Ghosted is a gritty literary thriller, a black comedy, a high-stakes poker caper, an urban cowboy adventure, and a love story. Bishop-Stall plunges fearlessly into the perilous terrain of drugs, love, and death in this ambitious debut.

About this title

Product Description:

Rare Book

Review:

Praise for Ghosted

"In spirit of Bishop-Stall's poker-playing protagonist, I made a bet with the author that I could wrap up my review with a four-word sentence capable of encapsulating the 'terrifying,' 'pissed-off,' 'life-affirming,' 'hung-over' quality of Ghosted. I've lost that bet." Jeff Charis-Carlson, Iowa City Press-Citizen

This master of immersion journalism opts to give us a novel about a young man who makes a living writing suicide notes. Yes please.” The National Post, Most Anticipated Books of 2010”

Grimly funny, terrifying and tender.” Montreal Mirror

The unique voice heard throughout Ghosted is so heartbreakingly authentic. This is a voice whose wry tones are surely as addictive as the drugs abused by the tormented characters in Ghosted. This is a story that you never want to end.” The Ottawa Citizen

It leaves you stunned. But then you realize you have just read a terrifying but moving and life-affirming paean to love, friendship, devotion, determination and all those other characteristics that make human beings such wonderfully fascinating creatures in real life and in richly imagined novels like Ghosted.” The Edmonton Journal

The characters of Ghosted compose a rogue’s gallery like no other. Most are drug addicted, hopelessly self-destructive, dangerously suicidal or just plain psychotic . . . It is exceedingly difficult to top a hotdog-selling, poker-playing, cocaine-addicted writer of suicide notes whose adventurous, bar-hopping girlfriend Willy is partially paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair and addicted to heroin.” Calgary Herald

In Ghosted, love and friendship are real and just as powerful as addiction and nightmares. Despite what the narrator might say, redemption isn't just something confined to bad novels.” Winnipeg Free Press

Bishop-Stall is a major talent. His prose is so vivid, you’ll feel the coke seeping down the back of your throat even if you’ve never done a line in your life . . . an unarguably unique voice, urgent and impossible to ignore.” Now Magazine

A savage, heartfelt, exhilarating first novel . . . What makes this high-concept premise work is the book’s a) heart, and b) voice. Which may, in the final analysis, be one and the same thing.” Toro Magazine

One finishes Ghosted amazed by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s ability to cram three or four novels worth of incident and characters into one book. Impressive, ambitious and exhausting, Ghosted is a novel for those who don’t scare easily.” Globe and Mail

Ghosted is not for the faint of heart in places it's an unflinching exploration of depravity. But it is, above all, an often funny, always optimistic parable of victory over demons of despair, the ghosts of our failed selves.” Linden MacIntyre, author of The Bishop’s Man

Bukowski craggy and Hornby sweet . . . a smart book about smart guys who can’t stop from acting dumb. The real pleasure, though, is in the lines: funny sad, funny strange, and funny zing! A hell of a first novel.” Andrew Pyper, author of The Killing Circle and Lost Girls

About this edition

• Publisher: Soft Skull Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 159376295X
• ISBN 13: 9781593762957
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336