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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY

Maisy Card

A stunning literary debut novel that reveals the ways in which a Caribbean family forms and splinters through generations.
The novel centers around Abel and Vera Paisley, a working-class Jamaican couple in the 1960s. Abel emigrates to London hoping to earn a livelihood that will support the family he left behind, but when he's presented with the opportunity to escape his destructive marriage by assuming a new identity (that of his friend Stanford Solomon) he seizes it and fakes his own death. Vera, forced into the role of widow and single mother, is overwhelmed by guilt for her husband's death, and becomes an abusive and neglectful mother to her children, Irene and Vincent.

Set in the United States and Jamaica and told in multiple narrative threads which incorporate elements of gothic fiction, Jamaican folklore, and history, Ghosts looks at the limits of forgiveness and the complexities of Caribbean family ties. The novel follows each child, grandchild, and other players affected by Vera and Abel's choices, exploring the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts while struggling to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. An electric and character-driven saga, the reader is propelled forward by the need to piece together the interworkings of an incredibly dynamic family.


Maisy Card holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College and is a public librarian. Her writing has appeared in Lenny Letter, School Library Journal, Agni, Sycamore Review, Liars' League NYC, and Ampersand Review. Maisy was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, but was raised in Queens, New York. Maisy earned an MLIS from Rutgers University and a BA in English and American Studies from Wesleyan University. She is the author of These Ghosts Are Family.
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Published 2020-03-03 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

Kirkus Best Books of 2020 Read more...

In this fascinating debut, Maisy Card reveals her spectacular range and scope. Part immigrant narrative, part ghost story, part historical fiction, part family drama, These Ghosts Are Family explores and illuminates the complexities of race and lineage in Jamaica and the United States. This is a bold, gripping, compassionate book.

This spirited narrative is grounded in a devastating history; and yet, somehow, These Ghosts Are Family generates a sense of possibility about the future - for these characters, and for the reader as well.

[A] big, generations-spanning family novel... Card's ghostly, surprising debut considers the bonds of blood, the weight of secrets, and the scars of trauma. Read more...

Maisy Card is a great writer. Her compelling debut evokes the richness of culture and the inevitable impact of generational secrets, full of magnificent characters that continue to haunt me.

How do actions reverberate across multiple generations? In Maisy Card's stunning novel, people live and die and lose and love and make their way through this chaotic but profound experience we call life. Her luminous prose lights a way even in the darkest moments. These Ghosts Are Family will haunt you long after you finish it.

These Ghosts Are Family is a favorite among the media and booksellers already: - An Entertainment Weekly, Millions, and LitHub Most-Anticipated Book of 2020 pick - A Rumpus and Electric Literature Most-Anticipated Debut of 2020 pick* - A Ms. Magazine Top Feminist Book Coming Out in 2020 - A BookRiot Best Book Club Pick of 2020 - A Celadon Books Most-Anticipated Novel of 2020 - A Lily Top Book to Read by Women in 2020 Selection - A Buzz Magazine Top New Book of the New Decade - A She Reads Most-Anticipated Historical Fiction Pick of 2020

I've admired Card's writing a long while, and in These Ghosts Are Family, a Jamaican family contends with a faked death, a stolen identity, and the revelation of decades-old secrets. Read more...

[A] rich, ambitious debut novel...Each character gives Card a fresh opportunity to play with form: Chapters shapeshift here into historical fiction, there into folklore...Card's ghosts bracingly remind us that no family history is comprehensive, that some riddles of ancestry and heritage persist beyond this lifetime.

Maisy Card's relentlessly inventive debut is a thrilling exploration of family, memory and which pasts we choose to haunt us.

A gripping tale of generational trauma and what happens when it goes unaddressed... This may be your next page-turner. Read more...

Through a fluid blend of patois and erudite descriptions of Jamaica, Card offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a troubled but resilient family whose struggles are inscribed by the island they once called home. This masterful chronicle haunts like the work of Marlon James and hits just as hard. Read more...

Through Maisy Card's immersive storytelling, These Ghosts Are Family explores the intersections of generational trauma, love, and long-held family secrets, showing what it means to build a life in the face of history. I was hooked from page one.

[A] stunning, kaleidoscopic debut. Card invites readers to imagine themselves as a series of characters, one by one, in the moments before [a] revelation upends their identities, and such inventive narrative techniques continue throughout the novel. A fantastic debut. Read more...

A dying man has kept a secret for three decades that will change the course of his family's life and alter everything they thought they knew. The story sweeps across time and location, from Jamaica to Harlem, to reveal the background of his choice and the effects it has had on everyone he's encountered. Read more...

An engrossing portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret. Read more...

I suspect many readers will talk about the consequences of unspoken generational trauma in These Ghosts Are Family, but I'm most amazed by the deft use of characterization, place and embodiment here. This book is a master class in writing home as a collection of odd spirits and a mobile metaphor.

Written with the brand of Jamaican humor I know and love, These Ghosts Are Family is a book I didn't know I needed to read, which might be the best kind of book. Maisy Card is a wonderful arrival for Caribbean literature.

Maisy Card's remarkable debut is for anyone out there with family drama or trauma and for those who have tried to make their own way despite (or in spite of) it. Read more...

A rich and layered story ... A wonderfully ambitious novel: It sprawls in time from the uncertain present to the horror of slavery on a Jamaican plantation, examining racism, colorism, and infidelity and how they obscure and fracture a lineage ... An intriguing debut with an inventive spin on the generational family saga. Read more...

These Ghosts Are Family operates on two levels: it pursues the personal (e.g., infidelity, lies, betrayal) while also exploring the universal; through the lens of one family, it confronts the enduring traumas of colonial history, slavery, and forced migration. Read more...

Every family's got secrets but Abel Paisley's secret is monstrous and mesmerizing. These Ghosts are Family begins with energy and intrigue and, really, never lets up. This book is painful and shocking but it can be funny as hell, too. What a talented writer. Maisy Card has written one of the best debut novels I've read in many years.

These Ghosts are Family by Maisy Card will enchant readers completely with a fascinating cast of characters, each more bewitching than the last. This book is destined to become 2020's most beloved debut novel.

[Maisy Card] wrote this book like it was an abstract work of art... this book is a must read.