The Invention of Ghosts by Gwendolyn Kiste Review (Book, 2020)
The Invention of Ghosts is a novelette by Gwendolyn Kiste. I think this is one of the most unsettling pieces of horror fiction I’ve ever read because of its use of perspective.
Everly is roommates with her best friend in college. She’s studying the history of the occult. Think spoon-bending mediums and the kind of seances Houdini would debunk. The more the two friends study the history, the more Everly is able to perform any psychic trick to the amazement and amusement of her peers in school.
I don’t want to give more of the plot away. It’s a wild ride. Even with a more traditional narrative approach, Kiste’s plot and pacing would be scary.
The Invention of Ghosts teeters the line between first and second person narrative. Everly is the narrator telling her story, but her story becomes your story. She refers to her roommate as “you” the entire time. The novelette is directed at you, a passive participant in someone else’s story. That other person centers her entire narrative on “you” and “your” reaction to what she’s doing.
The roommates are clearly best friends. Everly cannot remember a time when “you” weren’t there with her. You go to the same classes and parties. You have the same friend group. It’s just that “you” are more content to just hang out in the dorm room with your best friend.
Everly’s talents amaze even her. Yeah, a crowd of partying college students are going to lose it when they see one person able to do “light as a feather, stiff as a board” by herself. Bending spoons is always a crowd pleasing trick, and no spoon is too strong for Everly to bend with a single touch. “You” just don’t want her to do an actual séance with a Ouija board, but that’s the one trick that everyone else wants to see.
I cannot easily convey how effective this first person/second person mashup works. This is brilliant. It’s the kind of gag that I, a horror writer, wish I came up with first. It’s so disorienting to read the story of one friend focusing her entire life on a wallflower watching her every move, only for that character to keep calling “you” out as you read her story with no way of actually interacting. Everly spends the entire book becoming more and more frustrated at the inaction of her friend, and you receive the full brunt of that energy.
I have to mention the haunting illustrations by Luke Spooner. His loose, expressive style keeps the idea of ghosts running through your head every few pages. There are people who don’t quite look like people populating sketches of dorm rooms and college halls. It’s another layer of play with perspective that can cause you to do a doubletake and check if you see what you think you see on first glance.
The Invention of Ghosts is a short and terrifying read. I’m always looking for new experiences in horror and Gwendolyn Kiste showed me something I’ve never seen before.
The Invention of Ghosts is available on Kindle. It is part of a charity series with 40% of proceeds benefitting the National Aviary.
