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3/25/2019
As one of literary mind and inclinations, I have spent many AM’s clacking at my
keyboard, trying to put abstract feelings into words. In 2018, Maria Romasco Moore did just this
as she succeeded in capturing childhood and the confusion and wonderment that accompanies it
and magical realism. Ghostographs focuses on themes of childhood, friendship, identity, and
adulthood; portrayed through evocative writing and in a melancholy fictitious world. Each flash
story strings together a larger narrative—following a group of friends who grow up in a town
where magical realism is used to highlight the sometimes painful and confusing experiences
The novel is written with vintage photographs opposite the page of a corresponding flash
fiction essay. For example, the first story in the novella, “The Woman Across the Way,” contains
the opposite page is the accompanying story about the young narrator suspecting the woman in
the doorway of having snakes that live under her skin. The young narrator says, “The snakes
were thin and greenish blue and I know what you are going to say. Those were veins, you are
going to say. Silly child, don’t you know what veins are? But I tell you they were snakes.” This
story sets up the magical realism and the tone of all the other essays.
As we age, we can often forget what it felt like to be a child. Of course, if we don’t
struggle and we do remember, we might employ a hindsight to our childhood situations and
rationalize away the wonderment as well as the pain of being young. If you are looking for a
book that inspires and disturbs, is both lasting and moving, and combines tall-tales with truths
While reading this book you become a part of the “We” that Romasco Moore writes
about. There is a strong sense of friendship and collusion that the narrator of the story is a part
of. As a reader I found myself drawn in, as one of the We. I mentioned previously that Romasco
Moore includes elements of magical realism. Below is a passage that combines the imagination
of children with a relatable reality, as the children live with innocence and reckless abandon.
“From the froth at the bottom of the waterfall to the castle. From my backyard to
yours.(…) In the winter we dug burrows in the snow, hunkered under blankets of frost,
stored up sleep for the summer. At school we dozed with eyes open. Spoke nonsense
when called on to answer questions. In the summer we never slept, and no one could stop
us.”
As I read Ghostographs I found myself more and more intrigued by this novella that does
something unlike anything I’d ever read before. There is one book I can mention that shares a
comparable tone and language. Whilst reading, I found that the writing and language of the book
reminded me of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Miss
Peregrine’s is about a young boy who discovers an old mansion that once housed children with
odd, magical abilities. The story is illustrated with vintage photographs—which is what first led
me to make the comparison to Ghostographs. But where Miss Peregrine’s has a similar tone and
written themes leads the flash-fiction essays to feel akin to creative nonfiction. I found myself
attached to the characters and identifying with them in a far more personal way than I normally
do with fiction.
In an essay titled “Lewis” we read about a field that grows people. The narrator and his
friend Lewis can’t get to the growing people because of the thorns that separate them. Later in
Ghostographs the narrator can’t find his friend Lewis anywhere. The narrator runs to the
outskirts of town and sees Lewis standing with the growing people, of course the narrator still
Lewis returned to town in the winter. He’d done a lot of growing. He was over six
feet tall. I could no longer look him in the eye without a ladder. He bummed cigarettes
from Mabel and leaned against the sides of buildings like a fallen tree. I thought to
myself: my friend Lewis is gone now. I lost him in the tall grasses and he’ll never be
found.
Eventually we all grow up, either you grow up first or your friend does. Reading this
pulled me into all the memories I have of feeling like I can no longer connect to the friends I
once had—either I changed, or they did. Romasco Moore has written a tragicomic, hauntingly
beautiful novella that investigates universal themes. We become adults, we put on masks and
charade as confident individuals. As adults I feel we have stopped, or at least hesitated to connect
with vulnerability. Ghostographs combines old and new in a timeless fashion that inspires its
readers to reflect. Romasco Moore has personally inspired me recapture the imagination I had as
a child, to live without a mask, and embrace adjusting into life as an adult without losing myself
in the process.