Imprint
- Sceptre
- Sceptre
Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Adult & contemporary romance
A deeply affecting and unconventional love story, shot through with anger, black humour and grief.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZE 2022
'Unnerving, absorbing . . . Laurie is a miraculous creation . . . Piercingly human and darkly funny' Sunday Times
One ordinary morning, Laurie's husband disappears, leaving behind his phone and wallet. For weeks she tells no one, carrying on her cleaning job at the university, visiting her tricky, dementia-suffering father and holing up in her high-rise flat with a bottle to hand. When she finally reports him as missing, the police are suspicious. What took her so long?
Laurie can't fully explain her behaviour even to herself, or the strange presence she senses in the flat. Only when she looks back on the ensuing wreckage does she begin to understand, and see how she might repair the damage.
More books by Jenn Ashworth
Praise for Ghosted: A Love Story
-
Unnerving, absorbing . . . The mentally restless Laurie is a miraculous creation, somehow managing to be both a note entirely reliable narrator and yet solidly sympathetic. Piercingly human and darkly funny, Ghosted is a tender, beautifully controlled account of expectations knocked off course. - Sunday Times
-
Since her 2009 debut A Kind of Intimacy, Jenn Ashworth has been quietly collecting honours for her distinctive, empathetic and sharply observed novels, of which Ghosted is another . . . [Ashworth] writes powerfully and movingly about lives shaped by need, love and loss, as well as the solipsism of ferocious grief. - Daily Mail
-
Ghosted is fresh, darkly funny and exceptionally moving . . . Ashworth folds grief and anger and love into every line.
-
Ghosted is deeply unsettling - Laurie is such a believable complex person, I couldn't look away from her life. It's also just so utterly compelling and funny. The writing is impeccable and the dark heart of the novel is uncomfortably human and relatable.
-
Dark, funny, thrilling and deeply human, Ghosted is a book that will haunt you forever, and you'll be glad. Jenn Ashworth is a master of modern storytelling.
-
Ghosted is a marvellous novel; thrumming with the absences and presences that can haunt a life, and shot through with flashes of great sadness and joy. If you don't know Jenn Ashworth's work already - which you should - this is a great place to start.
-
Ghosted perfectly captures the claustrophobia of living in your own mind. Ashworth's writing is both acerbic and insightful. She has created a protagonist who is as flawed and as interesting as most memorable people are.
-
A vivid, blackly funny and heartbreaking portrait of a marriage and the tiny and large hurts within it, how they wear at us and haunt us despite everything, but I found it beautifully hopeful too.
Jenn Ashworth
Jenn Ashworth was born in 1982 in Preston. She studied English at Cambridge and since then has gained an MA from Manchester University, trained as a librarian and run a prison library in Lancashire. She now lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster. Her first novel, A KIND OF INTIMACY, was published in 2009 and won a Betty Trask Award. Her second, COLD LIGHT, was published by Sceptre in 2011 and she was chosen by BBC's The Culture Show as one of the twelve Best New British Novelists. Her most recent novels are THE FRIDAY GOSPELS and FELL. She lives in Lancaster.
Find a book you’ll love, get our Word Up newsletter
.png?auto=compress&w=150&h=60&fit=crop&fm=jpg)
.png?auto=compress&w=150&h=60&fit=crop&fm=jpg)
Hachette Australia acknowledges and pays our respects to the past, present and future Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our head office is located on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
