About this item
Highlights
- A captivating collection of ghost stories from "one of the most gifted writers working today" (New York Times), Night Side of the River is as ingeniously provocative as it is downright spooky.
- About the Author: Born in Manchester, England, Jeanette Winterson is the author of more than twenty books, including the national bestseller Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
- 320 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Ghost
Description
About the Book
"A captivating collection of ghost stories from "one of the most gifted writers working today" (New York Times), Night Side of the River is as ingeniously provocative as it is downright spooky. In this delightfully chilling collection, the iconic Jeanette Winterson turns her fearless gaze to the realm of ghosts, interspersing her own encounters with the supernatural alongside hair-raising fictions. Lifting the veil between the living and the dead, Winterson spirits us away to a haunted estate that ensnares a nomadic young couple in its own dark past, a staged immersive ghost tour gone awry, a West Village sâeance that threatens the bounds between AI and reality, and a vacation home in the metaverse where a widow visits an improved version of her deceased husband. Gloriously gothic and unnervingly contemporary, Night Side of the River examines grief, revenge, and the myriad ways in which technology can disrupt the boundary between life and death"--Book Synopsis
A captivating collection of ghost stories from "one of the most gifted writers working today" (New York Times), Night Side of the River is as ingeniously provocative as it is downright spooky.
In this delightfully chilling collection, the iconic Jeanette Winterson turns her fearless gaze to the realm of ghosts, interspersing her own encounters with the supernatural alongside hair-raising fictions. Lifting the veil between the living and the dead, Winterson spirits us away to a haunted estate that ensnares a nomadic young couple in its own dark past, a staged immersive ghost tour gone awry, a West Village séance that threatens the bounds between AI and reality, and a vacation home in the metaverse where a widow visits an improved version of her deceased husband. Gloriously gothic and unnervingly contemporary, Winterson examines grief, revenge, and the myriad ways in which technology can disrupt the boundary between life and death.
Review Quotes
Praise for Night Side of the River
A Good Housekeeping "20 Best Books of Fall" Selection
A Most Anticipated Book of Autumn from The Times (UK)
"For Jeanette Winterson, ghost stories are not old-fashioned or anachronistic in the modern world, but both cutting-edge and primal." -- May-lee Chai, New York Times
"Memorable...These supernatural tales are satisfyingly disconcerting." -- Publishers Weekly
"A bewitching collection for readers of horror and mystery, with just the right twists." -- Booklist
"A collection of ghost stories that range from campfire-level spooks to speculative reflections on the meaning of life . . . As challenging and entertaining as anything undertaken by this endlessly ingenious writer." --Los Angeles Times
"Winterson's stories . . . are excellent contemporary examples of how often women have made supernatural fiction their own." --The Washington Post
"Ghost stories that reinvigorate the supernatural . . . Winterson avoids pastiche, largely through the steady release of intensely portrayed and skillfully deployed emotion." --The Guardian
"As she ponders the spirit world, Winterson roams across cultures, from Chinese gui ghosts to the battle-ghosts of German, Icelandic and Scandinavian folklore. She also explores religions, different eras, the work of Charles Dickens, M.R. James and Shirley Jackson . . . [Winterson's stories] will haunt you." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"A collection of ghost stories that weaves in the liminal spaces -- Metaverses, one might say -- created through technology to coexist with the dead." --NPR, Book of the Day
"[A] frighteningly modern ghost story collection . . . Blurring the lines between nonfiction and campfire tale, this one imagines what would happen if there really was a ghost in the machine." -- Good Housekeeping, "20 Best Books of Fall"
"Big questions get asked here, both in the stories and in Winterson's reflections. What is waiting for us in the afterlife? What are ghosts? What does being 'haunted' really mean? Of course, Winterson doesn't have all the answers, but her speculations create something complex and thought-provoking nonetheless. On top of all that, the stories themselves are highly entertaining and satisfying -- and yes, pretty spooky." --Washington Independent Review of Books
"Richly evocative, beautifully told . . . Night Side of the River will expand readers' understanding of what ghost stories can be." -- Bookreporter
"[Winterson's] work . . . is charactised by a sensibility that is curious, probing, open-minded yet discerning, which is to say, ideal for an exploration of life, death, and the liminal spaces between . . . Winterson excels at creating ghosts for our current age, ghosts for now." --Irish Times
"Winterson intersperses her own spiritual encounters with tales that feature seances, smart glasses, AI technology, and her experiences with a ghost in her own Georgian-era house who arrived at her bedside and took her pulse. Both chilling and entertaining, it is a fun book for your bedside table if you are not too afraid." -- The Center for Fiction
Praise for Frankissstein
"Talky, smart, anarchic and quite sexy."-- New York Times
"Winterson has stitched together that rarest of beasts: a novel that is both deeply thought-provoking and provocative yet also unabashedly entertaining (I laughed out loud more times than I could count). Frankissstein, like its protagonist Ry, is a hybrid: a novel that defies conventional expectations and exists, brilliantly and defiantly, on its own terms."-- New York Times Book Review
"A brainy, batty story -- an unholy amalgamation of scholarship and comedy. [Winterson] manages to pay homage to Shelley's insight and passion while demonstrating her own extraordinary creativity... The dialogue is slick and funny, often delightfully obscene, but beneath all the kookiness, Winterson is satirizing sexual politics and exploring complicated issues of human desire... A bag of provocative tricks and treats. With diabolical ingenuity, [Winterson's] found a way to inject fresh questions about humanity's future into the old veins of Frankenstein."-- Washington Post
"A riotous reimagining with an energy and passion all of its own that reanimates Frankenstein as a cautionary tale for a contemporary moment dominated by debates about Brexit, gender, artificial intelligence and medical experimentation... While the story has a gripping momentum of its own, it also fizzes with ideas."--Financial Times
"Frankissstein is intellectually bracing and sexually explicit; a historical literary romp and a futuristic thriller. It, like its characters, rejects the binary."-- Los Angeles Times
"Spellbinding... artfully structured, unexpectedly funny, and impressively dynamic."-- Los Angeles Review of Books
"Devilishly scintillating and quite touching... buy and adore this astute, wildly inventive and totally unique book."-- San Francisco Chronicle
"A timeless writer... [Frankissstein is] brisk, romantic, sharp-humored."-- Wired
"Refreshingly, Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein... is a wildly inventive reimagining of one of science fiction's most beloved stories... lyrical, gloriously raunchy, pulpy and absurd."--New Scientist
"Yes, the book we have all been waiting for. Yes, everything Winterson has always done so well. Yes, above and beyond anything that is yet to be written."--Daisy Johnson
"Hilarious but serious time-travel gambol with Frankenstein: modern doubles into AI, cryogenics, and sexbots. (Hint: Mod. Byron does not come out of it well.)"--Margaret Atwood
Praise for Jeanette Winterson
"Winterson is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent deeply abides." --Vanity Fair
"Winterson's voice, with its idiosyncratic wit and sensitivity, is one you've never heard before." --Ms.
"To read Jeanette Winterson is to love her." --O, the Oprah Magazine
"Jeanette Winterson's sentences become lodged in the brain for years, like song lyrics." --Slate
"Winterson writes with heartrending precision ... Ferociously funny and unfathomably generous...Magnificent."--Vogue
"[Winterson is] searingly honest yet effortlessly lithe as she slides between forms, exuberant and unerring, demanding emotional and intellectual expansion of herself and of us."--Elle
About the Author
Born in Manchester, England, Jeanette Winterson is the author of more than twenty books, including the national bestseller Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and The Passion. She has won many prizes including the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, and the Stonewall Award.