These Ghosts are Family is a spellbinding, beautifully written story about the way generational trauma can harm, form or save a person ... a stunningly powerful experience, laced through with prose that’s gorgeous and effortless, and reminded me of Toni Morrison. A story of pain and of love, of ancestral pride and parental disgust, of joy and trauma, the magic of an ancient tale and the bone-deep reality of having to change a bedpan ... It’s easy to sink happily into this book; it’s easy to let it make you sad for the people in it, to break your heart, to make you want to live harder or let a fairytale absorb you ... Please let it enter your life and take you to somewhere incredible.
... [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 deftly grounds these experiments in subtle details that reveal history’s imprint on everyday family life ... Occasionally, the novel’s sheer breadth takes a toll on the prose, flattening complex emotions in particular into cliché ... Card’s ghosts bracingly remind us that no family history is comprehensive, that some riddles of ancestry and heritage persist beyond this lifetime.
The seemingly unforgivable is hardly so simple in Maisy Card's lyrical, ambitious debut, which rigorously explores the story behind and impact of one man's grand deceit ... Card is a restless writer. Her first chapter delivers a stunning series of second-person character portraits; they build into a centuries-spanning epic about race, trauma, and the weight of a lie.
... moves across time and space as it deftly weaves the families’ paths ... Card weaves these bloodthirsty characters—tragic, but complex—into the novel’s larger arc by emphasizing their origins. Though they weren’t Paisleys, they were among those who suffered as a result of Abel’s deceit. In other words, these soucouyants are a warning, and These Ghosts Are Family is a tale of the most monstrous acts: intimate betrayals with unthinkable consequences.
... a novel overflowing with unadulterated humanity ... Card is a natural storyteller. Whole family histories are compressed into two pages, stories building upon stories like strata of earth ... Card writes in first, second and third person, and presents one story through a journal. She has a marvelous ear for dialect. Because stories unfold quickly through a range of narrators, it’s not always clear who’s speaking. Nevertheless, the result is a rich stew, teeming with grudges, humor, doubt, loss and love ... It is a measure of Card’s skill that we come to know these characters in three dimensions, even as they struggle to know themselves.
... episodes and people in Abel's life, both dead and alive, unfold in multiple voices and over vast swaths of time. These episodes are presented asynchronously, actively engaging readers in piecing together the puzzle of a family that doesn't know how or if they all fit together ... Themes of deception and abandonment occur again and again, and Card shows how these acts spread and stain across generations ... Her personal understanding affects and authenticates the characters and events in These Ghosts Are Family. Card is a powerful new voice, and readers will eagerly await her next effort.
Drawing from the intergenerational trauma in her own life as a Jamaican-American woman, Maisy Card masterfully paints a picture of a Jamaican family haunted by choices, deaths—real and fabricated—and most of all, the omnipotence ofracism and sexism. As truths are revealed through the unwinding of life histories, the characters, first defined by their mistakes, become beautifully complex, contradictory, and multi- dimensional ... Card’s command of language, demonstrated through her use of dialect and of first-, second-, and third-person narrative, allows her to fit full histories into only a few pages ... the use of dialect stands as a reminder of Zora Neale Hurston; the novel’s use of time travel alludes to Octavia Butler; and the mastery of language is reminiscent of Toni Morrison. In the context of such a rich 'herstory,' the goals of Card’s novel can be truly appreciated. Despite these strong similarities with prominent Black women writers, the novel is still wonderfully unique, offering a commentary on the implications of anti-Black racism, sexism, and misogynoir ... celebrates the ways in
Card weaves a multigenerational narrative that tackles racism, colonialism, slavery, immigration, infidelity, and family ties—and just about every other issue of the modern age ... Set in both Jamaica and New York, this debut novel effectively reveals contrasting cultures and customs. Though the Jamaican patois requires close attention, readers of general fiction will enjoy unraveling the threads of this complex tale.
Card’s clean, readable prose provides an important counterbalance to the dense, heavy problems her broad scope of characters endure. A fantastic debut.
This is 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. A gifted storyteller with an eye for detail and compassion for all her flawed characters, Card ends the book with an unsettling ghost story about insatiable hunger ... An intriguing debut with an inventive spin on the generational family saga.
... [a] profound, assured debut ... 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.
