Love Ghost

The acclaimed New York Times–bestselling biography and “emotionally detailed portrait of the artist as a young man” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times) In the first biography of the iconic David Foster Wallace, D.T. Max paints the portrait of a man, self-conscious, obsessive and struggling to find meaning. If Wallace was right when he declared he was “frightfully and thoroughly conventional,” it is only because over the course of his short life and stunning career, he wrestled intimately and relentlessly with the fundamental anxiety of being human. In his characteristic lucid and quick-witted style, Max untangles Wallace’s anxious sense of self, his volatile and sometimes abusive connection with women, and above all, his fraught relationship with fiction as he emerges with his masterpiece Infinite Jest. Written with the cooperation of Wallace’s family and friends and with access to hundreds of unpublished letters, manuscripts and journals, this captivating biography unveils the life of the profoundly complicated man who gave voice to what we thought we could not say.

"I envy anyone who has yet to enjoy the sexy, eerie, and addictive novels of Jonathan Carroll. They are delicious treats—with devilish tricks inside them."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Neil Gaiman has written: "Jonathan Carroll has the magic. He'll lend you his eyes, and you'll never see the world in quite the same way ever again." Welcome to the luminous and marvelously inventive world of The Ghost in Love. A man falls in the snow, hits his head on a curb, and dies. But something strange occurs: the man doesn't die, and the ghost that's been sent to take his soul to the afterlife is flabbergasted. Going immediately to its boss, the ghost asks, what should I do now? The boss says, we don't know how this happened but we're working on it. We want you to stay with this man to help us figure out what's going on. The ghost agrees unhappily; it is a ghost, not a nursemaid. But a funny thing happens—the ghost falls madly in love with the man's girlfriend, and things naturally get complicated. Soon afterward, the man discovers he did not die when he was "supposed" to because for the first time in their history, human beings have decided to take their fates back from the gods. It's a wonderful change, but one that comes at a price. The Ghost in Love is about what happens to us when we discover that we have become the masters of our own fate. No excuses, no outside forces or gods to blame—the responsibility is all our own. It's also about love, ghosts that happen to be gourmet cooks, talking dogs, and picnicking in the rain with yourself at twenty different ages. Stephen King has said that "Jonathan Carroll is as scary as Hitchcock, when he isn't being as funny as Jim Carrey." Jonathan Lethem sees Carroll as the "master of sunlit surrealism." However one regards this beguiling original, two facts are indisputable: It's tough being a ghost on an empty stomach. And The Ghost in Love is a triumphant return.

On the outside, Josefina Navarro's life seems fortunate enough—she lives with her father and her nursemaid, Regla, who raises her after the death of her mother in a luxurious home in Vedado, one of Cuba's wealthiest districts. She attends society dances and is courted by all of Havana's elite young bachelors. Enchanted by the rituals of her nursemaid, Josefina learns about the profound mysticism inherent in even the most mundane affairs. Though she is pampered, Josefina feels that her life is without passion or excitement. Her father, Sergeant Antonio Navarro, a Spaniard by birth, is a stern and demanding man whose past is a tightly kept secret. When she meets and marries Lorenzo Concepción, a poor, reckless young man, the sergeant tells her, "So, you have chosen him...and you will be hungry and miserable all your life." The couple moves to El Cotorro, a poverty-stricken town that is far removed from the Vedado plazas and carefully tended gardens Josefina knew. Lorenzo begins to leave her for months at a time, "looking for work," but in reality, womanizing and carousing all over the island. Even after the birth of two healthy children, Josefina is not happy. This is not the life she had envisioned. During a political maelstrom, history brings the sergeant to El Cotorro to quell a riot, where he is attacked and presumed dead. But perception is reality on an island in which darkness and light commingle, and magic and truth are one in the same. When Josefina begins receiving letters from her father, she believes that what she holds are heaven's missives, ghost letters. Through the letters, Josefina comes to know her father intimately, as a ghost and guardian, as he reveals the truth about his life. In the act of writing and reading, she has found a love to fill the empty places in her heart. Set in Cuba and Miami, covering nearly fifty years of the island's history, LOVE AND GHOST LETTERS unfolds the lives of the Navarro-Concepción families in the patterns and permutations of memory, and conjures a Cuban setting that evokes mysticism and magic.

"Do you really know how to create Phantom Wall?" "Forgive me for designing the Wall-Hitting Ghost in my love for you!" Suspicious bend love, thyme before the Republic of China -- ah! A painting of the coffin temple's ancestors, a painting of a beauty eating a mole, and the embroidery of the mysterious Great Ancestral Hall of the Hunter Village — all of these things were truly suspenseful. Come with me!

The moment I meet a ghost, it would bring back countless years of memories. I am actually that demonic beast that everyone fears, but in reality, that isn't the case ...

He accidentally provoked His Majesty the King of Hell, and upon seeing the overweeningly arrogant Lord of the Underworld, he thought that his future life would turn into an idol of the domineering CEO falling in love with him.

When her irresponsible brother rents the family home, Langston Manor, for the duration of the Royal Ascot races to Valient, Earl of Trevarnon and his wild gentleman friends, lonely and innocent young Demelza is afraid. Although married to a woman who has lost her mind and is in an asylum, Trevarnon is a well-known 'ladies' man' - and, for her own safety and modesty, Demelza agrees to hide among The Manor's maze of secret passages. As she watches, though, through the old house's ancient peepholes, she sees another, very different, side to the notorious Nobleman. Suddenly one moonlit night, unde.

Josefina Navarro childhood was one of previledge and pampering in the pre-Castro days of Cuba. When she reached adulthood, however, she impulsively marries a poor and reckless young man who will only bring her heartache and grief. During the start of all the political troubles in Cuba, Josefina starts to get a series of letters from her father, whom she thought was dead. These "ghost letters" help her to better understand her distant father and bring some meaning to her otherwise disappointing life.