Miss Ghost

by Ruth M. Arthur

A foster child who has been rejected by her mother and has lost her father and grandfather, Elphie's life is filled with rejection. When she is sent to a home for troubled children, she is determined to keep her distance from everyone, until she meets Miss Ghost who has had problems not unlike her own.

Genres: Childrens

119 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Working name of UK writer Ruth Mabel Arthur Huggins, long active as a children's author, her career beginning with Friendly Stories (collection, 1932). Most of her early work, like the Brownie sequence -- The Crooked Brownie (1936), The Crooked Brownie in Town (1942) and The Crooked Brownie at the Seaside (1942) -- is for younger children, but with Dragon Summer (1962) and A Candle in her Room (1966) she began to write the haunting fantasy-tinged adolescent novels for which she became best known. Often featuring first-person narratives spanning multiple generations filled with echoes of centuries past.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last book that Ruth M. Arthur ever wrote, Miss Ghost was published posthumously, and follows the unhappy story of Elspeth (Elphie), who goes to stay with her grandmother in Scotland when her mother abandons the family and her father has a mental breakdown and must be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. After her grandmother's death and a disastrous stay with a foster family, Elphie herself begins to slip into a depressive state, and is sent to Barnologie - a home for disturbed children. Here Elphie encounters the (possible) ghost of a woman who once lived at Barnologie, and develops a strange relationship with her. But will "Miss Ghost" help Elphie heal, or draw her further into self-destruction?

Like another of Arthur's later works, After Candlemas , this short novel deals with some very contemporary problems - which is not to say that mental illness is modern, simply that we perceive it differently (I hope) these days. I am one of those people that keeps a quote journal, in which I record any random bits of text I find particularly moving, elegant, or eloquent - anything worthy of remembrance. Although I admire Arthur, I have found that I usually appreciate her work as a broader canvas - well-constructed and engaging - but I have rarely needed to record any specific piece of her books in my journal. One notable exception to this is the concluding passage of The Saracen Lamp . Miss Ghost contains a few more, and I found Arthur's description of the father's depression to be particularly moving: "Something strange and terrible". How apt.

I liked the narrator's ability to question her own reality, her acknowledgment that "Miss Ghost" may or may not have been real - after all, does it really matter whether it was Barnologie or Elphie that was being haunted? The haunting was real, whether or not the ghost was. Why only 4 stars then? Sadly, I felt that the absence of Margery Gill's illustrations really detracted from my enjoyment of the book. This title was published right around the time (late 1970s, early 1980s) when publishers stopped putting illustrations in most juvenile novels - no doubt to cut costs. What a loss...

[Corrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a really sad book but a page turner. 📙