Apparitions

by Sybil Baker

After Simone learns that her ex-husband Guy has died unexpectedly at the age of fifty, her only regret is that she didn't expose his affairs when she had the chance. But when a woman asks her to help her disrupt his Celebration of Life planned in Northern Cyprus, Simone wonders if she has a last chance to reveal Guy's hypocrisy. Accompanied by her best friend, Simone arrives in Cyprus; however, the circumstances surrounding Guy's death become increasingly mysterious. Worse, since Guy's death, Simone has been haunted by Guy and the ghosts of her loved ones warning her of impending danger. As the Celebration approaches and Simone's mental state deteriorates, she must decide who she should trust and who she must betray in order to save herself.

170 pages, Paperback

Published May 2, 2023

About the author

Sybil Baker’s latest novel is While You Were Gone. Her book of nonfiction Immigration Essays is the 2018-2019 Read2Achieve selection for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She is also the author of The Life Plan, Talismans, and Into This World (Foreword Book of the Year finalist, and Eric Hoffer Award Honorable Mention). She was awarded two MakeWork Artist Grants and a 2017 Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission. She lives and teaches in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is on faculty at the Yale Writers’ Workshop and VCFA’s low residency International MFA

Reviews

[Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apparitions by Sybil Baker is a book I was asked to blurb (Signal 8 Press, May 2023). It’s a short novel in which the narrator Simone travels with her friend Agnes to Cyprus for a memorial service for her ex-husband who has died there. Her plan is to disrupt the service by exposing the guy for having cheated on her and for generally being a manipulative narcissist. In this she will be aided by other former lovers of the man as well as former friends.

In the meantime, Simone is haunted by people from her past—a brother who died in Vietnam, a former Korean student who drowned in a ferry sinking, and of course Guy, her ex. All are warning her about something, but she isn’t quite sure what it all means.

Here’s the blurb I gave it: “In spare and emotionally heightened prose that calls to mind the work of Annie Ernaux, Sybil Baker’s new novel, Apparitions, is an intense psychological portrait of Simone, a woman haunted by her past. On a trip to Cyprus for her ex-husband’s funeral and bent on revenge, she is visited by a parade of ghosts who warn her not to be misled, paralyzing her with indecision. The book is a story of betrayal, but also one of disappointment and strangling regret. It’s a deeply satisfying mystery, too, as Simone seeks to understand what really happened to the man she once loved.”

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This slim page-turner is deceptively complex: part lush travelogue, part twisty love story, part murder mystery. I loved getting to travel along with Simone and Agnes, characters so lively they nearly leap off the page. In Apparitions, Sybil Baker has spun a tale of how our pasts can haunt us, and what happens when women choose alternative paths for their lives.