Ghost Mom

by T. Guzman

52 pages, Paperback

Published November 28, 2023

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poignant, humorous novelette (?) of flash stories told in first-person by the grown child of a recently deceased mother. Though their mother is a ghost who technically “haunts” them, it seems their relationship isn’t much different than before. Certain words and phrases still can’t be said, even when a direct question is finally asked.

Apparently even after you wish for another opportunity and then actually have the chance to say what you think you might say if the person were still alive, some things are still too hard to say.

“All you can say is, it’s okay.”

[Elijah Woodruff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah, I cried. What of it?

[Nina Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a time when grieving when you become a ghost of yourself. Imagine you now share that sad world you inhabit with the actual ghost of the one you loved and lost.

In T. Guzman's Ghost Mom, there is a beautiful moment where the actual ghost in the story, the titular Ghost Mom, has more of a life in her death than she did while alive. To watch the interactions with her child and to see their dynamic change and grow throughout the novel is to ask ourselves when we will, too, start living, get out of the ghost of a life we live, and make changes. Though not the life or death changes that serve as the catalyst for this Mom, but the ones we can make while living. This book urges you to leave that comfort zone, take a chance, and move on to something new and exciting. Don't wait till you're a ghost to start living.

I recommend this book and encourage you to get it through Stanchion Books today!

[Linda Bayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars = I loved it, but the editing annoyed me

Straight up: this should be a five-star book. We meet a character whose mother comes back as a ghost after her death and visits on a regular basis, but despite this, is unable to get their own life together or say the things that need to be said. It's beautiful. The ending made me choke up, and in other places I found myself giggling quite a lot.

Unfortunately I'm one of those people who gets bothered by typos, weird punctuation, and sentences that don't make sense the first time. The book felt like it was put through a spell checker and not given a close read by a human, because in a lot of cases a word was spelled correctly, but was not the right word. Sown instead of sewn, bare instead of bear. And there's a whole section or two where the ghost mom is referred to as "they/them" despite being "she/her" in the rest of the book. This really confused me because of the lack of consistency, and because to my mind "mother" is definitely a female noun, not one with non-binary wriggle room.

Typos notwithstanding, this was a worthwhile read. Highly recommended!

[Danielle McMahon · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Your life is a ghost story albeit not a very scary one.” T Guzman’s equally funny and heartbreaking flash fiction collection “Ghost Mom” takes us to hazy in-between spaces—between life and death, acceptance and denial, sorrow and shock. In this space exist ghosts both literal and figurative. Not only do we see the MC’s actual ghost mom but we also experience the mental fog of the character’s developing feelings surrounding the loss: a vaporous, incomplete feeling of a grief not fully processed. Guzman cleverly uses the second person POV to plop the reader down in this emotional limbo, and yet it’s not at all unpleasant. In fact, Guzman’s stories are really very funny, subtle, and relatable. Many pieces are carried out to absurd perfection by their matter-of-fact tone and short, snappy sentences. Grief is a heavy subject, and Guzman masterfully approaches it with a light touch, allowing us to laugh, imagine and wonder. I loved reading this collection and absolutely recommend it!

[Josh Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ghost Mom, the character, feels more alive while a ghost, and maybe that where the joy lies. This second life. The narrator in this novelette/prose poem is as conflicted as I am in interpreting the adventures. Is it grieving? Is it nostalgia? Some chapters do well in answering this while others don’t.

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little novella (or long short story??) was so well done. I absolutely loved the voice here - but would have loved to learn more about the man character as well, not just the ghost mom. For an author who admits in the dedication his mother is still alive, I think it’s such an accurate depiction of grief in general.

[Hildie · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, I loved this little book. Such a real view of grief but more light-hearted than heartbreaking. So. Freaking. Real.