I Wish I Was Like You

by S.P. Miskowski

"First rule. Never open your story with a corpse. It's a cliché. If you do it to be ironic, I'll throw your manuscript in your face."

Greta didn't set out to solve a murder. But if the first thing you see when you come home after a long day at a lousy job is your own dead body, it can make even the most cynical non-starter in 1994 Seattle take an interest. Refusing to believe her dead eyes, the one-time theater editor at the city's least noteworthy periodical - now a bitter ghost haunting the streets and busways of the Emerald City - will happily break every rule of crime fiction to tell her story and prove she didn't die a lame-ass, suicidal Cobain imitator. If Greta manages to figure out who really killed her, in the process? That's just an extra shot in her overpriced espresso.

Hauntingly scary, darkly funny, and occasionally nostalgic, I Wish I Was Like You is one vengeful spirit's look at a city learning to embrace narcissism and the dead inhabitants who will always call it home.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Mystery, Ghosts, Thriller

327 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

S.P. Miskowski is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Her books have received four Shirley Jackson Award nominations and two Bram Stoker Award nominations. Her second novel, I Wish I Was Like You, won This Is Horror Novel of the Year 2017 and a readers' choice Charles Dexter (A)ward from Strange Aeons.

Miskowski's stories have been published in Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Supernatural Tales, Black Static, Identity Theory, Strange Aeons and Eyedolon Magazine, and in numerous anthologies including Haunted Nights, The Madness of Dr. Caligari, October Dreams 2, Darker Companions: Celebrating 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell, The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten and There Is No Death, There Are No Dead.

She is represented by Danielle Svetcov at Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency and by Anonymous Content (film/TV rights).

Author site:
https://spmiskowski.wordpress.com/

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have not read any of S. P. Miskowski’s writing then “I Wish I Was Like You” is certainly a good book to begin your reading journey. Or if delving into a quality author’s back catalog is your cup of tea, S. P. Miskowski's debut novel, “Knock Knock”, and her first novella, “Delphine Dodd”, have been shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award and are other valid selections.

In the book “I Wish I Was Like You” we are given mystery, suspense, noir, and a ghost story containing dark humor a number of scares and an abundance of humanity. The story concerns Greta Garve, who has connived her way into a new job in the late 90’s Seattle, which she has come to dislike. Arriving home one evening, she enters her apartment to discover her own dead body within. Now she wants to find out what happened.

I have recently read Ms. Miskowski’s chapbook “Stag In Flight” from Dim Shores, and her novella “Muscadines” from Dunhams Manor Press. Both of which were excellent. As with those books she is firing on all cylinders in her writing.

I highly recommend this book.

[Carla Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not sure I've ever given new fiction five stars before, but this truly has mysterious depth and mystery to it, as well as being very entertaining. The fact that it takes place in the early 1990s resonates with me, as I was in high school at the time the book is set, so I remember it well (in the way, apparently, only kids can recall each month of each year - the older you get, time becomes a blur- for me at least, it might seem different if you have children). I would like to read this book again, as I'm not sure it could be fully understood the first reading. It is about death and life (but not annoying, as I usually find fantasies of the afterlife). It is not a mystery, though there is an obsession with crime fiction, but then a mystery is satisfyingly solved.

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fucking five stars all day, every day forever. Miskowski wrote like her life depended on it. Review soon!

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars--I liked the book.

What I liked:
* This is a love letter to 90s Seattle. I figured out I'm a year younger than the protagonist in this story, and moved to Seattle (from the suburbs) the same year the protagonist did. So it was really nostalgic for me to reminisce about having coffee at the B & O, mourn again the death of Mia Zapata, and recall the days of the free newspaper wars. The Seattle details are perfect.
* The narrator is really chilling. There's a dark, disturbing element to this novel thanks to her first-person narration.

What I was "meh" about:
* There's not a lot of plot; this is pretty navel gazing.
* The narrator is a terrible, morally bankrupt person--completely self absorbed and spiteful. It made it hard to connect with her.

Overall an interesting read. Likely I'll pick up more of Miskowski's writing.

[Ian Welke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Wish I Was Like You is a noir ghost story set in Seattle. It starts with an opening chapter that makes the list of my favorite book beginnings. (Up there with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Neuromancer, The Secret History, and a special magic few.) It’s also the best novel I’ve read this year. In addition to the fierce energy the book carries itself with, there’s this brilliant grim humor. Miskowski’s usage of a device of beginning chapters with the narrator’s writing teacher’s warnings about bad writing and then doing that very thing works wonderfully. Throughout there’s this metafiction at work, I loved it when the narrator referenced Jim Thompson, because this book feels a lot like a more modern Jim Thompson novel. It has that Thompson “I’d like this to be a Chandler novel, but Chandler’s far too optimistic and not broken enough” feel throughout. At the same time the writing style is clearly unique to Miskowski. Reading her work is always an opportunity to appreciate fine crafted prose, and I Wish I Was Like You is packed with those stellar prose.

It feels like there’s more I should say, but I’m still blown away. I have a feeling this book will stay with me for a long time.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short novel - you could stay up all night and finish it - contains so much. A portrait of Seattle in the heyday of grunge, a trawl through the lives of the ordinary and broken, a meditation on ambition, failure, and gender, of community and friendship and their limits. A portrait of failing to come of age in those gloomy, millennial times in the early 90s. The closest I can compare it to is Caitlyn Kiernan's earlier novels, set among the young, hungry and hip, but without the flawed romanticism Kiernan herself has identified in, say, Silk. Also, in what seems to me uniquely a tradition of US horror, Miskowski sketches a vision of afterlife that is linked to the ideas of the classic ghost story but somehow has the revelatory shock of a wholly new conception.

[Theresa Braun · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very different and intriguing read. However, the writing execution is not for everyone. For example, the switches in point of view are disorienting/jarring, but that’s probably the point—and to give a broader picture of the setting. Somehow those pieces really help make this novel complete. Also, there are a few shout outs to the title throughout, but it doesn’t really come together until that last line. In fact, there are several elements of this book that might not hit you until you finish it. That’s actually one of the things that I really appreciate here: the satisfying aftertaste.

Greta is not necessarily the most likeable character. That’s not to say we can’t empathize with her trying to find her way in the world, often scheming to get there. But, it’s being in the character’s head and witnessing her thoughts that makes the experience so real. She thinks and feels what many of us wouldn’t dare admit, which is a guilty pleasure. Add to this the need for us to find out who killed her, and you’ll keep turning those pages.

And, all of the answers you seek will be satisfied, along with a side of philosophy (musings on the meaning of life and the afterlife). You’ll be forced to think beyond what seems on the surface to be a work drama, while at the same time being amused by the snarky-ness of the narrator. There’s definitely a sense of humanity everyone can relate to, the everyday bullshit we wish we could escape. And also the uncomfortable question of how much of our destiny is our own fault. Or how much of it is the shitty cards that play out. Does our existence have any meaning in the end? Those notions are the haunting ones. You’re bound to have an emotional reaction to this book. I can’t say that it scared me at all, at least not in the way I was expecting. All in all, you just might want to read it to get that satisfying aftertaste I was talking about earlier.

[Mike Thorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many really good novels, S.P. Miskowski’s I Wish I Was Like You can’t easily be summarized in one sentence. If someone were to ask me “what is it about?”, I imagine I could competently outline the plot: After Greta’s washed-up crime-writing instructor Lee Todd viciously criticizes her fiction submission, she moves to Seattle and pursues a short-lived journalism career, before she’s murdered in a manner that’s assumed to be a Cobain-copycat suicide. Obviously, there’s more to it than that, but there’s the gist. But in terms of plot, this novel reads more as a deconstruction or a fun exegesis than as a simple transcription of Event A, followed by Event B, etc. The novel mixes up chronology and even point of view, peppering Lee Todd’s dogmatic writing rules throughout, before almost always coyly breaking said rules within the next handful of pages.

Read the full review in "Thorn's Thoughts," my column on Unnerving Magazine's website.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would be hard to describe this novel as it takes lots of genres and ideas, throws them together and manages to make it work. The book was also much different to what I expected and that made it all the more captivating.

I’d read and enjoyed Miskowski’s Skillute Cycle books and expected something similar but this turned out to be very different. It isn’t horror; it’s a mix of humour, drama, mystery and an unusual ghost story, these all form a unique story that is written with precise skill and care.

I found Greta strangely relatable and became invested in her quickly to the point that I found the book hard to put down. In fact all the characters were brilliantly formed and created a vibrant backdrop to the grungy city.

I’m not sure what type of reader I’d recommend this to, so I’ll just recommend it to everyone!

[Jon Von · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about the kind of assholes who'd write for a pretentious indie zine in 1994 Seattle. It's a city filled with homeless artists, living room theater troupes, con artists, and druggies. And only the particularly self-loathing and antisocial thrive before inevitably getting stabbed in the back. It's an interesting book about the 90s, the commercial nihilism of flannel-wearing, cigarette-smoking, grunge culture, and the reality of Washington state's most popular urban sprawl. But it's barely a ghost story and not scary for one second and the only real story is the rise and fall of an amateur theater reviewer. But it does pick up in the last fifteen percent with some nice poetic prose, so you can come for the grunge nihilism and stay for the existential crisis and it all works out more or less.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

HP Lovecraft once said, "I am Providence" And indeed, no writer has come along to usurp his ownership over the self imposed title.
If this is true, then S.P. Miskowski is Seattle.
Depending on who you read, I WISH I WAS LIKE YOU is either a horror story or a detective story. These labels will feel wrong. The book is neither and I'm convinced they were put upon by eager publishers who needed a way to describe the book to readers.
What it is, is a specific mood that could only have existed in Seattle in the mid 1990s.
I'm not just referring to a well researched time and culture that has passed on. Miskowski has included enough details that could only have come from living through Seattle and its affects in the mid 1990s. She nails the terrible jobs, the ephemera of an era, and the idiosyncratic trappings that anyone of the era would recognize. True to form and place, she makes it clear her main character hates Nirvana (the band).
There's an almost quixotic quality to the book. It's a brilliant portrait of a time and place that looks nothing like the time and place that has replaced it. Most of the bars and restaurants referenced within have been scraped away by out of town "firms" with no local investment. Miskowski does acknowledge this trend with the background noise of this trust fund babies and Microsoft millionaires making purchases of this decrepit warehouse or that decrepit warehouse. While she never would have known that this trend would lead to the Amazon infestation of the 2000s and 10s, it makes a wonderful in-joke.
Mot important, this book is depressing. The hazy nostalgia that can be found in so many novels of times past is not present. There's backstabbing and violence that permeates the text the way the rain soaked timbers of so many buildings on Capitol Hill. If there is horror, it is not ghosts or fiends that haunt so many horror stories, it is the horror of the human condition.

[Laura Sestri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Questa è la storia che racconta lo spettro di Greta dopo aver scoperto il proprio cadavere in casa, intervallando la ricostruzione della sua vita a incontri con chi ha deciso di farla finita, a cui rivela, in un barlume di consapevolezza finale, la propria natura spettrale e letale. Questa è la storia di un vuoto dentro, nutrito dall’invidia, dalla paura di essere invisibili e dal dover trovare per forza un nemico. L’autrice dà magistralmente vita a un personaggio a tutto tondo costruito con quel tocco tipicamente suo che sa fondere ironia, cinismo, profondità psicologica, superficialità e onestà. Tratteggiate con grande efficacia sono anche le altre figure che le ruotano intorno, in una Seattle anni Novanta anch’essa protagonista, con la sua musica, la sua pioggia, i suoi suicidi.

This is the story told by the ghost of Greta after having discovered her own dead body at home, interspersing the flashback about her life with encounters face to face with those who decided to commit suicide, revealing, in a glimpse of final awareness, her own ghostly and lethal nature. This is the story of a void within, fed by the envy, by the fear of being invisible and by the need to necessarily find an enemy. The author masterfully creates a well-rounded character with her typically touch capable of combining irony, cynicism, psychological depth, superficiality and honesty. S.P. Miskowski describes with great effectiveness also the other characters gravitating around Greta, and the backdrop for this very original story is 1990s Seattle, with its music, its rain and its suicides.

https://diabolichetraduzioni.blogspot...

[David Thirteen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I struggled a little with I Wish I Was you, mainly because I spent a good portion of the book trying to like the main character. As the story opens, Greta seems easy to identify with: an every-woman, struggling writer, with some bad breaks. But as it goes on her apathy and scorn for others gets hard to take. That is, until I realized that S.P. Miskowski didn’t intend for her to be particularly likable. Once that clicked into place my enjoyment of the book rose. Part meta-murder mystery (a crime writer trying to solve a murder), part vengeful ghost story, part love-letter to 1990s Seattle, this novel is witty and thoughtful. The horror of this book isn’t in the ghost as much as it is in the commentary of how life can sometimes be (as Hobbes put it) solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. I would definitely recommend it.

[Natascha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was for sure nothing like all the crime novels I have ever read.
To be honest, you cannot really call it a crime novel.
I expected Greta to be some kind of ghost, assisting police men to find out who her real murder is by triggering paranormal activities for them to track and deduce their meaning, which was not the case at all.
What I did like though, was the parts dedicated to Greta telling her life story - never have I felt so tired and disheartened at reading about failure. The only thing in her life, which she was passionate about, got wrecked and dragged along in mud. Over and over again. You feel her will to succeed declining over the pages, and this is something I have never experienced within a book before. Most of the story these days - I'm really just generalizing here - have a struggling protagonist who will somehow, after many days of hard work - prove themselves worthy, and in the end they are going to be successful.
Also, just take a look at the self-improvement section in any bookstore. They conceal the fact that many people do not reach their (initial) goals and aspirations, no matter how hard they try.
Maybe we should redefine our definition of success after all.

Still, I wouldn't recommend this book if you are out there in the world looking for some good old detective and crime story. It really is more or less a tale of being unhappy in my opinion.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to read it again. Several pieces didn’t click into place until the end of the novel, and I need to experience the book again, knowing what I now know. And what an experience. Every time I had to pause reading, I had several new observations of humanity’s faults and motivations to chew on. For better or worse, I identified all to well with the protagonist. At one point, I recovered from zoning out and pondering some forgotten mystery only to realize that I was laying there, hugging this book to my chest. Take from that what you will.

[Tea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story, these characters are a mess, honest hot messes. It's realistically creepy and familiar for us city folk. Even the ghosts are grounded. Read this book and meet Greta, she's a mood swing. Sometimes I really liked her and then I saw the Gen X view come through (I'm Gen X most likely you are too) and remembered how lost we are or we're convinced we are. There are others to meet in this book, read it, meet them, it's worth it.

[Jennye Stark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a ghost's memoir set in 1990's grunge-inspired Kurt Cobain-mourning Seattle. The narrator is a struggling writer--an apparently-murdered, plagiarizing, grudge-holding twenty-something theatre-reviewer who settles moodily into her haunting as she seeks to discover the identity of her killer. Her new hobbies include whispering nasty encouragement to indecisive would-be suicides and reflecting on bad decisions. One of my favorite novels read this year!

[Kevin Breaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big fan of this author. Love the writing style. Great story telling. Excellent work.

[Andrew Bockhorst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Gen X ghost story.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know Greta is meant to be a long-winded, insufferable jerk. But I can only take about 100-odd pages of this, sorry.

[Kristen Mirek · Rating 4 out of 5]

The library tagged this as horror, but once I stopped considering it as such, it was pretty good.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you S. P. Miskowski for writing this book exactly when I needed it. With planning and packing and traveling 3000 miles and living without furniture for a month and finally unpacking … I have had a long and distressing case of reader’s block. Then with perfect timing, I Wish I Was Like You landed on my Kindle.

To be honest this is not a book I would normally choose. I tend toward Victorian era stories that never mention the chamber pots under the bed, so I was hesitant to read I Wish I Was Like You, a book in which characters wear their chamber pots on their sleeves. These were people I didn’t much like, living lives I didn’t much understand. But (with no apology to Lee Todd Butcher) the story opens with a corpse, and from that moment on I was hooked. S. P. took me on a goth tour of Seattle Washington -- a time and place I have no connection to. I was an East Coast hippie in the sixties and haven’t really moved beyond. When goth was a lifestyle choice I was a suburban yuppie and mom, and while I know music continued to be made and performed after 1979, I had no clue that I Wish I Was Like You is a song. Fortunately my ignorance did not matter because S. P. chronicles the era with the precision of an eye witness; with every word she insures that time and place permeate the story. As the girls in black shambled down Seattle streets in their Doc Martens I felt the damp air and embraced the malaise of their decade. Could the aforementioned corpse have lived (and died) in a different time? I think not. Greta doomed herself to wallow in gothic misery by choices she never made. I didn’t understand Greta’s motivations, or more appropriately her complete lack of motivation. I never learned to like Greta -- she remained spectacularly unlikeable to the end. I am quite certain that if I had known Greta, I would have wanted to slap her. But S. P. wrote a compelling story and I was happy to follow her down the road of Greta’s life (and death).

[Suzanne Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been a fan of S.P. Miskowski’s work since her first collection of stories, Red Poppies, after which I devoured each installment of her Skillute Cycle. For years, she’s been faithfully turning out one gorgeously haunting story after another, but with I Wish I Was Like You, she’s accomplished something bigger, more ambitious, her most complex work yet. The characters in this story are so well-drawn, at turns weird and lovable, manipulative and repulsive; she approaches each one with a cool, questioning eye and an ear for a perfectly-turned phrase, which makes for a swift, stimulating read. Throughout, she explores what it means to be an outsider. How an outsider is made, or how she makes herself. She lets us feel what it’s like to crave revenge, to be consumed by spite. I loved watching our main character’s vision grow darker, her malevolence mixed with hopelessness. And the interstitial death tour of Seattle landmarks is absolutely brilliant, the writing at once spooky and satirical, resulting in a darkly vivid portrait of a long-gone Seattle, a city made for and by misfits. I can’t wait to read whatever she comes up with next.

[Zaya Thomson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a miserable book. That is not to say I didn't enjoy it (I did) but that it simply radiates misery. I can't imagine the process of writing it. The horror of the story lies not in any particularly scary moment or scene, but in the absolute, unrelenting depression of the story. If reading about an unstable ghost trying to solve her own murder while recounting her life story and pushing other living people to suicide sounds like your bag, I'd recommend this one. It's a good read -- and thank god it's brief.

[Melissa Joulwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a weird and awesome b0ok! I couldn't put it down. Not at all what I was expecting; I never know what was going to happen next. Loved it.

[Yves Tourigny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poison-pen love letter to 1990s Seattle, Miskowski's black humour, precise observations, and well-drawn characters make this novel an absolute pleasure to read.

[Jordan Whitlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun book to read, a mix mash-up of all the best genres but my favorite was the dark humor that reminded me a bit of Chuck Palahniuk at his best, and produced in me that extreme rarity while reading-literally laughing out loud quite often.
I was absolutely blown away by the first 75 pages, couldn't put the book down and was wondering how the writer could be so brilliant. I'm still amazed, but felt it lost some of its fire through the middle chapters. It all came together though, and the ending was great and fitting.
This was my first time reading S.P. Miskowski. I really enjoyed this experience and am looking forward to trying more from this talented author.

[Ann Theis]

PW

[David Bridges · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Wish I Was Like you is a ghost story combined with a dark coming of age story set in Seattle around the time of Kurt Cobain’s suicide. I am a fan of the author and have read a fair amount of her previous work, mostly short, but also her incredible novel Knock Knock. I Wish I Was Like You clocks in at 250 pages and I was consumed the whole time. Miskowski is just as strong in long form as she is in shorter form.

I Wish I Was Like You felt different to me than some of Miskowski’s other work. The prose was reflective of the 90’s and more metropolitan than other Miskowski books, which always seem to me to be more gothic or rural. I am not saying this as a bad thing because this is a great book. It has this noir psychological thriller vibe to it as the story’s tension develops. The characters are rough around the edges, including the main character Greta, who is not really a great person, but I couldn’t help but remain sympathetic to her throughout the whole story. Maybe because it opens up with her being dead from the start but I think it has more to do with Miskowski’s writing. Most of the book is catching you up to speed but there is also a second narrative that is placed in between chapters. I will let you read it to figure out what that narrative is. It took me a bit to figure it out, but when I did, I appreciated it.

I highly recommend you pick this book up and give it a shot. Especially if you are a fan of murder mysteries or ghost stories. I happen to be a fan of both. If you read and enjoyed I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas then I recommend you check this book out. Obviously, if you are an established fan of S.P. Miskowski like I am you should pick this book up as well. You can go wrong with any S.P. Miskowski books if you like dark fiction that spans all genres.

[The Gehenna Post · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever read a story or novel that just completely flips your entire perspective on storytelling? A piece that is so unorthodox and uncanny that it leaps from the page with a fluidity and style you hadn't thought possible? If you haven't, we suggest picking up a copy of S.P. Miskowski's I Wish I Was Like You. Not only is this deeply personal tale of the human condition entertaining and breathing with vivid characters and colorful, living descriptions, but it is also one of the most heartbreaking, soul-crushing novels to come out in recent years. 

Greta is a protagonist that you'll love to hate, and hate to love. A character that is animate, textured, jumping from the page and into your thoughts in ways that you may have thought only a best friend or loved one could. Miskowski's choice to employ second person narrative for many parts of this story was a hard sell at first, especially for Greta's haunts (no spoilers, so we shan't dive into this too much), but as the story progressed, and as the events of our heroine's life took course, it became clear that this story not only worked with such a peculiar choice, it needed it, was even meant to be told this way.

Miskowski's language is personal, intimate, in a way that most writers may be afraid to indulge with their work. The bravery and sheer wit of the author's prose choice, and the meticulous description that is never too much, never too little, all lend a hand in realistically (if not at times astonishingly) recreating the 1990s and the atmosphere of Washington State's culture at the time. Tying historical events into Greta's journey only solidifies the immersed landscape. There were moments where I could smell the smoke from cigarettes, hear the clanking of stilettos, see the drawing curtain descend, watch the malice and sorrow leak from the characters' eyes when tragedy after tragedy altered their lives.

S.P. Miskowski writes with a voice that bleeds confidence, a flow and pace that streams along much like the rain that floods the skies of Seattle. But amidst the elegant storytelling is a heart-wrenching and earth-shattering core that will tear the reader's heart out again and again. I Wish I Was Like You is a study of the human condition and provides an in-depth look at not just how hauntings are done, but most importantly, why. The twists and turns of Greta's life are difficult to read, due to their anchors in realism and the fact that anyone can relate to her choices to some extent, to her emotions and the reasoning she utilizes in her ill-advised decisions. The nihilistic, unforgiving aspects of our lead are sometimes admirable in their ferocity, and other times difficult to read. Her evolution is one that will surprise readers from the very first page, Miskowski's meta approach to many aspects of the story, primarily concerning the art of writing, acting as supporting pillars in a unique twist on the horror genre.

I Wish I Was Like You is masterful storytelling, rich with atmosphere and human themes. A mournful, melancholy tale that is unlike any other, the novel will bring you to tears, laughs, empathy, and often frustration that can only stem from damn good writing. By the end of the book, if you believe in such things as ghosts, you may find yourself lacking a fear you once had, and instead feeling an intense sympathy for any who lost themselves along the way, or who are losing themselves right now. Horror is in symbiosis with its characters, needing each other equally to be successful. Miskowski may be one of the few writers working today who completely understands and embraces this fact.