Ghost Train Leaving

Spanish Spectres #2

by Karen Little

Ghost Train Leaving is the second book in the Spanish Spectres series. The story continues to unfold violent events that transpired in Filled with Ghosts. 

Pilar wants to gather all the family for Christmas Dinner, convinced she won't make it to the next one. Her guest list includes her son Miguel, Diana, witness to his previous crime, and object of his passion and threats, granddaughter Heena, and Miguel's ex-wife Catalina, who has been dead for several years. Aaron and Ashish arrive at Miguel's villa hoping to find Heena, and their friend Tila, recently released from a psychiatric hospital into Miguel's care. When a police car pulls up shortly afterwards, Miguel thinks they have come to arrest him, and takes off with Tila, who is unwell and confused.. Unexpected encounters and events on the midnight train to Madrid change Miguel's plans. Will his criminal past catch up with him at last?

176 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 17, 2017

About the author

I trained as a dancer at London Contemporary Dance School, and as a Fine Artist at Camberwell School of Art, London, performing and exhibiting internationally.
My poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies, and Tentacles contains ten of my illustrated poems. My first novella Filled with Ghosts was published in December 2015 and shortlisted for the novella Saboteur Award in 2016.
'Karen Little writes characters with a surface oddness. Whether they are floridly psychotic or merely displaying a level of everyday delusions and compulsions of creativity; they are all unusual and unique. As the book goes on it becomes easier to absorb the deeper psychological movements that the characters have as well as these qualities. However, the opening of the book is quite impenetrable. We hear from Diana, who, in her own words, builds ‘sentences from [her] own spit’. Yet, as when reading someone like Elizabeth Smart, battling through this series of barely linked, intense images is worth it. Once the rhythm that runs through the piece is detected, it becomes easier to grasp what previously appeared to be chaos. The rewards are images such as this one: ‘I catch rainwater in a pan, pour it into my fish tank, filling it with freedom and light’. (extract from Sabotage Review, Sarah Gonnet)
The sequel Ghost Train Leaving was released in June 2017, and the final book in the trilogy (the Spanish Spectres series) Ghosts Treading Water in October 2017.

Reviews

[Cathy Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

The characters from Filled with Ghosts return, to narrate their lives in the vivid, lyrical prose of Karen Little. As before, the seemingly wild and chaotic thoughts of each character do add up to a convincing whole - in fact Little seems to capture the real nature of thought as perhaps no other writer has. One particularly pleasing element of the book is the development of the character Heena, a writer. It's wonderful partly because the reader gets sentences like this: "I press the last drop of juice from sunlight, like an orange, try to discard the peel of my misery, empty my mind of problems, fill it with prospect." There's also her honest and convincing writing about her writing: "I'm in a happy, deluded place where I think the words I've written are the right words, good words, in the right order. I've learned to not be precious about chopping back; the good stuff returns." If this is autobiographical, Little has nothing to worry about: Ghost Train Leaving, like its predecessor, is filled with the good stuff, the real stuff, the stuff that colours the world.

[barbara liddle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetically brilliantly written book

Karen Little is a literal genius ! I'm totally addicted ! Her use of words of poetic brilliance brings her stories to touch you deep into your own heart and soul bringing a deep understanding of each character you haven't read a book until you've read at least one of Karen's better still all of them can't wait for book three 💖

[Pascal · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The gleeful way the dog approaches the flowers for a sniff, first whiff of winter. Only cynics would mention the cocked leg, the certainty that dogs visiting the patch ahead of us left their urine mark; in snow, yellow tinges would be a give-away. The grass is cropped, with oases of longer, stronger stuff. As a child I never accepted that milky sap of dandelions made me piss the bed. They were my Dandy Lions, sneaked upstairs to live, before drooping under my bed, in the Lion's Den". With passages like this one, the author does something I believe all writers should: follow a natural rhythmic flow of creativity, letting one observation lead into the next, by turns sentimental, sour, and enigmatic. By applying this stream-of-consciousness method to a twisted and mysterious narrative, embracing harsh truths alongside magical visions, Karen Little has turned out a sequel every bit as vivid as its predecessor.