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Then Later, His Ghost
A man and a woman in a lonely longbarn expecting a child, a post-apocalyptic landscape, a journey out into the tempest.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
32 pages
Published January 6, 2014
2 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Hall
68 books662 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Sarah Hall took a degree in English and Art History at Aberystwyth University, and began to take writing seriously from the age of twenty, first as a poet, several of her poems appearing in poetry magazines, then as a fiction-writer. She took an M Litt in Creative Writing at St Andrew's University and stayed on for a year afterwards to teach on the undergraduate Creative Writing programme.
Her first novel, Haweswater, was published in 2002. It is set in the 1930s, focuses on one family - the Lightburns - and is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-framers, due to the building of a reservoir. It won several awards, including the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book).
Sarah Hall currently lives in North Carolina. Her second book, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), set in the turn-of-the-century seaside resorts of Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).
The Carhullan Army (2007), won the 2007 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction.
Her latest novel is How to Paint a Dead Man (2009).
Sarah Hall took a degree in English and Art History at Aberystwyth University, and began to take writing seriously from the age of twenty, first as a poet, several of her poems appearing in poetry magazines, then as a fiction-writer. She took an M Litt in Creative Writing at St Andrew's University and stayed on for a year afterwards to teach on the undergraduate Creative Writing programme.
Her first novel, Haweswater, was published in 2002. It is set in the 1930s, focuses on one family - the Lightburns - and is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-framers, due to the building of a reservoir. It won several awards, including the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book).
Sarah Hall currently lives in North Carolina. Her second book, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), set in the turn-of-the-century seaside resorts of Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).
The Carhullan Army (2007), won the 2007 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction.
Her latest novel is How to Paint a Dead Man (2009).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 1, 2020
WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOURTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2019 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.
if you scroll to the end of the reviews linked here, you will find links to all the previous years’ stories, which means NINETY-THREE FREEBIES FOR YOU!
2016: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2017: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2018: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
reviews of these will vary in length/quality depending on my available time/brain power.
so, let’s begin
DECEMBER 17
BING BONG, BING BONG! the first of the december short story advent calendar stories to be christmas-themed. sort of. it takes place in a ruined world, made of cold and extreme wind, survivors and tinned food, where nearly all of the animals are dead and nearly all of the books have been ruined. no, thank you, says me, but the narrator is a man with a much stiffer upper lip than mine, and a pregnant woman under his care. out he ventures into the raging winds, risking his life to get her a very special christmas present, making every black friday nightmare story you've heard seem like child's play.
a lovely and very harrowing christmas miracle tale.
merry, merry, booknerds!
read it for yourself here:
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/...
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DECEMBER 1
DECEMBER 2
DECEMBER 3
DECEMBER 4
DECEMBER 5
DECEMBER 6
DECEMBER 7
DECEMBER 8
DECEMBER 9
DECEMBER 10
DECEMBER 11
DECEMBER 12
DECEMBER 13
DECEMBER 14 GOODREADS ERASED THIS STORY AND MY REVIEW FROM THE SITE, SO IF YOU REALLY WANT TO READ IT, IT IS HERE. THANKS.
DECEMBER 15
DECEMBER 16
DECEMBER 18
DECEMBER 19
DECEMBER 20
DECEMBER 21
DECEMBER 22
DECEMBER 23
DECEMBER 24
DECEMBER 25
DECEMBER 26
DECEMBER 27
DECEMBER 28
DECEMBER 29
DECEMBER 30
DECEMBER 31
come to my blog!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOURTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2019 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.
if you scroll to the end of the reviews linked here, you will find links to all the previous years’ stories, which means NINETY-THREE FREEBIES FOR YOU!
2016: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2017: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2018: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
reviews of these will vary in length/quality depending on my available time/brain power.
so, let’s begin
DECEMBER 17
He’d seen awful things too. A man sliced in half by a flying glass pane, his entrails worming from his stomach. Craig’s broken skull. The good things had to be held in the mind, and remembered, and celebrated. That was why he had to get the pages for Helene and why they would have a nice Christmas.
BING BONG, BING BONG! the first of the december short story advent calendar stories to be christmas-themed. sort of. it takes place in a ruined world, made of cold and extreme wind, survivors and tinned food, where nearly all of the animals are dead and nearly all of the books have been ruined. no, thank you, says me, but the narrator is a man with a much stiffer upper lip than mine, and a pregnant woman under his care. out he ventures into the raging winds, risking his life to get her a very special christmas present, making every black friday nightmare story you've heard seem like child's play.
a lovely and very harrowing christmas miracle tale.
merry, merry, booknerds!
read it for yourself here:
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/...
*******************************************
DECEMBER 1
DECEMBER 2
DECEMBER 3
DECEMBER 4
DECEMBER 5
DECEMBER 6
DECEMBER 7
DECEMBER 8
DECEMBER 9
DECEMBER 10
DECEMBER 11
DECEMBER 12
DECEMBER 13
DECEMBER 14 GOODREADS ERASED THIS STORY AND MY REVIEW FROM THE SITE, SO IF YOU REALLY WANT TO READ IT, IT IS HERE. THANKS.
DECEMBER 15
DECEMBER 16
DECEMBER 18
DECEMBER 19
DECEMBER 20
DECEMBER 21
DECEMBER 22
DECEMBER 23
DECEMBER 24
DECEMBER 25
DECEMBER 26
DECEMBER 27
DECEMBER 28
DECEMBER 29
DECEMBER 30
DECEMBER 31
come to my blog!
August 28, 2025
Shakespeare’s The Tempest is front and center in this short story about a man helping a pregnant woman on Christmas Eve. We don’t know where the story takes place and we don’t know when. Suffice to say, it must be in the near future as the winds have overtaken everything, which means climate crisis and/or the aftermath of a thermonuclear event. And we’re not talking about “windy”; we’re talking about the Gulf Stream gone wonky. The kind of wind that will strip you of your clothes and leave your unnoticed corpse buried under debris. That kind of wind.
There were the usual items speeding past on the current – rags, bits of tree, transmuted unknowable things. Sometimes he was amazed there were enough objects left to loosen and scatter about. Sometimes he wondered whether these were just the same million shoes and bottles and cartons in flight, circling the globe endlessly, like tides of scrap.
The story’s hero has accidentally found a woman in an abandoned chapel, next to two dead men. She is going to give birth, so he takes her back to his little hovel, which has somewhat survived the atrocious storms. As a gift, he has been collecting various pages of The Tempest, which isn’t easy as most books have already been destroyed by the fury of the winds. When he goes on his expeditions, he must crawl on the ground so that he can’t be lifted or decapitated. It’s that kind of wind.
This is a very intriguing story, one which kept me reading quickly through as I had no idea where it might be headed. Sarah Hall writes wonderful descriptive sentences. I really wanted to know where the characters were located. I wanted to know why the characters couldn’t move to the coast because the storm surges were monstrous. I wanted to know why the hero’s mother and brother had died in a flu pandemic. What brought all of this on? I didn’t get my answers, but that’s what a short story should do, really. Just tantalize the heck out of the reader.
Book Season = Winter (dream percussions)
There were the usual items speeding past on the current – rags, bits of tree, transmuted unknowable things. Sometimes he was amazed there were enough objects left to loosen and scatter about. Sometimes he wondered whether these were just the same million shoes and bottles and cartons in flight, circling the globe endlessly, like tides of scrap.
The story’s hero has accidentally found a woman in an abandoned chapel, next to two dead men. She is going to give birth, so he takes her back to his little hovel, which has somewhat survived the atrocious storms. As a gift, he has been collecting various pages of The Tempest, which isn’t easy as most books have already been destroyed by the fury of the winds. When he goes on his expeditions, he must crawl on the ground so that he can’t be lifted or decapitated. It’s that kind of wind.
This is a very intriguing story, one which kept me reading quickly through as I had no idea where it might be headed. Sarah Hall writes wonderful descriptive sentences. I really wanted to know where the characters were located. I wanted to know why the characters couldn’t move to the coast because the storm surges were monstrous. I wanted to know why the hero’s mother and brother had died in a flu pandemic. What brought all of this on? I didn’t get my answers, but that’s what a short story should do, really. Just tantalize the heck out of the reader.
Book Season = Winter (dream percussions)
April 3, 2025
Het was een beetje verwarrend op momenten maar met de context snapte it het
January 12, 2022
also read for an essay
February 21, 2025
Its probably my fault, but i dont really get the essence of the story. Why write 7 pages about a storm? Where was the character development, the storyline, the plot?? Its all very confusing to me
April 3, 2025
ik voel de vibe wel n soort van maar vond het niet bijster interessant
October 13, 2021
Grade: A-
I had to read this for my university degree.
Really enjoyed this!
I had to read this for my university degree.
Really enjoyed this!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews