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Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices : A Novel
Ghost Dance is the first book in a line of relentlessly experimental and highly esteemed works by Carole Maso. Like the poetry-mother in this debut novel, Maso works to ensure her readers understand and come to accept sorrow as a knowable and tactile presence. Narrating a family story through the voice of a young writer whose mother has recently been killed, Maso invites readers to experience firsthand both women's love and courage, capabilties of imagination, their persistence of memory, and generosity of spirit.
It is this same generosity that allows readers the transformative intimacy Ghost Dance has to offer. Like her artist-protagonists, Maso's subject as well as medium is language, and she is brave and dangerous in her command of it. She abandons traditional narrative forms in favor of a shaped communication resembling Beckett and rivalling his evocative skill. Immersed in dilated and intense prose, the readers view is a privilege one, riding the crest of clear expression as it navigates the tangled terrain of loss and desperate sorrow.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
11 people are currently reading
484 people want to read
About the author
Carole Maso
24 books170 followersCarole Maso is a contemporary American novelist and essayist, known for her experimental, poetic and fragmentary narratives often labeled as postmodern. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from Vassar College in 1977. Her first published novel was Ghost Dance, which appeared in 1986. Her best known novel is probably Defiance, which was published in 1998. Currently (2006) she is a professor of English at Brown University. She has previously held positions as a writer-in-residence at Illinois State and George Washington University, as well as teaching writing at Columbia University.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
June 10, 2021
I once did the majority of my reading on public transit. This system became shaky in early 2020 because I did not have a job to commute to, and because I was biking nearly everywhere to save money. Then Covid hit, and at once I was biking absolutely everywhere, if I was traveling anywhere outside the apartment at all. You might imagine the quarantine an ideal time for reading, but I did none. I was without clear prospects and furiously attempting to create some. By September, I'd made my way into graduate school and at once all reading was class reading, usually essays and excerpts rather than entire books. Months passed. I was not on Goodreads. How I've missed you all.
Then, this month, Covid revealed a possibility. I've been working twelve hours shifts at a vaccination site, in a fairly stop/start pattern of activity. Suddenly, I'm presented with an unexpected wealth of interstitial reading time. I'm back.
Hi everyone. I'm back. At least until next semester.
So, snatching up books from the unread heaps circa late 2019, here's Carole Maso's debut. Others have found in it an unevenness befitting a first novel from a brilliant writer, but I thought it elegantly composed throughout. Only DeLillo has this capacity for precise rhythm at every scale -- by word, by sentence, by paragraph, by section -- all with a fine sense of intercutting of a kind rarely experienced outside film. Yes, yes, the imperfections may be there if you seek them, but I see in first novels, often, a breathless unrestrainedness, a seeking to get it all down, all of it, spanning world and experience, lest one never have chance to write again. This could be uneveness, I suppose, but it feels more like kinetic ambition. There are scenes here that surge free from the page and envelope the reader in a swirling gust of snow. If there's a issue it's that she's actually written two novels here that are only nearly the same book, one a familial drama about hereditary genius/madness and the other a tapestry of America in all its traumatic marring of the physical and cultural landscape of the pre-Colombian continent, from historical genocide to the scarring runnels of capital that persist or are scored anew in the present.
But first novel ambition sometimes goes unsurpassed. How lucky we are that Maso only refined from here and later managed a novel as furiously perfect as Defiance.
Then, this month, Covid revealed a possibility. I've been working twelve hours shifts at a vaccination site, in a fairly stop/start pattern of activity. Suddenly, I'm presented with an unexpected wealth of interstitial reading time. I'm back.
Hi everyone. I'm back. At least until next semester.
So, snatching up books from the unread heaps circa late 2019, here's Carole Maso's debut. Others have found in it an unevenness befitting a first novel from a brilliant writer, but I thought it elegantly composed throughout. Only DeLillo has this capacity for precise rhythm at every scale -- by word, by sentence, by paragraph, by section -- all with a fine sense of intercutting of a kind rarely experienced outside film. Yes, yes, the imperfections may be there if you seek them, but I see in first novels, often, a breathless unrestrainedness, a seeking to get it all down, all of it, spanning world and experience, lest one never have chance to write again. This could be uneveness, I suppose, but it feels more like kinetic ambition. There are scenes here that surge free from the page and envelope the reader in a swirling gust of snow. If there's a issue it's that she's actually written two novels here that are only nearly the same book, one a familial drama about hereditary genius/madness and the other a tapestry of America in all its traumatic marring of the physical and cultural landscape of the pre-Colombian continent, from historical genocide to the scarring runnels of capital that persist or are scored anew in the present.
But first novel ambition sometimes goes unsurpassed. How lucky we are that Maso only refined from here and later managed a novel as furiously perfect as Defiance.
March 8, 2018
A book of endings. Letting go. The feverish pain of good byes and loss. Written young, a first novel the reader can easily see the trying on of different styles and ideas, those forms that would continue to develop into her later more successful writing; reminding me of college years, trying on new roles, new ways of being. Knowing this makes it easier to overlook the unsteadiness of her filled pen. The inelegance of trying too hard, the unevenness where paragraphs jostle against one another versus the juxtaposition of what I think of as post modern writing. That for me is a land where linearity has not vanished since it has not begun. I read on with a faith that by the end I am led to an experience; a different path leading inward winding to a core meaning.
Here Maso, unlike her later works, plays with a linearity, teases with it, adding post modern dabs and swirls as supplements. Therefore on its own (If I didn’t know this was her debut and hadn’t read some of her later work) it stands shaky and wobbly in parts but its unevenness is also caused by some beautiful and memorable passages. But this is a debut novel and readers can get the thrill of watching her develop within the work itself, then even more so in her ongoing works.
I give this novel a 3.0 standing alone on its own, and a 4.5 as an introduction into this great writers work. So, that averages out to…I was always terrible in math… so let’s up the 4.5 to 5.0 and we have a 4.0. Sounds right to me.
If you haven’t read her please do.
Read
November 23, 2017Carole Maso's Ghost Dance is at once history, myth, family chronicle, and an extremely original evocation of that elusive meeting ground of creativity and hallucination. Its prose is like poetry, it is an inspiring first novel. --John Hawkes
Maso's first novel. And I'm reading all of her novels. Would come the day one complains about one's fellow mfa students "too many Maso=readers". An american treasure she is. Please introduce yourself.
March 20, 2023
This took a bit to get into and it is very different from Ava, my favorite Maso up until now.
That said, there is something I love about debut novels, I think it has to do with how free and yet unpolished they are. They feel deprived of already existing external expectations, which often gives them sharper edges and a wilder feel.
This is an explosion of feelings that can barely fit the pages without leaking out and penetrating your skin. Never have I cried so many times while reading as I did with this book. There was such urgency in these words, such impact, it was impossible to remain untouched by them.
The repetitions and circularity treatment given to the memories in their pervasive non-chronology kept building emotional charge until they would burst into almost a single flame.
There is so much packed in here, so many ghosts, so much flesh, so much soul, that could fill a whole ocean and still overflow. Maso is not for everyone, and I myself can barely handle opening up to all of her intensity. That said, I don’t think I’ve come across any author that reached so deep within the nature of grief and desire like she has. It is painful and rewarding, like any life transformation. But, oh so worth it!
That said, there is something I love about debut novels, I think it has to do with how free and yet unpolished they are. They feel deprived of already existing external expectations, which often gives them sharper edges and a wilder feel.
This is an explosion of feelings that can barely fit the pages without leaking out and penetrating your skin. Never have I cried so many times while reading as I did with this book. There was such urgency in these words, such impact, it was impossible to remain untouched by them.
The repetitions and circularity treatment given to the memories in their pervasive non-chronology kept building emotional charge until they would burst into almost a single flame.
There is so much packed in here, so many ghosts, so much flesh, so much soul, that could fill a whole ocean and still overflow. Maso is not for everyone, and I myself can barely handle opening up to all of her intensity. That said, I don’t think I’ve come across any author that reached so deep within the nature of grief and desire like she has. It is painful and rewarding, like any life transformation. But, oh so worth it!
October 30, 2023
Carole Maso’s prose is a poetry of intense longing. She is so difficult to read, not because of the experimental nature of her books, but because emotions spill off the pages of her books. And these emotions are contradictory, they contain multitudes, they are messy, but d*mn, they are beautiful.
“Let us change the shape of each word as they speak. We were restless. We walked deliriously through the landscape of passion, always at the edge of breath. Our desire alone exhausted us. We sleepwalked through our days with uneven breath, hooded eyelids, lusting not only after the absent lover, the lover out of our reach, but after what we sensed was the unavailable in ourselves: the thing we could never call up no matter how diligent or attentive we were, the places we could never reach, the people we could never be.”
Ghost Dance is an attempt to confront loss, to write and re-write endings, to say goodbye. The weight of sadness and grief hangs over the book, that kind of tragic longing that robs you of breath and feeling, but grief is also that smile amidst the tears or the sun shining through the rain, because love once existed and still does, somewhere, it was real, it still is, even when those people are gone.
This is Maso’s debut novel, it uneven at times and lacks the refinement of her later novels, but it is a stunning first attempt at pushing the boundaries of storytelling, even more so as part of Maso’s entire creative trajectory.
Someone pointed out to me that it was the season for a book about ghosts. I hadn’t even thought about it being October and reading a book titled Ghost Dance. But small details from the book were in fact haunting me almost 40 years after it was published, or maybe it was my present day haunting the pages of the book—uncomfortably warm and uncertain autumns, the pain of watching human cruelty and indifference add more victims and ghosts to history books. Maybe what is most haunting is just how little things change.
“Let us live in the mouths of the men who lie, who deny and deny and deny, who cover up their crimes.”
4.25-4.5*
“Let us change the shape of each word as they speak. We were restless. We walked deliriously through the landscape of passion, always at the edge of breath. Our desire alone exhausted us. We sleepwalked through our days with uneven breath, hooded eyelids, lusting not only after the absent lover, the lover out of our reach, but after what we sensed was the unavailable in ourselves: the thing we could never call up no matter how diligent or attentive we were, the places we could never reach, the people we could never be.”
Ghost Dance is an attempt to confront loss, to write and re-write endings, to say goodbye. The weight of sadness and grief hangs over the book, that kind of tragic longing that robs you of breath and feeling, but grief is also that smile amidst the tears or the sun shining through the rain, because love once existed and still does, somewhere, it was real, it still is, even when those people are gone.
This is Maso’s debut novel, it uneven at times and lacks the refinement of her later novels, but it is a stunning first attempt at pushing the boundaries of storytelling, even more so as part of Maso’s entire creative trajectory.
Someone pointed out to me that it was the season for a book about ghosts. I hadn’t even thought about it being October and reading a book titled Ghost Dance. But small details from the book were in fact haunting me almost 40 years after it was published, or maybe it was my present day haunting the pages of the book—uncomfortably warm and uncertain autumns, the pain of watching human cruelty and indifference add more victims and ghosts to history books. Maybe what is most haunting is just how little things change.
“Let us live in the mouths of the men who lie, who deny and deny and deny, who cover up their crimes.”
4.25-4.5*
July 29, 2008
prose so dense you have to chew it. not for casual or speedy perusal.
Read
February 16, 2019A book I read in a college literature course and return to every decade. I can't say it's aged well, but it was a powerful book for me as an undergrad and I think I return to it because of getting to relive that feeling. The lyricism, the imagery, the colors are so amazing.
January 29, 2018
Review in process.
October 24, 2019
This book is hard to describe. The fragmented way of telling a completely non-linear story about grief, love, and loss really took me a while to grasp onto, and the writing is so dense it took me much longer to read and digest this book than usual. At some points I was a little bit frustrated with the seemingly disconnected chunks of memory/story/dream/etc., but it all came together beautifully in the last section. A ton of beautiful passages, and I can't wait to read more by this author!
August 20, 2022
What a breathtaking novel, both in terms of its prose and its deliberately desultory structure that moves back and forth in time as well as narrative threads and that's peppered with pithy repetitions; a structure in other words that's true of our memory of loss.
I bought this book years back at a second-hand bookstore and gravitated towards it on a recent trip home. I was unable to travel internationally and see my family for 3 years thanks to Covid, and reading this book in this frame of mind made it especially moving.
That scene where Vanessa and her family watch the maternal grandmother dance took my breath away. An earth dance, literally and metaphorically, that's a counterpart to the grandfather's ghost dance.
I will, I know, be revisiting this novel at least two more times.
Cannot recommend this gem enough. Please give it plenty of quiet time and a clear mind. It will reward you manyfold.
I bought this book years back at a second-hand bookstore and gravitated towards it on a recent trip home. I was unable to travel internationally and see my family for 3 years thanks to Covid, and reading this book in this frame of mind made it especially moving.
That scene where Vanessa and her family watch the maternal grandmother dance took my breath away. An earth dance, literally and metaphorically, that's a counterpart to the grandfather's ghost dance.
I will, I know, be revisiting this novel at least two more times.
Cannot recommend this gem enough. Please give it plenty of quiet time and a clear mind. It will reward you manyfold.
May 28, 2023
A brilliant if time consuming book it returns the time you invested in it page after page. Carole Maso deserves a much wider audience than she has, confined to academic and east coast literary circles (she is Professor of Literature at Brown U.). The emotional currents she exposes in "Ghost Dance" will will resonate with you for long time to come. Ken Kesey's remark about "I And Thou" by Martin Buber the Protestant Theologin/existentialist ("It takes you several hours to read but affects you for a life time")... it's taken me the better part of a lifetime to read "I And Thou" and there is no way I'll ever finish it, but with "Ghost Dance" although it's non-linear narrative makes it challenging, it bears re-reading and will definitely affect you for a lifetime. With apologies to Mr.'s Kesey & Buber.
August 29, 2016
Carole Maso was one of my English professors at ISU. As a student I recognized her brilliance but also that her writing existed on another plane. As a reader driven by plot, I had difficulty getting through this. I would like to re-read it now and see what I think.
October 14, 2019
Exquisite...in language, in story, in memory, in imagination, in pain and loss, in hope and acceptance, in life, and in love. This is a book that will leave you changed forever.
June 8, 2017
Carole Maso is the reincarnation of Virginia Woolf, and in this book she proves it.
Carole Maso is a powerful enchantress.
Some people keep old-style colored glass fishing floats near their windows to trap evil spirits as they pass; I'm pretty sure this novel is one of those. I'm not trying to call you all evil spirits. I'm just trying to say that you'll be surrounded by light and color in a confusing and pleasant way and sometimes you'll feel trapped but mostly it'll be the light and the color.
You should know that she's going to tell this story however she wants to tell it. You may find yourself in the position of having to choose between holding onto certain notions of what an author is supposed to do in a novel and, on the other hand, letting go of those notions and following Carole Maso down into the thing that is Ghost Dance.
Carole Maso is a powerful enchantress.
Some people keep old-style colored glass fishing floats near their windows to trap evil spirits as they pass; I'm pretty sure this novel is one of those. I'm not trying to call you all evil spirits. I'm just trying to say that you'll be surrounded by light and color in a confusing and pleasant way and sometimes you'll feel trapped but mostly it'll be the light and the color.
You should know that she's going to tell this story however she wants to tell it. You may find yourself in the position of having to choose between holding onto certain notions of what an author is supposed to do in a novel and, on the other hand, letting go of those notions and following Carole Maso down into the thing that is Ghost Dance.
August 1, 2025
3.5 stars or a light 4. This was a very good book. Maso can write and is a unique writer. An experimental book that also seems ahead of it's time from when it was written. Hard to not roll your eyes a little bit with the ritual at the end but outside of that, this was my only gripe.
February 11, 2023
I wished I’d found this book sooner, the layering of emotion in fragments is captivating. So glad I finally did come to this novel and more of Carole Mason’s work.
February 15, 2009
The Topaz Bird is an elusive creature signifying many things, creativity, I think, and madness. Carole Maso weaves a beautifully written tale of grief, loss, and redemption too. Ghost Dance is about ideas and emotions rather than plot. Longing, loss, and the grief that comes from irremediable loss are, I think, the main themes of the book.
The longing in the book is the longing for both familial and romantic love. The sort of longing the intensity of which is often inversely proportional to the intensity of feeling that is reciprocated. Or, if the longed for thing is not reciprocated feeling, perhaps the longing is for outward demonstrations of love.
A mother sits on the heart of this novel. The weight of her beauty and absence oppresses everything and everyone. Her essence, like the Topaz Bird that is, it seems, her soul, is a beautiful and free creature that cannot be caught or caged. Those that love her are, therefore, doomed to a certain passivity in watching and waiting for her. Like a bird, she stays but a moment and then is gone.
Carole Maso's poetic prose conveys the orbit of various family members and lovers around the mother. The story circles around, approaching the central truth and flitting away again. Certain sections are repeated several times through the book, sometimes verbatim, sometimes nearly so. In this way, Ms. Maso returns and emphasizes certain themes, including the rhythms of love, longing, and grief.
Absent mothers do, I think, create a craving in their children that cannot be satisfied. The same may be true to mismatched lovers. This aspect, the much-loved but oft-absent (both physically and emotionally) mother/lover, is portrayed beautifully, with a truth that is gripping. This book, because of its emotional power, will not be one that is easy to forget. It is, I think, worthy of remembering for its artistry as well as the technical achievement Ms. Maso manages. Carole Maso deserves a wider audience.
The longing in the book is the longing for both familial and romantic love. The sort of longing the intensity of which is often inversely proportional to the intensity of feeling that is reciprocated. Or, if the longed for thing is not reciprocated feeling, perhaps the longing is for outward demonstrations of love.
A mother sits on the heart of this novel. The weight of her beauty and absence oppresses everything and everyone. Her essence, like the Topaz Bird that is, it seems, her soul, is a beautiful and free creature that cannot be caught or caged. Those that love her are, therefore, doomed to a certain passivity in watching and waiting for her. Like a bird, she stays but a moment and then is gone.
Sometimes I think I have heard the fluttering of wings. Sometimes I think I have seen something: a tip of a tail, a piece of beak, a leg, one thin leg of that incredible bird. Sometimes I see the bare branch of a tree swaying in slow motion in my sleep and I know what that means. I try to get myself past the tree to see what's beyond it -- the field that opens like a great hand, the wide breath of sky. I search for a trace of the Topaz Bird. Only moments before it was perched on that bobbing branch. I am getting closer. I follow the horizon line of my dreams. I watch.
Carole Maso's poetic prose conveys the orbit of various family members and lovers around the mother. The story circles around, approaching the central truth and flitting away again. Certain sections are repeated several times through the book, sometimes verbatim, sometimes nearly so. In this way, Ms. Maso returns and emphasizes certain themes, including the rhythms of love, longing, and grief.
Absent mothers do, I think, create a craving in their children that cannot be satisfied. The same may be true to mismatched lovers. This aspect, the much-loved but oft-absent (both physically and emotionally) mother/lover, is portrayed beautifully, with a truth that is gripping. This book, because of its emotional power, will not be one that is easy to forget. It is, I think, worthy of remembering for its artistry as well as the technical achievement Ms. Maso manages. Carole Maso deserves a wider audience.
June 7, 2012
"Christine Wing, Vanessa's eccentric poet-mother and the object of her infatuation, disappears with a trace. Vanessa's gentle, remote father vanishes shortly thereafter, his car found by the New York Harbor, the front seat littered with travel brochures. Then Fletcher, her brother, runs off in a rage, sending fractured messages on picture postcards from around the country. The legacies and obligations between mother and daughter emerge as Vanessa turns to her inner world to reassemble the broken pieces of her life with the one gift her mother labored to give her: imagination."
~~back cover
I'm still wondering what actually happened in this book. It was written in forward and backward flashes, luckily only from Vanessa's POV. But her POV from different ages. If I had to synthesize the plot: Christine Wing was a beautiful woman and a driven one; an internationally known poet and someone unable to sustain ordinary life. Her children adored her, to the point of unhealthy devotion. Nowhere in the book does Vanessa talk about other children -- playing with them, liking them, going to school with them, hating them; other children just don't exist for her and her brother.
It's a book of alternate endings. Which one is real, and which one did Vanessa make up to satisfy her obsessive need to know? Is her lover real, or only the imagine embodiment of her need to be "good enough" so that her distant, uninvolved mother would finally love her?
The book is well written, and therefore a pleasure to read. The discordance created by jumping back and forth through time detracts from that pleasure, however, and I don't know that I would recommend this book to anyone else.
~~back cover
I'm still wondering what actually happened in this book. It was written in forward and backward flashes, luckily only from Vanessa's POV. But her POV from different ages. If I had to synthesize the plot: Christine Wing was a beautiful woman and a driven one; an internationally known poet and someone unable to sustain ordinary life. Her children adored her, to the point of unhealthy devotion. Nowhere in the book does Vanessa talk about other children -- playing with them, liking them, going to school with them, hating them; other children just don't exist for her and her brother.
It's a book of alternate endings. Which one is real, and which one did Vanessa make up to satisfy her obsessive need to know? Is her lover real, or only the imagine embodiment of her need to be "good enough" so that her distant, uninvolved mother would finally love her?
The book is well written, and therefore a pleasure to read. The discordance created by jumping back and forth through time detracts from that pleasure, however, and I don't know that I would recommend this book to anyone else.
August 4, 2008
One of my favorite books from 1989. Looking forward to a re-read to determine if it still holds. Tried some of her other books, and never got hooked, though.
Update from 8/2008: Oh no! Couldn't get through the bugger! Read a bit, put it down; read a bit, put it down; then, down, down, down. About a daughter trapped in familial loss and grief, puzzling over past, present. Years ago I was astonished at the conclusion. Perhaps I'll try the book again once my mindset is geared to a more circular narrative.
Update from 8/2008: Oh no! Couldn't get through the bugger! Read a bit, put it down; read a bit, put it down; then, down, down, down. About a daughter trapped in familial loss and grief, puzzling over past, present. Years ago I was astonished at the conclusion. Perhaps I'll try the book again once my mindset is geared to a more circular narrative.
September 14, 2010
It baffles me that Carole Maso is so widely unknown. I read AVA first, and it opened a whole new way of looking at narrative for me. Ghost Dance is a less-broken narrative that poses questions about familial bond, memory, and profound loss, and just like AVA, the writing is stunningly lyrical. For a first novel especially, Ghost Dance accomplishes a lot both in content and form, and everyone who loves language or is drawn to meditations on some of life's biggest, most tangled questions should absolutely read it.
February 2, 2008
to all of my friends in goodreads which happens to be just women, please, please, please, read this original and beautiful writer. especially-art lover, ava, ghost dance. these books are like nothing else I have read. a mix a stream of conciousness, poetry, history...the essence of a world she evoked in her books as if I have a glimpse of the sacred out of the corner of my eye; its beuty and horrors.
August 20, 2012
An absolutely beautifully written book, though very sad. At 300 and something pages and an 8pt font (i swear, my eyes were so strained, i kept falling asleep) it is a lengthy book with not much happening in it. But I was so engaged in the characters' lives and emotions and all that they had at stake that I didn't want to stop reading it. I would recommend it to anyone who likes excellent literary fiction. But if you prefer a more commercial novel, forget it. Beautiful.
January 13, 2008
Excellent book, from an excellent writer!
March 24, 2008
I often think of this book while in the throes of being mild. As the title suggests, haunting.
June 13, 2008
Ok, maybe this is my favorite book.
Read
March 18, 2010Never Finished, bad book.
October 21, 2019
Reread for class. Once again, profoundly moved by the language and the pain.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews