The Sharing

by John Galbraith Simmons

A psychotic girl and the appearance of the ghost of Captain Reynolds, a Civil War officer who disappeared at the Battle of Gettysburg, bring tragedy to Sarah Jackson, a local history professor

Genres: Horror

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 12, 1983

About the author

John Galbraith Simmons has broad range as a writer and translator. He is the author of four published novels, including The Sharing (1983) and Midnight Walking (1986), two collective biographies around science and medicine, The Scientific 100 (1996) and Doctors and Discoveries: Lives That Created Today's Medicine (2002), and the forthcoming tPA for Stroke, (2010) written with Justin Zivin, MD, PhD. Simmons broke into translation in 1994 with Return to Vietnam. He and his wife, Jocelyne Geneviève Barque, joined the board of translators in 2004 for the three-volume International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis; they also worked on The Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. Simmons is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he studied philosophy, and Long Island University. He lives in New York City.

Source (21.04.2014): http://arts.gov/writers-corner/bio/jo...

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an unusual novel. Here we are with the American Civil war, Gettysburg, an academic surrounding, two mentally unstable women, a widowed professor, his new girlfriend. But what about the mysterious Captain Alan Reynolds. Where was he buried? Why did he quit his fiancee in quite a harsh way turning to a girl named Justine? What about Graycoste, Sarah Jackson's home? What about the relationship of Miranda to a young colored boy named Aron? How did it end? The book evolves slowly, the characters are elaborately drawn but you feel that everything will turn into tragedy. Here is a very melancholic and depressing atmosphere. What about the long dead soldier? Who will survive in the end? Somehow I was drawn into this strange slow burning novel. The ghost of a long gone soldier acting strange and talking gibberish and those women Sarah and Miranda turning slightly mad. Are those apparitions real? Gothic romance meets American Civil War meets racial issues meets some late 70s and early 80s horror. Great spectacular cover and somehow spellbinding story in fine prose. A long forgotten book I discovered here. Really recommended!