Ghostland

Name: Ghostland
Brand: Harper UK
Availability: InStock
Author: Edward Parnell
ISBN: 9780008271978

Author: Edward Parnell

Narrator: Sam Woolf

Unabridged: 10 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: William Collins

Published: 10/17/2019

Categories: Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Family & Relationships, Nature

Synopsis

‘A uniquely strange and wonderful work of literature’ Philip Hoare ‘An exciting new voice’ Mark Cocker, author of In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death. In , Parnell goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children’s fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper; from W. G. Sebald’s and Graham Swift’s to the archetypal ‘folk horror’ film … Ghostland

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on April 09, 2020

I thought I was fairly well up on the classical English ghost story, especially as exemplified by M. R. James, but compared to Edward Parnell I am the merest novice. Besides James, I encountered lots of old friends, including Algernon Blackwood and E. F Benson, as well as new acquaintances such as W......more

Goodreads review by Daisy on January 19, 2021

I read a lot of books. I am an eclectic reader. This book is unlike any I have ever read before encompassing, as it does, biographies of authors, travel writing, natural history, film criticism and memoir. It is a stunningly unique work. I loved it. I loved it more than any other book I can remember. I......more

Goodreads review by Blair on April 06, 2020

Edward Parnell's quasi-memoir is a ramble through Britain's ancient, haunted places, with the author touching on various works of horror literature as he attempts to deal with the devastating effects of a series of family deaths. Being a combination of psychogeography, literary criticism, and person......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on June 20, 2021

Always the ghosts. At one point in his Ghostland, Edward Parnell quotes a character from a Walter de la Mare ghost story “Seaton’s Aunt”: Why, after all, how much do we really understand of anything? We don’t even know our own histories, and not a tenth, not a tenth of the reasons. Ghostland is unclass......more

Goodreads review by Jonfaith on October 08, 2024

It's not the house that is haunted. It's me. And I want to be; I have to be. I’m humble and a bit damaged. The only ghosts I know are in my head. Similar to the author, I viewed an excessive numbers of horror films as a child. I’ve since experienced loss, but unlike the author—thankfully not of such......more

Quotes

‘Ghostland is a gazetteer to a British landscape filled with folkloric, literary and filmic spirits, avian auguries, and natural history and a deeply touching personal grief that speaks to the hauntedness of childhood memory and teenage dreams. Obsessive, possessive, nostalgic, an act of vivid retrieval – this is ’ Philip Hoare ‘, Ghostland is a personal meditation on the primal power of the British landscape to shape literature, film and television that tunes into the core collective experience of the Haunted Generation’ Cathi Unsworth, author of ‘Part memoir of family to two parts ’ Roger Clarke, author of ‘ is both haunting and entertaining, echoing with an enthusiast’s love for that which is out of kilter with the everyday; things not quite right glimpsed from the corner of the eye’ Stuart Maconie, ‘A blend of travel writing, history and grief memoir, provides not only a seance with the author’s lost family, but also a premonition of his dazzling literary future’ Paul Willetts, author of , filmed as ‘A weaving together, less of haunted houses as of haunted people, including MR James, Alan Garner, W G Sebald and the author himself, in places where the past has left its mark’ George Szirtes, author of ‘His is a book, creating a sense of place and invoking the power of literature and nature.’ ‘Throughout this book, there is…a fascination with figures in a landscape glimpsed out of the corner of the eye.’