Ghost

Name: Ghost
Brand: Blackstone Audiobooks
Availability: InStock
Author: Alan Lightman
ISBN: 9781538504468

Author: Alan Lightman

Narrator: Christopher Price

Unabridged: 7 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Published: 09/05/2017

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Ghost

Synopsis

David is a modest man who works in a bank, lives in a rooming house, enjoys books and quiet walks by the lake. Three months after unexpectedly being fired from his job, he takes a temporary position at a mortuary. And there, sitting alone in the “slumber room” one late afternoon, he sees something that he cannot comprehend, something that no science can explain, something that will force him to question everything he believes in, including himself. After his metaphysical experience, all his relationships change—with his estranged wife, his girlfriend, his mother—and he grudgingly finds himself at the center of a bitter public controversy over the existence of the supernatural.

About Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman, an active research scientist in astronomy and physics, has taught at both Harvard and MIT. His novels include Einstein’s Dreams, which was a New York Times and international bestseller; Good Benito; The Diagnosis, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award; and Reunion. His essays have appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Nature, Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker.

About Christopher Price

Christopher Price is a professional actor, director, and voice artist who has worked extensively in regional theater, radio, and television. His many theater credits include works by Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, and David Mamet. He lives in Portland, Maine where he also practices scenic design.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vonia

Alan Lightman writes like a poet. More specifically, his descriptions read like poetry. It evokes emotions and paints such palpable images. A man's seemingly ordinary contemplation as he waits for a customer to arrive easily becomes twenty pages of un-putdownable picturesque prose from Lightman. He......more

Goodreads review by Nicholas

This book was frustrating. On one hand, its marvelously written, with fascinating characters and a complex theme--the very nature of reality. On the other hand, I had trouble accepting the book's base premise--that a man who claims to have seem something ghost-like rise from a dead body would become......more

Goodreads review by Sarah

It's not...terrible? But I was promised a mortuary ghost. The book is mostly just a lot of talk about divorce, college nostalgia, career disappointments, daily trifles, and so on. The "supernatural" bits felt shoehorned in and didn't quite work. The most interesting character was the funeral director......more

Quotes

“Satirical and compassionate, Lightman's brilliantly orchestrated and gripping tale dramatizes our marshaling of fear, fantasy, and faith as we confront the unknown and the inevitable. At base, all we can truly trust, Lightman suggests, is wonder and kindness.” Booklist (starred review)

“Ghost is subtly and delicately narrated, a prolonged and unwavering look at a serious, controversial subject.” Joyce Carol Oates

“A fascinating novel, splendidly framed and elegantly told. I'm moved by the characters and by the narrator's insights into the nature of reality. I read Ghost with relish.” Ha Jin, author of War Trash

“This is an important novel, and it deserves a lot of attention. I absorbed it as an allegory of the birth of superstition and a trip into the scary zone between the palpable and supernatural taken even by the educated twenty-first-century mind.” Edward O. Wilson, author of Consilience