Ghosting: A Memoir

Totally original and difficult to classify, Ghosting is a remarkable account of one woman's life. Or to be more accurate lives. For about fifteen years Jennie Erdal had a double existence: officially she worked as a personal editor for one particular man - Tiger - but in reality she was his ghost-writer and in some mysterious sense his alter ego. During this time she wrote a great deal that appeared under his name - personal letters, novels, newspaper columns, full-length books, business correspondence. Ghosting moves from startlingly vivid evocations of an austere Scottish upbringing in Fife to superbly rendered portraits of the people with whom she worked at a London-based publishing house. None comes across more affectionately or intriguingly than that of Tiger, a larger than life character with whom the author had a deeply symbiotic relationship in spite of their personalities being almost polar opposites. This highly intelligent, extremely entertaining and beautifully written memoir is laced throughout with rich, quiet comedy and profound insights into what it means to be human and to live in language. It is a wonderful book that deserves the widest possible audience.