The Ghost Writer

John Harwood

Feb 2011 · Random House

About this ebook

Viola Hatherley was a writer of ghost stories in the 1890s whose work lies forgotten until her great-grandson, as a young boy in Mawson, Australia, learns how to open the secret drawer in his mother's room. There he finds a manuscript, and from the moment his mother catches him in the act, Gerard Freeman's life is irrevocably changed. What is the invisible, ever-present threat from which his mother strives so obsessively to protect him? And why should stories written a century ago entwine themselves ever more closely around events in his own life?

Gerard's quest to unveil the mystery that shrouds his family, and his life, will lead him from Mawson to London, to a long-abandoned house and the terror of a ghost story come alive.

Ratings and reviews

This book held lots of ups and downs for me. There were times when I thought it was worth a four-, maybe even a five-star review, and other times I wondered why I was bothering, thinking it was no more than a one or a two. The beginning was great; it really hooked me in. Before long, a mystery is introduced, and the main character begins to uncover clues by finding and reading bits and pieces of various stories written by his long-lost grandmother. Some of these stories are REALLY good in their own right, and you read those voraciously and are actually disappointed when they end and we find ourselves back in the protagonist's head. Some of them are... meh. Others are good, but you battle to decipher their significance within the main plot. I'd more-or-less figured everything out by around 75% in, but it really was a fantastic revelation which still managed to hold some surprises for me. But I didn't like how it ACTUALLY ended, which was very abrupt. What's more, the Google Play edition I was reading reported the page count as 384, but the last sentence was on page 380. Although looking back now, maybe that was intentional. As you've gathered, I've seemed to contradict myself many times in this review. That's because my feelings ABOUT the book contradicted themselves so often, too. I have to say, if you like a good ghost story, you may enjoy it. But I think you have to be in the mood to read it.

About the author

John Harwood grew up in Hobart and studied literature and philosophy at the universities of Tasmania and Cambridge. He has published biography, political journalism, satire and poetry. He is also the author of The Seance.