Ghost Stories

A truly wonderful book. Hustvedt’s gift is to be able to write about the most searing of emotions with extraordinary insight, measure and beauty. The result is a deeply moving memoir, raw with loss, yet luminous with love. – Sarah Waters, author of FingersmithGhost Stories is a year of grief spun into wise, truthful gold. What a kind, honest book. What a gift of love. – David Mitchell, author of Cloud AtlasAll love stories must end as ghost stories. So we are reminded in Siri Hustvedt’s tremendously moving portrait of a man, a marriage, and the joys and sorrows of a shared artistic life. Love and grief lie, inseparable, on every page. This is essential reading from an all-time great. – Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie LangtonTender, elegiac and erudite, Ghost Stories is a paean to love and to its ultimate expression - grief. A remarkable achievement – Louise Kennedy, author of TrespassesBoth a work of intimate reflection and a moving tribute to the 43 years she and Auster shared … a profound and forthright meditation on love and loss, unique in our literature … Ghost Stories has laughter and tears; it’s a wonderful celebration of his spirit … For now, in dark times, we have Ghost Stories. Some will see it as a love letter to Paul Auster. Actually, more interesting than that, it’s an account of a widow falling in love again, but with a ghost. – Robert McCrum * Independent *This book is cohesive, melancholy, distinctive and genuinely moving … Hustvedt writes so intimately about their physical and intellectual companionship that she makes you feel, in a way not all memoirists can, the dimensions of the crater he left behind … Ghost Stories is almost exactly my kind of thing. It’s a grainy and resonant book about loneliness, despair and confusion. It’s close to a howl. – Dwight Garner * New York Times *A howl of grief for the loss of a husband, father and grandfather * Literary Review *Rich with accounts of their life together * Sunday Times Culture *Ghost Stories is, in a sense, a collaboration: sandwiched between Hustvedt’s funny, desperately sad account of her husband’s sickness are passages written by Auster in the final months of his life in the form of letters to his baby grandson. Literary history is full of talented writer couples, but few seem to have achieved the balance, mutual respect and happy productivity of Hustvedt and Auster. – Susie Goldsbrough * The Times *Beautiful … [Hustvedt] is a writer of astonishing range and depth … it seems necessary to give something of the background of these two writers, yet there is no need to know any of this to find solace and deep delight from the intelligence and humanity of Ghost Stories, its portrait of a marriage of true minds. Auster comes across here perfectly as he was: smart, funny, caustic, loving, idealistic - exasperated to the last by the politics of his native land. Hustvedt (who always looks so cool in her photographs, even when not dressed in a jumpsuit) reveals the nerves that co-exist with her grit and wisdom … the delight to be found in Hustvedt’s book arises because so much of the landscape revealed is one of love. Love of life, love of the world, love of family … Ghost Stories deserves its place among the enduring accounts of sorrow and survival. It will console you for the losses you have suffered, and for the ones you know - we all know - are yet to come. – Erica Wagner * Observer *Extraordinary … a moving love story … [Hustvedt] delivers a powerful narrative as a witness to death and dying, in an acutely and thoughtfully observed book. Ghost Stories can and should change the way you think about life with and alongside others who matter to you. It deserves many readers * The Conversation *Raw and touching … sorrowful, tender, candid, even funny, Ghost Stories is a book about death that brims with life, in all its misery and joy. This a story of partnership: romantic, domestic, literary – Anthony Cummins * Daily Mail *This heart-breaking memoir shares how novelist Husvedt navigated her husband Paul Auster’s terminal cancer diagnosis and death in 2024. It’s a powerful tribute to their long union and love * Good Housekeeping *

Siri Hustvedt is the author of seven novels, five collections of essays, a poetry collection and a memoir. Her books have been listed for major prizes, including the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize and the PEN America Literary Award. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and has been awarded honorary PhDs from Johannes Gutenberg University, Stendhal University and the University of Oslo. She is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and has written on art for the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph. Born in Minnesota, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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