Ghostlight by Kenneth Oppel

Illustrated by James Fraser

Published by Guppy Books

ISBN 978 1 913101 76 3

I’ll be honest: I went down with Covid in mid October (having avoided it for the last two and a half years) and reached for the TBR pile. I wasn’t over-enamoured by the idea of ‘Ghostbusters meets Stranger Things’, but for reasons we will put down to brain fog, I nevertheless opened ‘Ghostlight’. Fast forward two days and I cannot say enough good things about this brilliantly told story. It’s a real page turner, with characters I love and a story I felt invested in.

The main characters are a well drawn and varied group of ‘friends’ who, in themselves, have their own stories to follow. Rebecca Strand is the main character in chapter one, when we meet her and her father battling evil from their Victorian lighthouse. It is a gripping opening chapter which had me hooked. A historical setting with a hint of a feminist protagonist and a truly evil and supernatural antagonist in Viker.

I was a bit surprised – though in retrospect I shouldn’t have been –  to find chapter two in the modern world, but I was enchanted and amused by the character of Gabe, embellishing various stories on his summer job ‘ghost tour’. His Russian refugee friend Yuri adds further comedy but of a similarly gentle kind, and we are glad these friends have each other. Callie gets involved when she attends one of Gabe’s ghost tours and asks for his help with her ghostly blog. She is different enough to complement the boys, and her journalistic ambition gives the plot energy and impetus- and much needed money at crucial times!

Woven into the main plot in which Viker is fought for the very existence of humanity, there are many other elements at play: we learn of historical events; we consider the decency and generosity of much of human kind, including the indigenous peoples local to the area;  we reflect on the modern technological world through the eyes of Victorian ghosts who master it so much more easily than Gabe; we face spiritual questions around coping with the death of those we love and finding a way to go on; the acceptance evident in the blending of ghostly and current worlds is complete when we don’t flinch at the phrase ‘his live friends’; we also enjoy the coy romances which gradually creep up on us and the characters. The blending of past and current is skilfully achieved and shows the importance of history to our modern world.

I literally could not put it down. Oppel has taken some quite traditional elements – the ghost story, the teen friendship story, the romance, the colliding of new world and old – and turned them into something that really works as a whole, and which is stronger for, and than, its constituent parts. It is a ghost story, and I would heartily recommend it for a Hallowe’en read, but it is so much more than that. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t yet read any of Oppel’s other work but I have added quite a few books to my TBR pile…

Thank you to Guppy Books for my copy of this book- and for introducing me to a new author (for me) and opening my mind to a slightly different genre!