The January book selection is These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card.
Stanford Solomon's shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley. And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead. These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel's decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem.
This “rich and layered story” (Kirkus Reviews) explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is a “beguiling…vividly drawn, and compelling” (BookPage, starred review) portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret.
Consider the title of the book. Why do you think the author chose it? Who--or what--do you think are the ghosts that the title refers to?
The book flips between life in Jamaica and New York, with a short stint in London. How important is place and that place's history to the experiences of its characters? Why do Irene and Victor move to New York? Why does Debbie decide to visit Jamaica? What binds these places together--the people currently living? Or the painful history that connects the three places?
What do the Rastafarians represent in the context of the book?
While Abel is the patriarch of the two modern families in the book, the early family history is traced through its mothers. Discuss how this shaped the storytelling. What does the book have to say about the role that women play in a family? What brings women in these families together? What drives them apart?
Louise grows up thinking that she's white, and is shocked when she learns that her mother, Florence, was a slave. How does this knowledge change how she sees herself? How does it change how others see her?
There's a dramatic scene in the middle of the book, where Debbie decides to destroy the journal of her ancestor, Harold Fowler, in order to drown out his voice in her head. What did you make of Debbie's decision?
Why do you think the novel ends with the story of the three girls who were kidnapped at Vera's funeral? What are these girls hungry for? How does this fit into the other themes throughout the novel?
Let us know what you think of These Ghosts Are Family.
