GHOST STORIES PB

"One of the most anticipated books of 2026 for the Guardian, Observer and BBC Culture A remarkable achievement LOUISE KENNEDY A deeply moving memoir, raw with loss, yet luminous with love SARAH WATERS What a kind, honest book. What a gift of love DAVID MITCHELL Essential reading from an all-time great SARA COLLINS The tender memoir of the forty-three years Siri Hustvedt spent with her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster - from their first encounter in 1980s New York to his death in 2024 Ghost Stories is Siri Hustvedt s most personal work yet, a searing and intimate meditation on grief, memory and enduring love, written in the aftermath of the death of her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster. It is a patchwork-quilt book that stitches together memories from over forty years of love and life together: journal entries Siri wrote between November 2023 and 3 May 2024, the day of Paul s funeral; emails Siri sent to friends during his cancer treatment; notes Paul sent her over the course of their relationship; and three love letters Siri wrote to him in 1981, when he left her for a period of nine or ten days to return to his former life with his first wife and son. The book also contains Paul Auster s last ever piece of writing - the first thirty-five pages of what he hoped would be a small book of letters to Siri s and his grandson, Miles Auster Hustvedt Ostrander, born on 1 January 2024. Unflinching, tender and wise, this is the full-bodied story of Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster s life together, an exploration of how grief unmoors time and how the intimacy of a shared life continues to mark the everyday. A note from Siri I began writing Ghost Stories shortly after my husband, Paul Auster, died on April 30th 2024. My meditations on Paul s cancer, his death, my grief, the potent feeling I had of his presence on the day he was buried, and my memories from the years we spent together are interwoven with several texts that were written