Guest Book: Ghost Stories

by Leanne Shapton

What haunts us? What can’t we let go of? A tennis prodigy collapses after his wins, crediting them to an invisible, not entirely benevolent presence, until one day he vanishes. A series of ghosts appear at their former bedsides, some distraught, some fascinated, to witness their unfamiliar occupants. A woman returns from a visit to Alcatraz with an uncomfortable feeling. The spirit of a prisoner has attached himself to you, a friend tells her. He sensed the empathy you had for those men.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Art, Poetry, Ghosts, Canada

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 26, 2019

About the author

Leanne Shapton is an illustrator, author and publisher based in New York City. She is the co-founder, with photographer Jason Fulford, of J&L Books, an internationally-distributed not-for-profit imprint specializing in art and photography books. Shapton grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, and attended McGill Univesity and Pratt Institute. After interning at SNL, Harper's Magazine and for illustator James McMullan, she began her career at the National Post where she edited and art-directed the daily Avenue page, an award-winning double-page feature covering news and cultural trends. She went on to art direct Saturday Night, the National Post's weekly news magazine.

In 2003, Shapton published her first book of drawings, titled Toronto. From 2006 to 2008 Shapton contributed a regular travel column to Elle magazine, consisting of writing, photography and illustration. From 2008 to 2009, Shapton was the art director of The New York Times Op-Ed page.

Leanne Shapton published Was She Pretty? in November 2008 and Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry, in February 2009, with Sarah Crichton Books / Farrar, Straus & Giroux. She published The Native Trees of Canada with Drawn & Quarterly in November 2010. Shapton recently contributed a regular column to T: The New York Times Style Magazine's blog The Moment. In 2011 She posted an illustrated series titled "A Month Of..." to The New York Times opinion page website.

Currently Shapton contributes a food and culture column to Flare Magazine.

In 2012 Shapton published Swimming Studies with Blue Rider Press. It won the 2012 National Book Critic's Circle Award for autobiography, and was long listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2012.

Sunday Night Movies, a book of paintings from movies, is forthcoming from Drawn & Quarterly, fall 2013. Shapton is currently working on Women In Clothes, a collaboration with Sheila Heti and Heidi Julavits, about how women dress, with Blue Rider Press.

Source: Leanne Shapton Bio.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

BOO!!!



this book had been on my radar ever since i’d seen it pop up, prior to its release, on a few different horror-focused book lists. since i am always on the lookout for off-kilter horror, i snatched it up the week it came out and was instantly struck by what a beautiful, thoughtfully designed book it is—each story is offset, assisted, or composed entirely of the author’s own photographs and artwork, and it looks gorgeous.



as far as its horror content, well, let’s just say it is so off-kilter that it may not be horror. no one will ever be scared by this book. unless a poltergeist knocks it off the bookshelf. or hollows it out and fills the hollows with spiders. etc.

although i’ve been conditioned by books like Night Film and House of Leaves to associate floor plans and olde-timey photographs with horror,





stories composed only of these elements, which a fair number of these are, is not enough to goose my bumps.

although, what have these reindeer seen that is making them so tense?



to be fair, just because i was led to it following a trail of horror breadcrumbs, the book itself makes no such claims. it identifies itself as a book of ghost stories, and it certainly is that—haunt-ing rather than haunt-ed. even those stories that are more image than text-based evoke a particular moodiness, less horror than nostalgia, where the very nature of photographs as representations or manifestations of something—a moment, a memory—that no longer exists, makes them inherently ghostly.

so, in terms of ephemera as ghostiness, this book wins.

and some of them actually do read as horror stories; a gentle horror where much is implicit or suggested, but it’s there if you go looking. my favorite story was SIRENA DE GALI, which is a perfect example of subtle horror—it never announces itself but it is undeniably there, in the spooky subtext.



this is definitely worth reading, but don’t let those horror lists mismanage your expectations. it's simply a beautiful book whose ghosts aren’t trying to scare you or even trying too hard to get your attention. in fact, i couldn’t even locate them in some of these stories, which is identical to my experience with ghosts IRL, so i’m not even ashamed of that fact.

tl;dr: BOO!!



come to my blog!

[Jan Agaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the most unique story collections I've ever read. It was so subtly yet effectively creepy in various, creative ways. If you liked Strange Pictures and Strange Houses by Uketsu, I recommend this one

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was home, visiting my parents for the weekend with my daughter, Alice. My parents were happy to see her and gave Alice toys to play with that I'd never seen before – old dolls and plastic baskets. When I asked where they had come from, my father said they had found them in the free area at the dump. After lunch one day, as Alice played in the living room, my mother told me a ghost story. – Sinforosa

So, to begin with, which is the more disquieting idea in that passage above? That your mother wants to tell you a ghost story or that she chose some toys for your daughter from the trash? Leanne Shapton has an impressive resume as an artist/writer/art director for well-known publications, and she brings all of these talents to Guestbook: Ghost Stories; a sort of scrapbook of found photographs, original watercolours, and added prose that leave the reader with an uncanny sense of dread. I suppose that the book's thirty-three entries can be thought of as “short stories”, and they range from the very short (Public Figure... is a prose poem made out of the comments on an Instagram-type star's [unshown] photo; So beautiful/I love/That looks relly relaxing...) to longish (Billy Byron charts the rise and fall of a tennis prodigy and the presence on the court that helps his game and destroys his mind, complete with many photos and drawings). Some entries read like traditional ghost stories and some seem to suggest the things that haunt us in our modern lives: In Natura Morta, another Instagram-style entry, sixteen black and white photos of a woman from the Sixties (?) and a woman from today (is that Shapton herself?) are shown without more commentary than the number of “likes” each receive – and it makes you wonder about the trajectory of photography and who took the photos of the woman from the past, in a time before every pose was meant to be widely shared; stalker or lover, the male gaze haunts these photos.

She looked me in the eye and said, “This is a true story.” We were at a dinner party, a casual one in someone's enormous, expensively fitted kitchen. She had come alone, was recently divorced. I'd met her before, but we'd never really spoken or found common ground. I'd always thought she was chilly, but when we were sat next to each other at dinner and got to talking about books and people we both knew, I realized her shyness was the blurry, foggy kind – reserved, but not cold. – Alcatraz

In every case, Shapton is telling stories and making art. I had to fight an urge to scroll too quickly through the picture-heavy entries, and taking these slowly proved particularly rewarding. At the Foot of the Bed (a series of pictures of beds, some from catalogues), A Geist (posed pictures from celebrity/high society parties all featuring the same man somewhere), and Sirena Da Gali (an online catalogue of vintage dresses for sale) each have many pictures, but also much small print to read; and each of these entries became more sinister and uncanny as they stretched out. In this interview from The Creative Independent, Shapton explains her inspiration and thought processes behind this book – I especially appreciated the bits about multi-channel storytelling – and I thoroughly respect her ideas and their results. Not your typical read, but all the better for that. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted might not be in their final forms.)

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is very creative. It is just not my cup of tea but I still admire it. Mostly photos regarding ghost sightings and hauntings with musings/fiction by the author.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe this makes me lowbrow but putting words to pictures in mostly nonsensical ways doesn't make for great literature or even a fairly interesting read. I am amazed about the positive hype in the reviews for this book. I do think this author is a brilliant artist though. The ability to sell this book to a publisher and to lure critics into giving good reviews for something a third grader could have pieced together one afternoon is evidence of a brilliant scam artist.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

5+ out of 5.

Surprisingly frightening, full of imagination-stoking fragments or tales that light up the darker corners of your mind for just long enough to wonder if you're really alone there. Some of the more traditional stories have their own strengths -- a tennis prodigy whose uncanny abilities are perhaps due to an imaginary friend who might not be so imaginary, a cellphone-video one-page ghost story -- but the real powerful stuff comes from Shapton's juxtaposition of photography and text, from the ways in which the reader must project their own story onto the negative space therein.

Or maybe I'm just the kind of reader who, when shown a grainy photograph of a room in an old house in a book subtitled 'ghost stories,' wants there to be a bump in that particular night, and will immediately consider all the ways there could be one.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was such a weird and interesting book that I admit that I didn't completely get. The title, Guest Book appears in letters on the cover..but if you tilt the book slightly, you will see the letters Ghost Stories appear. The book is written in a most unique manner. It is told through a series of photographs, passages and other random methods. Some of the book was so compelling and interesting, most of which revolved around the various photographs, some which gave me legitimate chills. Other parts fell a bit flat for me. I would give this 5 stars in some aspects and one star in others, so I settled in the middle.

[Erika Schoeps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclosure: I won an advance reading copy of this title in a Goodreads giveaway.

The issue with museums as a novel-loving person is that you rely on the captions. Enjoyment is tempered by a lack of context. I say this in the third person because I'm confident I'm not the only person with this problem. Guest book: Ghost stories is for you if you can relate to this thought.

Guest book: Ghost stories is an unorthodox haunted house novel. It's mainly pictures of abandoned rooms and house exteriors, but there are also some pictures of the spooked inhabitants too. Some narratives are more straightforward (main character with a story arc), and some are only told in picture captions. Neither text nor picture is privileged over the other in any story. Each exists to balance the other out and provide context.

This does not mean that anything is overexplained. It's mysterious, but I still felt as though Shapton often addressed my naturally arising questions.

A unique lovely aspect of this is the reader's ability to set the pace. Because of the placement of pictures and text in a liberal way (sometimes left-right, sometimes multiple images and captions on a page, sometimes image only), I felt encouraged to take my time and linger, and was never unduly bothered progress in the traditional manner.

As artful, liberal, and experimental as Guest book: Ghost stories is, I still felt spooked in the traditional way. Some pictures or captions literally had me writing "AIEEEEEEE" in the margins because of the chill it gave me.

How many times can one reader be spooked throughout by silhouettes, empty rooms, and a character's suspicion that some eerie presence is making itself known? For me, the answer was an infinite amount of times.

[c.s. · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a strange book. parts of it reminded me of the house of leaves; the ruminations on spaces/houses being haunted or inhabited by supernatural entities/forces. the ghosts are not always "normal" ghosts, but ghosts of or created by the living (failed relationships, loneliness, etc.) as it went on the book became eerier & more dream-like. there is a vignette within called "sirena de gali", that i loved. it's sort of like if the descriptions of clothes being sold on ebay or in antique stores were written by their previous owners' (ghosts') consciousness while wearing the items.

another vignette that i loved was simply called "at the foot of the bed," where creepy-looking catalog pictures of beds were shown -- the real creepiness hitting you once you read the notes section at the end of the vignette. if you're looking for your "standard" (bedsheet, dark figure) ghost, don't worry there are some, and they are frightening :o in this guest book everyone/everything is allowed a ghost: icebergs, dreams, quesadillas, & 1960s-style dresses. {& a warning that there is animal killing mentioned in the story eqalussuaq that i found upsetting}

this is not even a review lol i just had & still have a lot of thoughts about this book after finishing it today.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A half-written, half-illustrated-with-drawings-and-photos art book that succeeds best when linear (the story of tennis pro Billy Wilmington being haunted by his imaginary friend Walter - so creepy) and less so when it’s illustrations accompanied by vague lines of description (I know grainy black and white photos of old beds are scary... and?). Some of the segments fell right in the middle, and those were pretty enjoyable: a compilation of thrift store dresses with short monologues from women who might have worn them on special occasions - a cool concept if not a substantial one. Shapton definitely has a signature style, but the book couldn’t live up to the promise of leaving me with a haunted feeling.

[Ingrid Contreras · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot love this book enough. It’s an art piece. Compulsive, moving, and oh yes, haunting.

[Annabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

ZO mooi en onverwachts ook zo eng - in 1 ruk uitgelezen terwijl ik langzaam steeds schrikkeriger werd van elk mini-geluid in huis.

[Lars Meijer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een prachtig en merkwaardig boek.

[Janine Dukelow]

Leanne Shapton = new author crush. Incredible format, loved the repurposed photographs. The stories were so convincing.. I checked to see if any were nonfic afterwards lol

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 4 out of 5]

❤️❤️❤️

[Timothy Deer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the weirdest book I’ve ever encountered and I think I might have hallucinated the whole thing, including the fact that Martha Stewart told me to read it. Couldn’t put it down but maybe that was sleep paralysis in waking form. An extra star for how the book smelled.

[Amy (literatiloves) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the strangest book I have ever read - that’s not a criticism - but this book is really unlike anything I’ve read before. This was a random library pickup - it was autumn and was in this on a “creepy books” display - I flipped through it and was very intrigued.

Guestbook: Ghost Stories is a series of short vignettes, photographs and art pieces. It is a hard book to explain but I agree with the NPR review by Lily Meyer that said “It behaves more like a short story collection than any other literary form, but reading it feels akin to walking through an art exhibit, each piece linked in ways that are ineffable but clear.”
Each story brings with it an underlying sense of unease. There is nothing overtly scary about it - what makes it feel so haunting is what your imagination does with the information given. I made the mistake of reading this one night in the dark and decided not to do that again. It made it feel so much more eerie. Like I said, don’t go into this expecting horror or scariness but something more like a slow moving sense of dread - for me it was the black and white, grainy photos in particular that were used in some sections that gave it the added creepiness.

It took me a while to decide how to rate it because on one hand, I feel that there was a lot that I didn’t “get” but on the other hand, I appreciated the way that it allowed me my own interpretation. Because I didn’t always know exactly what I was reading, it was hard to pin down exactly how I felt about it but it was a singular reading experience and so it would probably be a 3.5 star but I decided to round up to 4. I think that eventually, I would like read it again and see what I get out of a second reading.

It took me a while to realize that the title wasn’t just Guest Rooms but embossed between those words is Ghost Stories and I think that is a good representative of the book. You have to read between the lines.

[Lany Holcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a printmaker, historian, and bookseller, this book brought together everything I enjoy and adore and fit inside the binding of a book. This work flows like a museum and is curated so carefully with its stories that it performs for itself. An enchanting read!

[Hannah Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half of the stories didn’t make sense to me so my three stars are for the stories that did. The stories that left a chill in my spine were few and far between but the photographs and illustrations made up for the confusion I had throughout. Maybe that was the point, I just didn’t get it.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange, dark and wonderful!

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, strange and eerie. Beautiful book

[Vikki VanSickle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking visual delight that contemplates the many ways that people or places can be haunted. Something meaty to ponder and dwell over on a lazy afternoon.

[Joe M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Leanne Shapton's "Guestbook," I kept thinking about one of the more memorable opening credits sequences I've seen in a film lately, during James Wan's "Insidious." As the movie opens, the titles slowly pan through a series of black and white photographs taken in a large house. The images are fairly innocuous: stairs, bedrooms, hallways, etc. except there's just something a bit off-kilter and creepy about each one; whether it's the crooked hang of a picture, the way a light is cast on a wall, or a shadow on the floor. Shapton's collection of "ghost" stories enacts a similar type of haunting, pulling narratives together through photographs, captions, drawings, and other found artifacts (one using Christmas wrapping patterns is especially brilliant) to capture that same feeling of creeping disquiet. As it turns out, sometimes a historic family portrait, a house blueprint, or even just a photo of the foot of a bed is as disturbing as a figure in the dark once your imagination starts roaming. I'd even say these are not so much "ghost stories" even as impressions of the supernatural, but more than once they got the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. A truly unique and original reading experience, this is a book that leaves a lasting impression!

[Judy Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disapointed in this book because I do like ghost and paranormal stories. . It is mostly photographs, very little writing in depth. I would have enjoyed it more if the stories had been written from beginning to end. As an example if I went into a bookstore looking for books. I would pull this book from the shelf, skim through the book and then put it back I received this from goodreads.

[Gabriele Goldstone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure what to make of this photo book. Definitely not what I expected. I'd heard the book discussed on CBC Radio with Eleanor Wachtel and was fascinated by the author. I think perhaps it's the sort of book that needs more than a quick read. I didn't do it justice. But mine was a library copy so I won't be re-reading it and I won't recommend to anyone either.

[Jane Night]

I am not leaving a star rating because I couldnt finish this book.
I recieved it from a goodreads giveaway and am grateful the publisher sent it to me.
Unfortunately I found this book super confusing.
It did have lovely pictures but I def was completely lost with rest of it.

[Anastasia Musser · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe it is because I'm not much of a hipster, but I did not get this book. Confusing.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leanne Shapton is one of those authors (a label I use loosely) whose work makes me stop and muse, to reflect anew. Her Swimming Stories is an elegant and eloquent engagement with having been, in that case, an elite athlete. Here, in Guestbook, she explores the having-been-ness of places and things. It’s about the remnants of experience, the residues of what was – in places, of things and events, of lives and stories.

It’s all made up (unlike Swimming Stories), it’s a collection of art works, and an art work in itself, where found photos and sketches as well as some of her pieces, are assembled to tell stories. We go to houses weaving together occupants’ stories, encounter memories spawned by dinner party conversations or street corners passed. We see narratives built out of (fictionalised) social media series or on-line shopping sites, and are taken through set of eyewitness recollections of the iceberg hit by the Titanic.

Shapton works well with bricolage, and here her bricolage is both uncanny and of the uncanny – hints of a past and of things witnessed out the corner of the eye. Don’t delve into it, read it – it’s a spooky treat.

[Mark Popham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a habit of reading just as much of a book review as makes me interested in the book before closing it, so I was completely unprepared for what Guest Book: Ghost Stories actually was. There are, as the embossed but uncolored print on the cover promises, "ghost stories" in the most literal sense: stories about ghostly visitations, explicitly related by other people in party settings. But there are also pictures, diagrams, stories or expressions told through drawings and website listings, society photos, notes about menus aboard ships or the difficulties in running exclusive bars - narratives that deal with lack or visitations or sameness, if that makes any sense at all. Multiple pieces made me laugh out loud at their audaciousness - I simply could not believe that Shapton was doing this. It is incredible, you have to read it.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ghosts. Not ghost stories" -- a perfect line for a haunting book. What one might think is a book about ghost stories, it's really an exploration of the ghosts in every day life. That loneliness and haunted feeling a person can have, almost unexplainable. Filled with moments of lush writing and intricately built sentences intertwined with creepy-esque, haunted photography -- Guestbook: Ghost Stories is a wild ride. There are some incredible stories thrown in there (the tennis player story being one I was so involved in, I don't think I took a breath while reading it) and there are some moments where I had to take a step back because it was powerfully sad.

Very interesting read, gorgeous and lyrical and definitely something that feels important.

FYI -- I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway :)