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Ghosted
Mason, a struggling writer, comes in from the cold after five years of drifting. His childhood friend, Chaz, a small-time gangster, loans him an apartment and finds him a job selling hotdogs. But instead of getting his act together, Mason drinks too much, does too many drugs and loses too much money at poker, digging himself even more deeply in debt to Chaz, who also happens to be his drug dealer. Talk about a vicious circle.
Then Mason has a bright idea. He'll find the cash to pay Chaz back by becoming a ghostwriter of suicide notes, a fitting use of his talents. The trouble is that Mason is hard-wired to rescue people, and no one needs rescuing more than the suicidal. Except maybe the woman he is falling in love with — Willy, a wheelchair-bound, heroin-smoking beauty.
What happens when someone already wrestling with his own demons immerses himself in the tragedies of other people's lives? In this case, a a hotdog cart is totalled, a convict sprung, a funeral faked, a head scalped, a horse stolen. Terrible secrets are brought to the light and suicide morphs into murder. Then, just when it looks like Mason is finally going down, he faces the biggest test of all. He'll either become the death-defying hero of his own dreams or lose everything and everybody he's ever loved.
From the Hardcover edition.
Then Mason has a bright idea. He'll find the cash to pay Chaz back by becoming a ghostwriter of suicide notes, a fitting use of his talents. The trouble is that Mason is hard-wired to rescue people, and no one needs rescuing more than the suicidal. Except maybe the woman he is falling in love with — Willy, a wheelchair-bound, heroin-smoking beauty.
What happens when someone already wrestling with his own demons immerses himself in the tragedies of other people's lives? In this case, a a hotdog cart is totalled, a convict sprung, a funeral faked, a head scalped, a horse stolen. Terrible secrets are brought to the light and suicide morphs into murder. Then, just when it looks like Mason is finally going down, he faces the biggest test of all. He'll either become the death-defying hero of his own dreams or lose everything and everybody he's ever loved.
From the Hardcover edition.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
3 people are currently reading
165 people want to read
About the author
Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall
4 books23 followersShaughnessy Bishop-Stall left Vancouver at seventeen to hitchhike to Costa Rica. After teaching English, painting houses, and picking olives in Mexico, Italy, and Spain, he worked as an actor and journalist and currently teaches writing at the University of Toronto. His book Down to This chronicles his year living with the homeless in the continents largest shantytown. He lives in Toronto."
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
March 26, 2010
Well kiddies, this is going to be a hard one to review, because well, quite frankly I just didn't like the story. Now I want you all to know, it has nothing to do with his ability as a writer, because he definitely has talent. It's just that I don't like books that deal with some of the more unpleasant people in this world, and quite frankly there are things I can live without knowing.
To illustrate the above point, here is a passage from the novel. I can't even type the beginning of the passage because it is just too graphic and horrific.
Then I said, "If you don't, I will break this bottle inside you. It took a while but eventually she said "My name is Becky, and I will be 8 next week". "That means you are seven" I said, and filled her mouth with her underwear. It had blue ducks and blood on it"
Seriously, no one needs tor read something like that. I know there are damaged people like this out there who really should be shot down like the rabid dogs they are (no Jen, tell us what you really feel) but we don't need to have a description of what they do when they rape a child. Honestly, after reading the passage, I had to put the book down for a couple of days, because I was seriously disgusted.
The characters are very realistic and the storyline very unusual and at times I was very impressed with the author's creativity. Sometimes the dialogue was laugh your ass off funny.
"He flipped open the tape deck. "Gowan? So if you got trapped in here you'd have to listen to Gowan for the rest of your life?"
Other times the storyline was hopeful and you felt yourself cheering the protagonist on but than the hope was sort of dashed on you. I really enjoyed a couple of the characters and just found them to be interesting and realistic, Chaz (A sort of nice drug dealer) and Dr Francis (incredibly realistic troubled Dr). Even the main character of Mason, a down and out sort of guy, was sort of likable. I just got pissed at him, because he was constantly doing really stupid things, when he knew better. Bishop-Stall really excels at the development of his characters which really bring them to life. Also his description of a shelter are so painstakingly real that you can tell that the author has definitely spent time in one. The last couple chapters are just brilliantly written and made me feel better about forcing myself to read the damn book.
Please, if you like a dark and gritty tale, that has a Palahniuk flavour to it, go out and get a copy, because the author is seriously talented. At times I did enjoy reading it, but those times were few and far between.
To illustrate the above point, here is a passage from the novel. I can't even type the beginning of the passage because it is just too graphic and horrific.
Then I said, "If you don't, I will break this bottle inside you. It took a while but eventually she said "My name is Becky, and I will be 8 next week". "That means you are seven" I said, and filled her mouth with her underwear. It had blue ducks and blood on it"
Seriously, no one needs tor read something like that. I know there are damaged people like this out there who really should be shot down like the rabid dogs they are (no Jen, tell us what you really feel) but we don't need to have a description of what they do when they rape a child. Honestly, after reading the passage, I had to put the book down for a couple of days, because I was seriously disgusted.
The characters are very realistic and the storyline very unusual and at times I was very impressed with the author's creativity. Sometimes the dialogue was laugh your ass off funny.
"He flipped open the tape deck. "Gowan? So if you got trapped in here you'd have to listen to Gowan for the rest of your life?"
Other times the storyline was hopeful and you felt yourself cheering the protagonist on but than the hope was sort of dashed on you. I really enjoyed a couple of the characters and just found them to be interesting and realistic, Chaz (A sort of nice drug dealer) and Dr Francis (incredibly realistic troubled Dr). Even the main character of Mason, a down and out sort of guy, was sort of likable. I just got pissed at him, because he was constantly doing really stupid things, when he knew better. Bishop-Stall really excels at the development of his characters which really bring them to life. Also his description of a shelter are so painstakingly real that you can tell that the author has definitely spent time in one. The last couple chapters are just brilliantly written and made me feel better about forcing myself to read the damn book.
Please, if you like a dark and gritty tale, that has a Palahniuk flavour to it, go out and get a copy, because the author is seriously talented. At times I did enjoy reading it, but those times were few and far between.
June 9, 2010
Really liked it. I felt very connected to the characters, and the writing was really powerful. Very simple, which I love. I kinda felt like the end was a bit of a runaway train - everything went really, really quickly - but, all in all, an excellent read.
Oh! I read a lot about how disturbing and violent it got, but there were only two parts that I found difficult to take. Just skip over them - you'll know when you get there.
Oh! I read a lot about how disturbing and violent it got, but there were only two parts that I found difficult to take. Just skip over them - you'll know when you get there.
April 22, 2021
This book. Well it is a long story.
First of all, why am I reading a ten year old , out of print first novel? That in itself was a fun mystery— which started with these detective games I ordered from the Mysterious Box Company, a kind of Raymond Chandler/LA Confidential type take on the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Games. (Side note: I had the same idea, so this was right up my alley)
I know this already feels like a tangent, but bear with me. Basically the LA Detective series is like a choose your own adventure type story where you also have maps and newspapers and other clues to help you choose your path. They are a lot of fun, and this was a trilogy.
The first one had no author, but the fake pulp novel in the second one is written by “Mason G Dubisee” and the third is by “Mason H Dubisee”.
Oh and by the way, these little mystery games were unusually well constructed and surprisingly well written, in many different styles.
This middle initial thing seemed to me like the kind of convention a ghost writer would use. Then a little googling reveals that Mason Dubisee is, in fact, a fictitious protagonist invented by Shaughnessy Bishop Stall, a University of Toronto professor who has written exactly one novel, Ghosted, in which Mason Dubisee is a ghost writer of suicide notes.
I ordered a copy online for under ten dollars and, of course, it was signed.
A failed, signed, out of print novel off a book tour, by a man who is now ghost writing for a game company. And the backstory is that the publishing company went out of business right as Bishop-Stall was on his book tour in 2010. You don’t often get so much tragedy and pathos and mystery as context, before you even start the book.
Ghosted reminds me of a lot of things, including Gone Girl and Bukowski and Palahniuk —but mostly it reminds me of The Nix by Nathan Hill, which is one of my very favorite books, and is also a book about writing and addiction (to video games, not cocaine) and procrastination.
Both are books that took five years, or maybe whole lifetimes, to write; in both the authors have seemingly poured ALL of their ideas as if they know that even writing this one, first novel was already impossibly hard and there isn’t likely going to be another chance.
Ghosted’s ideas are all interesting and wonderful and poignant, which ends up creating an inconsistent, postmodern mish-mash of genres, where on one hand it becomes a well constructed (but extremely dark) thriller with an amazing payoff, and on the other hand a literary deconstruction of addiction and the meaning of life and roads not taken. It frequently breaks the fourth wall which is where the David Foster Wallace comparisons come in (also drug use and recovery) although Ghosted is much more accessible than Infinite Jest and thank God, no footnotes.
One more metaphor, that famous museum in Paris where all the HVAC tubes and wiring are on the outside for all to see— but it isn’t just for show, all the pieces completely work: the plot, the character development, the research, the addiction memoir, the horror scenes, the big, tense, climax and then denouement. Super functional, but in your face.
I am just a huge fan of this book, and also the idea that a work as brilliant as this went so heartbreakingly unappreciated. The idea that the narrator of a book in the semi-omniscient person must be some kind of ghost. It is brilliant and perfect, and SBS can now be a favorite author in a way that say Neil Gaiman once did, but no longer can, because he got too famous.
And yet, if you gave it three stars because the author couldn’t stick to his lane, I couldn’t really argue with that. That’s fair. Bishop-Stall could absolutely write straight thrillers, but he doesn’t want to do *just* that. He obviously wanted at some level recognition as a writer of literature, and ironically, recognition is exactly what ghost writers never get. SBS just wrote a book in 2018 about hangovers for goodness sake. He’s a hopelessly romantic, brilliant, deeply conflicted f-up. And so say all of us.
Finally, for six hundred dollars I can take a twenty person course with Bishop-Stall online at the University of Toronto. He’s a genius, and that is just so incredibly sad. And yet, available...
I’m totally in.
First of all, why am I reading a ten year old , out of print first novel? That in itself was a fun mystery— which started with these detective games I ordered from the Mysterious Box Company, a kind of Raymond Chandler/LA Confidential type take on the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Games. (Side note: I had the same idea, so this was right up my alley)
I know this already feels like a tangent, but bear with me. Basically the LA Detective series is like a choose your own adventure type story where you also have maps and newspapers and other clues to help you choose your path. They are a lot of fun, and this was a trilogy.
The first one had no author, but the fake pulp novel in the second one is written by “Mason G Dubisee” and the third is by “Mason H Dubisee”.
Oh and by the way, these little mystery games were unusually well constructed and surprisingly well written, in many different styles.
This middle initial thing seemed to me like the kind of convention a ghost writer would use. Then a little googling reveals that Mason Dubisee is, in fact, a fictitious protagonist invented by Shaughnessy Bishop Stall, a University of Toronto professor who has written exactly one novel, Ghosted, in which Mason Dubisee is a ghost writer of suicide notes.
I ordered a copy online for under ten dollars and, of course, it was signed.
A failed, signed, out of print novel off a book tour, by a man who is now ghost writing for a game company. And the backstory is that the publishing company went out of business right as Bishop-Stall was on his book tour in 2010. You don’t often get so much tragedy and pathos and mystery as context, before you even start the book.
Ghosted reminds me of a lot of things, including Gone Girl and Bukowski and Palahniuk —but mostly it reminds me of The Nix by Nathan Hill, which is one of my very favorite books, and is also a book about writing and addiction (to video games, not cocaine) and procrastination.
Both are books that took five years, or maybe whole lifetimes, to write; in both the authors have seemingly poured ALL of their ideas as if they know that even writing this one, first novel was already impossibly hard and there isn’t likely going to be another chance.
Ghosted’s ideas are all interesting and wonderful and poignant, which ends up creating an inconsistent, postmodern mish-mash of genres, where on one hand it becomes a well constructed (but extremely dark) thriller with an amazing payoff, and on the other hand a literary deconstruction of addiction and the meaning of life and roads not taken. It frequently breaks the fourth wall which is where the David Foster Wallace comparisons come in (also drug use and recovery) although Ghosted is much more accessible than Infinite Jest and thank God, no footnotes.
One more metaphor, that famous museum in Paris where all the HVAC tubes and wiring are on the outside for all to see— but it isn’t just for show, all the pieces completely work: the plot, the character development, the research, the addiction memoir, the horror scenes, the big, tense, climax and then denouement. Super functional, but in your face.
I am just a huge fan of this book, and also the idea that a work as brilliant as this went so heartbreakingly unappreciated. The idea that the narrator of a book in the semi-omniscient person must be some kind of ghost. It is brilliant and perfect, and SBS can now be a favorite author in a way that say Neil Gaiman once did, but no longer can, because he got too famous.
And yet, if you gave it three stars because the author couldn’t stick to his lane, I couldn’t really argue with that. That’s fair. Bishop-Stall could absolutely write straight thrillers, but he doesn’t want to do *just* that. He obviously wanted at some level recognition as a writer of literature, and ironically, recognition is exactly what ghost writers never get. SBS just wrote a book in 2018 about hangovers for goodness sake. He’s a hopelessly romantic, brilliant, deeply conflicted f-up. And so say all of us.
Finally, for six hundred dollars I can take a twenty person course with Bishop-Stall online at the University of Toronto. He’s a genius, and that is just so incredibly sad. And yet, available...
I’m totally in.
August 4, 2011
I had such high expectations for Bishop-Stall's first fiction novel. His non-ficiton work, Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big City Shantytown is definitely my favorite book that I have read, and that's saying something.
On some counts, I'm sorry to say, that I wasn't fully satisfied with this book. There are a lot of sloppy sections that could have been tightened or altered for a more even narrative ... these sections are mostly in the beginning of the novel, and mostly concern Bishop-Stall's use of character and plot. Instead of serializing the "clients," there should have been more robust and novel-length interactions. I just do not believe that Mason felt as attached to these people as he apparantly is. Also, Seth Handyman should have been in much more of the novel. Partially because he's just an interesting character, but also because he falls into the same pitfall as I just mentioned ... it's just too short of a time frame to really get the proper emotion going.
But there are other counts where I loved this book. Seth, for one, is likely one of the better characters to come out so far this year in literature, and Ghosted offers an interesting look into writer's block. Using Down to This as a background for Bishop-Stall's personal philosophies also helped ... since I understood a section of Mason that was in the novel, but never outright explained.
Overall, the first half of the novel is quite forgettable, despite its extremely interesting premise. However, if you can get to the ending, it is overall worth the read. Plus, it's an extremely quick read.
On some counts, I'm sorry to say, that I wasn't fully satisfied with this book. There are a lot of sloppy sections that could have been tightened or altered for a more even narrative ... these sections are mostly in the beginning of the novel, and mostly concern Bishop-Stall's use of character and plot. Instead of serializing the "clients," there should have been more robust and novel-length interactions. I just do not believe that Mason felt as attached to these people as he apparantly is. Also, Seth Handyman should have been in much more of the novel. Partially because he's just an interesting character, but also because he falls into the same pitfall as I just mentioned ... it's just too short of a time frame to really get the proper emotion going.
But there are other counts where I loved this book. Seth, for one, is likely one of the better characters to come out so far this year in literature, and Ghosted offers an interesting look into writer's block. Using Down to This as a background for Bishop-Stall's personal philosophies also helped ... since I understood a section of Mason that was in the novel, but never outright explained.
Overall, the first half of the novel is quite forgettable, despite its extremely interesting premise. However, if you can get to the ending, it is overall worth the read. Plus, it's an extremely quick read.
March 14, 2017
This was a pretty interesting read. I definitely didn't expect it to go the way it did, with the whole murder-mystery element to it. Based on the doctor's actions, I could tell she was fucked up and would probably give up her practice at some point. She got too friendly with clients, and always wanted to save them. So her ghosts were similar to Mason's in some way. I guess all of us addictions counsellors have ghosts, but hers were particularly painful as you find out her relationship to Becky the Bunny at the end of the book. I almost stopped reading after Seth Handyman's description of what he did to her. I wanted revenge on him as much as the other characters did, but somehow he slipped through our fingertips.
I still don't think I caught what happened to Circe/Sissy (as the wanted to be id'd). Not sure if i missed it or if it wasnt really said. But it was cool to hear that many of the "assisted suicides" weren't really that, and Mason's culpability and guilt over his actions faded. I really loved the first third of the book, watching Mason get fucked up to deny the reality that faced him: he couldn't really write (high or sober), he worked in a gimmicky hot dog truck, and he sucked at poker. I was glad we eventually got to hear about Mason's father, and liked how the end bits tied a few things together. All in all, there were some hard to digest bits in there, and a bit of a messy middle to the book (maybe that was just representing Mason's withdrawing state as he searched for truths), but I thought it was a pretty neat book.
I still don't think I caught what happened to Circe/Sissy (as the wanted to be id'd). Not sure if i missed it or if it wasnt really said. But it was cool to hear that many of the "assisted suicides" weren't really that, and Mason's culpability and guilt over his actions faded. I really loved the first third of the book, watching Mason get fucked up to deny the reality that faced him: he couldn't really write (high or sober), he worked in a gimmicky hot dog truck, and he sucked at poker. I was glad we eventually got to hear about Mason's father, and liked how the end bits tied a few things together. All in all, there were some hard to digest bits in there, and a bit of a messy middle to the book (maybe that was just representing Mason's withdrawing state as he searched for truths), but I thought it was a pretty neat book.
August 30, 2021
While there were graphic scenes both of which were about 2 pages each. Overall the story kept me interested and continuing to read wanting answers and to find out what messed up choice that mason was going to make less.
While by times the plot got a little confusing it also made perfect sense given the circumstances of the characters in the story. Was a good read. Wouldn’t bother reading again but I do recommend to give it a shot. It’s an eye opener to the darker sides of society.
While by times the plot got a little confusing it also made perfect sense given the circumstances of the characters in the story. Was a good read. Wouldn’t bother reading again but I do recommend to give it a shot. It’s an eye opener to the darker sides of society.
September 18, 2018
He tried.
September 14, 2020
Weird weird weird book
August 15, 2014
Wow. I was not expecting to like this book - right now, after finishing it, I'm still not sure if I do like it. There's some gritty, disturbing stuff in there - some of which makes sense because of the subject matter, some of which just feels gratuitous, existing only for Edginess or something. The main character is hard to like at first - but, either because or in spite of the fact that you spend the whole story with him... he becomes someone you're rooting for. Maybe it's because there's no villain for most of the book - unless you count the bad sides of human nature, and the partly-metaphorical ghosts of unlived lives. During that part, the protagonist Mason seems to fade into the background - living as neither the hero or antihero he wants to be, self-consciously stooped to the dregs of life around him. But when the villain emerges - and I've rarely met one I've hated more (though his main villainous act is another gratuitous - Mason stands in sharp relief against him, someone who wants to save instead of destroy, even if the saving and destroying is sometimes hopelessly muddled and the very nature of free will called into question. Some parts of the book feel manipulative, but they're probably meant to be - I mean, this is a book partly about how words can resculpt/redefine lives, make a sad life noble (or, rather, reveal the nobility that was there all along). It's those moments, the ones that show the power of story and belie humanity's baser parts with hints of something transcendent in the human soul - those make me like this book. I'm still conflicted - but I think the reader's meant to be.
May 28, 2010
Suicide is a tricky subject to write about. This is true when you're writing a novel, and also true when you're like Mason, the protagonist of this novel, and your job is to write about suicide. To write people's suicide notes for them.
Ghosted starts off in a Chuck Palahniuk sort of area, as you can kind of guess with the synopsis - a little misanthropic, a little nihilistic, and strung together with enough dark humour and adrenaline that you keep reading. Then, around half-way through the book, it takes a left turn and gets REALLY dark. The answer to the question "What kind of person writes suicide notes for other people?" is revealed to be "One with serious psychological and self-destructive issues", and we also are reminded that no matter how messed up you may be, you need to be careful, because there are others who are way more dangerously messed up than you are.
I wasn't quite sure what Bishop-Stall was trying to say through the whole thing, though; it's clear from the subject material and the way that he writes about it that he isn't just out for entertainment, but wants something more. I left the novel not sure what that "something more" was, though.
Ghosted starts off in a Chuck Palahniuk sort of area, as you can kind of guess with the synopsis - a little misanthropic, a little nihilistic, and strung together with enough dark humour and adrenaline that you keep reading. Then, around half-way through the book, it takes a left turn and gets REALLY dark. The answer to the question "What kind of person writes suicide notes for other people?" is revealed to be "One with serious psychological and self-destructive issues", and we also are reminded that no matter how messed up you may be, you need to be careful, because there are others who are way more dangerously messed up than you are.
I wasn't quite sure what Bishop-Stall was trying to say through the whole thing, though; it's clear from the subject material and the way that he writes about it that he isn't just out for entertainment, but wants something more. I left the novel not sure what that "something more" was, though.
May 7, 2011
A truly strange, sad and compelling read — by turns darkly, darkly funny, wrenchingly sad, maddeningly jumbled and unexpectedly moving. It's an uneven book, and perhaps that's a purposeful reflection of the protagonist: a young(ish) drug addict and ne'er-do-well named Mason who suddenly finds himself very actively engaged in the business of ghostwriting suicide notes. To call him an unreliable narrator is charitable: he's a mess and a terrible, terrible person, and so deeply and profoundly selfish and self-destructive (and, therefore, totally believable as an addict) that it honestly becomes difficult to deal with him over the course of several hundred pages.
That said... the words, stories and lives of those Mason encounters are so deeply and surprisingly moving that the novel takes on a compulsive readability that defies easy explanation. Where does that leave Ghosted? A tough read, but an often strangely, sadly lovely one. (Thanks to @earnestgirl for the recommendation.)
That said... the words, stories and lives of those Mason encounters are so deeply and surprisingly moving that the novel takes on a compulsive readability that defies easy explanation. Where does that leave Ghosted? A tough read, but an often strangely, sadly lovely one. (Thanks to @earnestgirl for the recommendation.)
February 12, 2012
After finishing the book, I sat there for a few moments and wondered if I should say, "Wtf?" or something even less eloquent. I still am not sure what to think of the ending, but I am happy about the majority of the space in between the first couple of chapters and the last. This author had a ton of characters, organized random but important anecdotes, and a lot of things that didn't seem relevant but were if you made them be. The dark and curious side of me wants to read more of his work. I definitely wouldn't just recommend this book to anybody, but I would to those with an open-mind or maybe even more the likes of an addict's mind wanting a lot of stimulation. You will get that in this book.
November 11, 2021
I actually read an uncorrected proof of this novel before it was released and really liked it (still the only copy I own). I might be partly biased because it's based in my hometown. I'd never read a book based in Toronto before this one which is surprising. It does have a lot of dark themes and the characters are deeply troubled. I won't say I really connected with any of the characters per se—most of them live pretty unrelatable existences—but I did find myself rooting for Mason most of the way through.
Worth a read if you don't mind the plunge into a lot of mental health issues. I can also see why it's not a book for everyone, so take my rating with a grain of salt.
Worth a read if you don't mind the plunge into a lot of mental health issues. I can also see why it's not a book for everyone, so take my rating with a grain of salt.
February 25, 2014
I find it hard to give any book a 5-star rating. But this book deserved it. It's beautifully written with incredible dialogue and a well thought out story arc. This story is set in Toronto (truth be told, this may be the reason for the fifth star) and it centers on Mason Dubisee. A young man who imagines himself a bit of a cowboy and has been leading a reckless way of life; but now tries to settle down to concentrate on his novel. To support himself, a friend hooks him up with a job selling hot dogs out of a unique cart. Thus begins a foray into a side profession that introduces him to one of the most eclectic ensemble characters introduced in a long time.
September 12, 2016
After reading his memoir, I wanted so much to like this book, but it ended up coming out choppy and awkward. In fact, if I hadn't have been so moved by Down to This, I would have probably already forgotten that I even read Ghosted.
From what I remember about the story, it follows a writer ghost writing suicide notes. What follows is moral questioning and an attempt at a love story that is just kind of bad.
It's a real bad sign when the best thing I can say about this book is that I really like the dust jacket.
From what I remember about the story, it follows a writer ghost writing suicide notes. What follows is moral questioning and an attempt at a love story that is just kind of bad.
It's a real bad sign when the best thing I can say about this book is that I really like the dust jacket.
March 12, 2011
I didn't think I was going to like this one at the outset - it was reading a bit like the downtown TO version of Bright Lights, Big City, which is a bit too 1980s for me. It improved as it went along though, and as someone whose TO patch was Kensington Market, there was a lot of nostalgia for me with this novel. Still, there's something simultaneously profound and slight about it. It does make me want to go back and read his non-fiction though.
January 21, 2013
Interesting character and bizarre career he stummbled upon. Who could come up with this stuff? SUMMARY: At thirty Mason Dubisee must face the truth that he is a drug-addled drifter, an aspiring novelist unable to move beyond lists of titles and themes. But he stumbles into a shadow career of ghostwriting suicide notes for the despondent, a gig that helps him cover his gambling debts but takes an emotional toll since he is hardwired to rescue people.
March 26, 2017
This was a surprisingly heartfelt and touching read. I loved all the characters (except ) and their lives within the city of Toronto (especially in areas that I know well). The writing was a great mix of thoughtful and poetic and snappy and real. Definitely a winner.
June 15, 2012
A lot of interesting concepts thrown together to make for a schizophrenic love story/action movie. I might have enjoyed this more if I even gave a shit about the narrator. He was too whiny and self-absorbed to empathize with.
January 9, 2013
A strange little story about a failing writer and drug addict who falls into a gig ghost-writing suicide notes. Better when it's anecdotal than when the story is building. The characters are fantastic though. Just a really really good little read.
January 10, 2011
Eh... shrug.
February 9, 2011
it was okay. i lost interest about 120 pages in and then just really read the 2-liners and the emails and the confessions.
March 10, 2011
Entertaining but uneven in places. Quite a few rabbits in the hat-tricks.
July 10, 2014
i finished this yesterday afternoon and am still thinking about it today
extremely dark but also incredibly funny and touching at times
extremely dark but also incredibly funny and touching at times
Read
May 10, 2019Excellent - sent chills up my spine.
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