Visiting Ghosts

Visiting Ghosts was shortlisted for the NZ Book Awards. These often wryly humorous stories are marked by keen observation and poetic sensibility.

Bomble is dead, Mr Hubbard is dead, but Leo and Toby are very much alive. The psychologist’s behaviour is not entirely ethical, and Ruth is gloriously and wonderfully wicked. Roland finds a surprise in his mother’s wardrobe and the cow-girl finds her way across the bridge. Little wonder that these stories by Judith White won the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Centenary Award in 1988.
First published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1991, the stories in Visiting Ghosts are quirky and unpredictable, exploring some serious issues in unconventional ways.

Elegantly written, with acute powers of observation and wry humour, they explore the frailty and resilience of the human condition in a broad range of circumstances. This collection of stories, the first in the Timeless Tangerine series, is a New Zealand classic, and their author a significant voice in the New Zealand literary landscape.

Reviews

The most appealing feature of  Judith White’s short stories is her acceptance that the neurotic and the repressed have a valid viewpoint on the world. …

Neurosis is an area she seems to understand. It enables her to get to that place all writers try for: where reality, seemingly known and thoroughly discovered, suddenly opens up new depths and distances.

Geoff Chapple (Sunday Star)