BOOK REVIEW | GHOST SUMMER | TANANARIVA DUE

ABOUT THE BOOK

Whether weaving family life and history into dark fiction or writing speculative Afrofuturism, American Book Award winner and Essence bestselling author Tananarive Due’s work is both riveting and enlightening.

In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness. Featuring an award-winning novella and fifteen stories—one of which has never been published before—Ghost Summer: Stories is sure to both haunt and delight.

With an Introduction by Nalo Hopkinson and an Afterword by Steven Barnes.

First published August 31, 2015

REVIEW

CONTENTS

GRACETOWN
The Lake / Summer / Ghost Summer

THE KNOWING
Free Jim’s Mine / The Knowing / Like Daughter / Aftermoon / Trial Day

CARRIERS
Patient Zero / Danger Word (with Steven Barnes) / Removal Order / Herd Immunity / Carriers 

VANISHINGS
Señora Suerte / Vanishings 

Originally published in 2015, this is Tananarive Due’s first collection of short stories. Collected from a number of different stories, this collection spans a number of different genres, from horror to speculative fiction and even dystopian. 

The stories are split into different sections and include fourteen short stories and a novella (Ghost Summer)

Tananarive Due (pronounced DOO) has steadily been gaining mainstream recognition with her utterly brilliant The Reformatory, and this collection is no less compelling. 

The first set of stories is a series of short stories connected by the fact that they are set in the fictional town of Gracetown. The town has its fair share of hauntings, with haunted swamps (Summer), transformative waters (The Lake) and historical trauma (Ghost Summer) 

The Following section is all about people with precognition and powers (except for the werewolf one).

The stories collected under the Carriers heading are all dystopian themed and for the most part are interconnected with one character.

Whilst the final part deals with those that are taken from us. 

Tananarive Due is a master story teller. Her stories are compelling and her characters have a life of their own. This story shows her versatility as a writer, and each story demands attention. She deals with a number of different issues in the stories, such as racism, death and real life monsters. 

As you can expect in a short story collection, some of the stories may not hit home to everyone, but to be honest, even Tananarive Due’s weak stories are nothing short of brilliant.