It Is an Honest Ghost

May 30, 2016
Goldbach's (Selected Blackouts) second short fiction collection deftly explores a multitude of personalities and anxieties. In "An Old Story: In Five Parts," vignettes reveal a man slave to his isolationist routines. The title story tracks a group of young men whose conversation regarding the strange happenings at a 200-year-old flourmill devolves into an acid-fuelled discussion of metaphysics and the transmigration of souls. Two storiesâ"A Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" and "Jenny"âare almost entirely dialogue driven: the former involves two high school friends reconnecting at a strip club after many years apart; the latter is a one-sided transcription of a truly awful first date. "Standing in Front of the Kazon Cathedral: St. Petersburg, Russia, 2005" is the strongest pieceâa work of flash fiction, it's a near-perfect distillation of the branching, rapid-fire thoughts of an anxiety-ridden mind as a man, while staring up at the sky, imagines being captured and killed as part of a terrorist action. Two stories, however, don't fit with the rest. "Sigismund Mohr: The Man Who Brought Electricity to Quebec" and the novella "Hic et Ubique" feel more emotionally detached and less introspective than the others. Additionally, the novella's weight throws off the collection's balanceâits tone and heft don't belong, and so the book limps to its end after a decidedly strong start.