Swallow The Ghost

I always get such a thrill when getting approved for the preview of a book on Netgalley and the thrill of being able to read this book in January 2024 when it won’t be published until August 2024 so I can make my own opinions and read a book without much insight into what the story is really about.

That’s exactly what happened with Swallow the Ghost by Eugenie Montague. Whilst this is a debut novel, Eugenie herself is a teacher for MFA Writing and has a law degree too, read what you will into that about her calibre of the English language. For me the beginning was simultaneously confusing and interesting. The first chapter starts with the heading Groundhog Day 2 so you know that there is something unnatural / “Truman Show” like going on with the lead character’s life and then you find out that she works in (publishing? marketing?) a job to promote a thriller / murder mystery written by another author entirely on Twitter. So firstly, I felt a little disoriented thinking that the lead character was in a simulation and then I was told there was another simulation going on inside of that. Whilst I found the whole concept of a story within a story super interesting and the idea of completely telling a story on Twitter by creating individual characters that Tweet @ each other until one disappears and peppering the Tweets with clues as so ingenious, I have to admit that I was waiting for the shoe to drop and to figure out what the heck was going on in the main character’s life? She started out seeming so normal and then after a few paragraphs, you can see her as just a typical depressed lonely millennial girl who’s working in the big city, living with roommates and being disenchanted with life but the background of starting each of her mornings with the same paragraph made it feel very strange.

So whilst I didn’t like the concept of the Groundhog Day and I never like it in movies either, the author’s grasp over the Twitter and social media proliferation in today’s society had me hooked. I wasn’t as much interested in the murder mystery of how the Twitter story unfolded but I was interested in all the ways the different social media platforms were interacting to make things “viral”. I think there were some very insightful sentences that fit naturally into the story about internet connections such as “Time on the internet was excruciating. Too fast. A complete standstill. Forever.” – anyone who has ever tweeted or shared a photo on social media and waited for a reaction/ reply will feel this deeply.

“Effortful commentary by someone with forty followers. Offhand joke by someone with three million.””Effortful commentary by someone with forty followers. Offhand joke by someone with three million.”

“They lie in bed looking at their phones.”

“There is a lot of time in a marriage. It’s nice if two people like to sit quietly directing their attention at something else.”

I give credit to the author for creating likeable characters that seem relatable and you could imagine them as your actual colleagues and all of them had pretty normal activities and conversations despite the sense of “not everything is as meets the eye” feeling throbbing in the background. Kaya who is Jane’s best friend is likeable and believable whilst her boss Tom and the Twitter author Jeremy seem well developed with opinions and authentic interactions with Jane.

Just when you think the book is getting to a happier note, BAM the main character dies and is discovered having been murdered and the second half of the book starts. The second half is a fast paced murder mystery that has you on the hook to resolve the murder of Jane. The fact that there are 2 clear parts to the story and how the descriptions change in the second half, show a clear pick up in pace and it literally feels like you went up on the roller coaster on the first half and zoomed down in the second half to find out who the killer was.

This is about 74% of the book and then all of a sudden there is a third part of the book which is like a podcast format of the writer Jeremy and the podcast host and it’s really an interview as if Jeremy were a real person and writer and is completely unrelated to the actual story although it does mention Jane’s death. I thought that the last 25% of the book should have been dropped personally but I can’t wait to see what the reactions of others are once the book is published!

Themes:

1. Rituals – Jeremy, who is the author of the Twitter murder mystery/ thriller, is created to come across as a pretentious author but does deliver some pretty insightful commentary such as the fact that “this country no longer believes in God” so everyone creates rituals. They joke about how brunch is like a ritual, how Jane dresses is like a ritual and the Groundhog Day theme plays into the concept of how humans create rituals (which often we call routines) to make them feel safe and familiar.
2. Social Media – It’s striking how avoidant of her roommates and neighbours and anyone Jane is. She goes to work and the only people she mentions are her friend Kaya, her boss Tom and her client Jeremy while she frequently mentions that she has 2 roommates, and other colleagues that she leads but never names them. Meanwhile on Twitter, she mentions the handles of strangers as though they are close to her and the concept of what the “real” world is and where her connections lie is very much falls into the social metaverse rather than the physical world and people around her. So much so that characters that they have artificially created on Twitter have more dimension and qualities and arcs than the real humans do in this book and it is clear that the author has done this intentionally.