Ghostwritten by Isabel Wolff

ghostwriter noun

A person whose job it is to write material for someone else who is the named author.

(oxforddictionaries.com)

I picked this book off the shelf at the library first because I was intrigued by the title. I think I was slightly hoping it would actually be a ghost story (maybe written by the ghost?) which is odd because I would probably never have read it if it was.

Instead, it turned out to be a novel about a ghostwriter - a woman called Jenni whose job is to write up the contect of a book published in someone else's name. In this story, Jenni is writing the memoirs of a WW2 Japanese prison camp survivor named Klara ahead of her 80th birthday. The story runs in two strands, switching between Jenni's present-day experience of working with Klara and Klara's account of her childhood. It's a bit like reading two novels intertwined.

In a way, the book is fairly predictable. For Klara, the process of revisiting her childhood memories is difficult but therapeutic as she opens up to a stranger about the horrors she experienced. However, it's clear from the start that Jenni also has a difficult past to deal with. At the very start of the book, a prologue introduces us to two children, Evie and Ted, and a tragic accident on a beach holiday. Their story is cut off, however, so that the reader is left wondering what actually happened to them and looking for clues as to how their story is connected to Jenni's.

The book builds towards a crisis point of revelation, but clues and warning signs abound so that by the time that point is reached, the revelation hardly comes as unexpected. In fact, the answer has never really been hidden from the reader; fairly early on, it's easy to guess from Jenni's reflections how her story fits with that of the two children, although some details are only ironed out only when Klara makes the discovery. Instead, bringing the story into the light of day is part of a process of Jenni laying her own ghosts; learning to put her history behind her and live in the present day.

Indeed, although the novel is far from being a ghost story, there are moments in the book when Jenni's ghosts take on a degree of physical substance. Whether it's her own emotions leading her to take things too seriously or an actual manifestation of someone from her past is a question that isn't really explored or treated as particularly important; instead, the important thing is to come to terms with something she has long avoided. Although they respond differently to their pasts, there is a sense that Jenni's own background gives her sensitivity to where the rub lies in Klara's story and the ability to draw that out. Guiding Klara through the telling of her WW2 experiences in turn enables Jenni to open up, and having opened up (not entirely inentionally) to Klara she is able to open up also to those much closer to her.

For me, the most beautiful part of the book is in fact this gradual opening up on the part of self-contained, attention-avoidant Jenni, who has settled into a career in ghostwriting precisely because it does not lead to any recognition of herself. There's an interesting swing back and forth between Jenni's interactions with Klara's family, whose intimacy clearly holds some fascination for her, and her retreats back into her own private space where only a couple of her closest friends are allowed in (and even then, it's mostly a case of listening to one friend's show on the radio). Jenni's past has fed into how she deals with close relationships today, and as she comes clean with those closest to her she is able to trust them, and ultimately to trust herself, in a way that she never has done before.

The book is also a fascinating insight into a little-known part of WW2 history as Klara recounts life in the prison camps of Java. For the Japanese at that time, surrender was a shameful thing, and thus their prisoners were treated as wholely unworthy of respect. The experiences of these prisonners have received little attention given the horror of the concurrent holocaust in Europe, but they also deserve recognition. The real history of Javan prison camps is communicated in Klara's story with an openness and a sensitivity that deserves credit - whether you choose to give that credit to Klara as the storyteller, to Jenni as the ghostwiter or directly to Isabel Wolff as the author.