In The Ghosting of Anne Armstrong, reader, researcher and subject hunt and haunt each other through a collage of closely reticulated histories, fictions, autofictions and reflections. Between the lines, something uncanny to do with how and why we conjure voices from history manifests itself. This is a book that intrigues, compels and disturbs.
Jenn Ashworth, author of A Kind of Intimacy, Cold Light, and The Friday Gospels
An impressive act of historical reimagining – thoughtful, subtle and frequently surprising.
Ian McGuire, author of The North Water and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Manchester
I quickly found myself very much enjoying the voices in The Ghosting of Anne Armstrong; that is, not only the story but the storytellers. Then, before the experience ended, the author's voice sounded out, letting me wonderfully into the telling – and thus exploring the practice of creative writing and the nature of research through such creative practice. Fabulous!
Graeme Harper, editor of New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing
As an academic historian very familiar with the Anne Armstrong documentation, I found this a fascinating read. It is a brilliant fusion of history and fantasy, based on a continual interplay between the imagined and the historically grounded, and it establishes a vital sense of immediacy by highlighting both the twenty-first and the seventeenth-century local contexts. The reader gets a sense not only of the personalities involved in Anne's story but also a sense of that Northumbrian distinctive landscape within which it unfolded.
James Sharpe, Professor Emeritus of Early Modern History, University of York
his writing propels this story into deliciously frightening, and exciting, territory.
Publishers Weekly
