[available online]
A Word Without Ghosts
Language is haunted, controlling, transforming. By existing in the realm of language, you exist in the realm of symbols, in the realm of time beyond time. In the realm beyond words. A sister finds the ghost of a brother, a mother, and is almost turned into a bird.
From the review at The Fix Online:
“A Word Without Ghosts” is even more vivid. As arresting and full of memorable imagery as it is, the dreamlike surrealism with which Paul Jessup permeates its fictional physics left this reviewer reeling. While undeniably sensual, grammatical hiccups and an embarrassment of magical symbols don’t leave room for much coherency. In some ways, it recalls the sort of weird psychodrama Neil Gaiman’s MirrorMask dished out. The easiest (and most reductive) way to synopsize this one is that a birdlike sister and a bearlike brother suffer odd metamorphoses in a ruined station full of books while sexual tensions bubble to the surface. Jessup created a much more successful story when he wrote his haunting (and successfully cohesive) “Ghost Technology from the Sun,” which appeared in Postscripts #12. I hope to read more of his work in the future.
