Luca, a native of Manchester, finds himself return to the city after dropping out of his doctoral degree.
The PhD represents an intellectual, complex, and at times, ideal world. and Luca's life outside of the PhD is more shattered.
In need of money, Luca turns to ghostwriting.
MS, philosophy, language, classes, trauma, belonging, being true to one's self, being between two worlds and minds, mental and real/physical dislocation, misunderstandings are some of the many layers and themes of this interesting book.
The writing is 3.5 stars.
The themes and topics 5.
The overall execution is 4, in my experience. With a bit more editing, I would have enjoyed it more.
Though, I recommend it for its interesting and authentic themes and characters/situations.

I was really eager to read this as I have MS and wanted to see how this was handled. I liked how reflective and lyrical the writing is but only managed to get 40% of the way in before abandoning the book. It lacked pace and forward motion for me and I just couldn't care enough about the protagonist enough to carry on reading.

Poor Ghost! by Gabriel Flynn successfully captures that feeling of being someone who struggles with their natural instinct to self-sabotage and how to move forward with life when you've no idea what you're doing.

This book delivers what it promises : a story about a man struggling after his failing at his PhD, coming back to his hometown and being offered a job to write the story of another man. Frustrated ambition, intelletucalism and memories are the centre of the book, down to its structure. We follow our narrator in the present timeline and wander into the past before coming to the present.
Once again, books set in a contemporary setting and telling a story of day to day life isn't for me. I couldn't connect with Luca and found him quite unlikable, despite my empathy. Normally, I don't really mind unlikable characters as long as I am invested in their story. Saddly, it wasn't the case here, leading me to put the book aside half way through.
It's not that the book is bad. It is well enough written, not the most vivid prose I've read, but doing it's job. But the overall sense of misery and the movement between present and past had a tendency to annoy me, and I had no drive to pursue my reading, so here we are.
People looing for a quite realistic novel, with themes of lose, failure, love and stories might find this book to their liking.