The Re-Enchanted Ghost in Contemporary American Fiction

Introduction

Chapter 1. Trauma and Transformation in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones

Chapter 2. The Five People You Meet in Heaven: Mitch Albom’s American Fable

Chapter 3: Eco-Spectrality in Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead

Chapter 4. Freedom From Certainty in George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo

Afterword

Biography

Karen Frances McCarthy holds a Doctorate in English Literature from the University of Birmingham (UK) and is an adjunct faculty member at New York University School of Professional Studies, where she lectures on the cultural and religious intersections of speculative fiction. She is the author of two books, including the creative non-fiction work Till Death Don't Us Part, and focuses on integrating academic scholarship with spectral research.

A groundbreaking exploration of postsecular ghost literature, McCarthy deftly navigates the spectral terrain of contemporary America, weaving in broader literary and cultural contexts. The result is a compelling portrait of selfhood, connectivity, and liminal afterlife spaces. This is essential reading for scholars of contemporary fiction and the evolving role of spirituality in literature.

—   Eleanor Dobson, Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century Literature, University of Birmingham, UK

 

McCarthy provides a fresh perspective on literary specters by finding in contemporary American fiction not the haunting ghosts of old but ghosts that are themselves haunted. In a compelling study, she demonstrates how, as postsecular figures in spiritually syncretic narratives, they undergo arduous, unexpected, yet redemptive journeys from disenchantment to re-enchantment.

—   Esther Peeren, Professor of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam

 

Ghost stories simply will not go away, and McCarthy explains why in her exploration of how they evolved in the last quarter of the twentieth century. She shows how ghost narratives provide a vehicle for addressing some of every culture’s most perplexing problems, even in a “post-everything” world in the West.

—   Harry Lee Poe, Edgar Allan Poe scholar and Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture, Emeritus

 

In this fine book, Karen Frances McCarthy identifies a body of contemporary supernatural fiction that eschews shopworn gothic effects to re-imagine ghosts as more haunted than haunting. McCarthy’s analysis shows this “re-enchanted” ghost to be a potent metaphor for healing our fragmented culture. This rare academic study will haunt you.

—   Dale Bailey, Professor of English Literature, Lenoir-Rhyne University, NC

 

McCarthy opens a new chapter in the interpretation of ghost stories.  She closely reads four recent novels that newly position ghosts as liminal agents of their redemption rather than spooky haunters of embodied life. She shows how they reflect spiritual fragmentation, disconnection, and uncertainty, and offer a path to healing our own disenchanted lives.

—   Ernest Rubinstein, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Humanities, New York University School of Professional Studies

 

In evocative, thought-provoking prose, McCarthy compellingly restages the drama of the literary ghost in modern American fiction, offering an array of insightful interventions into notions of loneliness, liminality, haunting, and human connection.

—   Rona Cran, Associate Professor of Twentieth-Century American Literature, University of Birmingham, UK