I wanted to enjoy this book--Jeanette Winterson AND ghosts, how could this go wrong? By the end of the first "chapter" I had my answer. This introduction sounded more like a high school term paper on the history of ghost stories in the media than any useful introduction for her short stories. After a few pages, I found myself skipping and skipping and skipping through pages that covered the beliefs of early China, Shelley's Frankenstein, then the latest Netflix series, without any focus on why this is even a necessary chapter. I was in such a foul mood by the end of this, along with her instruction of how to read the stories, that by the time the first story actually started, I stopped caring to read the book entirely. What a strange tone to set for what should have been an interesting series of short stories.

I received an ARC for this book from NetGalley for free. (Also I'm extremely late reading and reviewing this so sorry about that.)

I was surprised how much I found myself enjoying these ghost stories. I really enjoyed the modern take of the technological aspects of the first three stories. Ghosts in metaverse? Yes, please. I wish there had been more of this type stories in this collection.

Some other standout stories for me where two connected stories that were about a couple moving temporarily to a old rundown building and how their relationship gets infected by the past of the house. And a story that was about a professional ghost party organizer (or something like that) who ends up inviting a real ghost to the party.

Like all short story collections there were some stories I didn't really care for, but I found myself enjoying majority of them.

Generally I find short story collections to be a hit or a miss. This one was a hit, and not just that but every story in it was a hit! I really enjoyed the different interpretations of what a ghost story can be.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.

Night Side of the River is a collection of ghost stories that reinvigorate the supernatural genre with Jeanette Winterson's trademark wit, imagination, and style. Winterson blends the traditional elements of haunted houses, restless spirits, and eerie encounters with the contemporary themes of technology, identity, and reality. The result is a dazzling and provocative exploration of what it means to be human in a world where the boundaries between the living and the dead, the real and the virtual, are constantly shifting and blurring.

Winterson divides the book into four sections: Devices, Places, People, and Visitations. Each section contains stories that challenge our assumptions and expectations about the nature of ghosts and hauntings. In Devices, we encounter ghosts that manifest through artificial intelligence, such as a malicious app that torments a widow or a virtual reality simulation that offers a better version of a disappointing husband. In Places, we visit haunted locations that trap and transform their visitors, such as a dower house that reveals its dark secrets or a ghost tour that goes horribly wrong. In People, we meet characters that are haunted by their past, their present, or their future, such as a soldier who sees visions of his dead comrades or a woman who is stalked by her abusive ex-lover. In Visitations, we witness the interactions between the living and the dead, such as a seance that blurs the lines between human and machine or a widow who reunites with her husband in the metaverse.

Winterson's stories are not only spooky and suspenseful, but also insightful and inventive. She uses the ghost story as a vehicle to explore the complex and often contradictory aspects of human existence, such as grief, love, memory, identity, and morality. She also questions the role and impact of technology on our lives, especially as it creates new possibilities and challenges for communication, connection, and representation. Winterson's writing is elegant and engaging, combining lyrical prose, witty dialogue, and clever twists. She also pays homage to the literary tradition of ghost stories, referencing and reworking the works of authors such as Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and Roald Dahl.

Night Side of the River is a brilliant and original collection of ghost stories that will haunt and delight readers of all ages and tastes. Winterson proves once again that she is one of the most gifted and versatile writers working today, and that the ghost story is a genre that can still surprise and inspire us.

🌟🌟🌟🌟💫

A wonderful, brilliantly-written, and wildly eclectic collection of ghost-themed short stories, from one of my favorite authors, interspersed with several ghostly introspections based on her own real life experiences. The stories run the gamut from spine-tingling and sinister, to heartbreaking and grieving, all the way to downright reflective and philosophical.

Sprinkled throughout and reappearing within the collection are several themes, including the intersection of AI (and technology-generated realities) with ghostly other-worldly realms and happenings, as well as musings on hauntings (internal or externally generated? Both?) relationship to religious “knowing”, time and space, memory, and the nature of consciousness.

All in all, the result is a fascinating literary package, worthy of any lover of the spooky, the spectral or the spirited.

As in all collections, there are some stories included that speak more directly to this reader, standing out as what can only be called superb. My very favorites are listed below.

- No Ghost Ghost Story

A heartbreaking look at grief and loss, as told by Simon, who is recently dealing with the death of his husband William.

“Another day. The sun is gone. Morning hardens on the wall. “

As Simon muses on his unbearable presence now that he is alone, he thinks about life, and death, and how we humans - as energy, as patterns, as atomic particles made up mostly of emptiness - manage to sense physical touch, and to love, and to experience life and death in all their mystery.

Could it be that Simon, desperately searching for a sign that William is still present, in some form, in his new reality, may not be disappointed, after all?
—-
- The Undiscovered Country

A follow-on story, now told from William’s perspective, that is spectacularly poignant, (pun intended?), as the William-spirit seeks a way to protect and cherish the man he loved before moving on to his now new world of “strangeness”.

“I cover him with the last of me, and I love him, and he sleeps.”

Beautiful.
—-
- Devices Apparition

Although Bella’s husband John has died, her JohnApp (with all of Johns personality and memories) continues to call and harangue her. Until Bella finds a creative solution to her predicament.

As techno-creepy as any episode of Black Mirror, this story is as chilling as it is engaging.
—-

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

I absolutely love gothic short story collections and Winterson has hit this one out of the ballpark!!! I was frightened and kept a light on while reading, that’s for sure…

Winterson's storytelling is both gloriously gothic and unnervingly contemporary as she explores themes of grief, revenge, and the ways in which technology can disrupt the boundary between life and death. With a fearless gaze into the realm of the supernatural, "Night Side of the River" promises to be an ingeniously provocative and spooky collection of ghostly tales.

Read NIGHT SIDE OF THE RIVER by Jeanette Winterson if you love ghost stories, the horrors & possibilities of the virtual world, oranges, grief narratives, hauntings, the space between lives, the stories we tell, being very cold, soup, the dissolving of time, support ghosts,, theatrics & liminal spaces.

It's been a long time since I've read a book of ghost stories, and I'm so glad I did! Winterson's book is an indulgent delight for a person who wants a bit of spookiness with a literary, thoughtful writing style.

I love Jeanette Winterson and I could read and love the shopping list. This an excellent collection of ghost stories and I loved them
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Thanks Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC of Night side of the river!

If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that i love love love a good ghost story. So it's safe to say i love love loved these stories by jeanette winterson. Night side of the river contains ghost stories divided by four central themes: devices, places, people and visitations. Places was my favourite theme - i suppose i have a special weakness for stories in which a house, a place or a location can be a haunting in and of itself.

Days later and i'm still thinking about the creepy double story 'A fur coat/Boots', which was my fave in this collection by far. The end of 'Fountain with lions' had me tearing up. I regularly felt a chill run down my spine while reading this book, but i also felt that a lot of these stories went a lot deeper than just scaring me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of ghostly tales, but then, I may be biased; I’m a sucker for a good haunting. Of course, I did have my favorites.

I especially enjoyed “A Fur Coat”, “App-Arition” and “The Spare Room”, primarily because the haunted in these stories isn’t necessarily the living, but the dead haunting themselves or one another. Indeed, that was the attraction for me in Winterson’s tales: they challenged the concept of haunting, yet remained authentic to the trope of the traditional ghost story. Readers shouldn’t expect to be thrown into a new genre here; this is not speculative horror, but tried-and-true revised into immersive stories.

And, of course, the revelations in these stories are more about the living than the dead, which is ultimately the mark of a good short story.

The collection as a whole is fantastic, and follows through on this tightrope balance between showing the reader something novel and satisfying their hankering and expectations of the “ghost story” trope. In some stories, Winterson brings in an element of the contemporary through technology and devices we use today, in other cases, it is the characters’ quotidian lives in the present — marred somehow with an encounter with death and the dead — that makes it clear to the reader there is an anachronistic meeting of time here.

Winterson’s writing is superb, well-suited to the genre of the short story form. With few words wasted on exposition and an emphasis on characters’ thoughts, Winterson quickly immerses the reader in the story. It is everything a reader wants from this short form.

Halloween has passed, but Winter is upon us; put this on your list for this year’s gloomy, deathly season.

Very enjoyable set of ghost stories, some of them were creepier than others. My least favorite were the ones from the Devices section. Only skimmed the authors sections in between stories.

More mysterious than horrific, this is a nice collection of ghost stories for grownups. Winterson's writing is moody and atmospheric, her characters lonely and defeated . . . the perfect combination for engendering things that go bump in the night. Highly recommended for anyone looking for some mild chills.

Jeanette Winterson has long been a favorite of mine. Even when I wasn't a hundred percent sure of what was going on, there were lesbians so it was all good.
"Night Side of the River" is a bit different. For anyone who may have found some of her previous works inaccessible due to either the writing or the lesbians, will have no cause to skip this book of wonderful ghost stories.
Some reviewers seemed to prefer one part over others (e.g. technology or grief). I loved them all and was especially taken with Winterson's take on ghosts and our digital "afterlives".
Jeanette Winterson has always been an astute and masterful writer and this book is no different. If you enjoy ghost stories I really think you should read this book.
Thank you, Jeanette Winterson!
#NetGalley

OMG I am so thankful to Grove Atlantic, Jeanette Winterson, Dreamscape Media, and Netgalley for granting me audio and digital access to this collection of short ghost stories right before Halloween, providing me with the perfect mood-setter for the season of spooks.

I received an ARC via NetGalley, my opinion is my own.

I really enjoy much of Winterson's writing, but whenever she takes on technology, the effects are hit and miss. This is a spooky collection of short stories with a few personal essays (and an introduction) thrown in. Winterson's talent for turn of phrase is on full display in the latter, with occasional flashes of brilliance in the former. The stories verge in tone - there's a bit of Poe-esque, some King-the-Shining, some Black Mirror - and subject matter - visitations are technological, supernatural and historical. There's attention given to all kinds of ghosts, and the vibes differ, too, from humour and wistfulness, grief and violence, love and old fashioned spookiness. I think it would work better as a paper copy (where you can easily choose your favorites and return to them periodically) than as an ebook (which is interesting, given the author's preoccupation with posthumanity and our potential transition from flesh and blood to digital beings).

I liked the personal essays best (and found the instances of personal hauntings described by Winterson to be the spookiest). But, well, I could live without her writing about avatars and AI! I just don't find her persuasive on the subject (even if occasionally quite witty).

Thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for my arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was an interesting collection. Jeanette Winterson is such a fun writer and I love how she tackles the ghost story. The sections in-between the stories were interesting too, especially as a writer myself, I found it interesting the way Winterson was basically facilitating a discussion on the "ghost story." I think this has a little bit of everything for everyone and although not every story is a homerun, it's still worthwhile to read through.

Interesting takes on the traditional ghost story, and I enjoyed that this book gave more comfort than spooks. Between stories, there are meditations on the function and context of ghost stories as a whole, and I found this book questioning the very concept of ghosts. What about ghost stories frighten us? What about a life in the beyond comforts us? What keeps a soul tethered to existence? The first few chapters that also introduced the technology and devices component were most compelling to me, and I could see them being made into Black Mirror episodes. I also very much enjoyed the story of the wedding - a bit of queer cosmic justice.

Thank you so much to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for sending me this advanced readers' copy!

A very spooky book of short stories, on subjects ranging from the ‘traditional’ hauntings to high tech paranormal stories.
I must admit the first story about a phone app was very creepy indeed which I was pleasantly surprised about.
Only a talent such as Jeanette Winterson could pull off such a variety of successful ghostly stories.