I enjoyed this collection of well written short ghost stories that entertained me to the end. The author has many variations of ghost here as examples of what happens after we die and ghosts stuck in time . I found the short stories all very well crafted to the readers enjoyment. I highly recommend this book for all who enjoy ghost stories and the paranormal.

Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity. My review opinion is my own.

A fun collection of well-written ghost stories. Great for quick reading. However, I feel like many of the stories just didn't have enough to carry them or old a lot of interest. I did enjoy how the stories were separated into different sections by their overall theme.

Funny, sad, scary, 100 miniature ghost stories make for a must read. I couldn’t put the book down. Not your usual ghost stories but all enjoyable.

I love inventive takes on the supernatural, especially when they are written so well. The author of Ghost Variations has thought a lot about what happens after we die. This book contains 100 postcard stories exploring different versions of what the afterlife might be like. The stories are tiny, but satisfying. I had to pause after each one to let the concept sit in my thoughts for a while.

I am a fan of time travel, so I especially enjoyed the “Ghosts and Time” section. Here we find a ghost coming to terms with not yet having been born, another who seemingly ages a lifetime over the course of one day.

Some of the ghosts in these stories are far from typical:
“In April, the U.S. secretary of philology held a press conference to announce the discovery of a twenty-seventh letter, dead for some centuries, that had been haunting the alphabet at least since the time of Cervantes”

This is a fun, thought-provoking book. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I liked that the various stories had a 'ghost' to them (real or in the sense of 'haunting').

I just found that 100 of them was not what I was interested in reading.

The writing was great, the stories were short, but I felt that there was probably too many ghosts for me.

For those who are looking for more substance books this would probably be a choice for you. Those who are looking for short stories with a 'theme' or an 'artsy' aesthetic, this would be for you.

I received an ARC of this from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm usually not a fan of short stories, I tend to stick to something that has a bit more substance that I can really have time to get into but some of these super short stories really resonated with me. Even though they were a page and a bit long, I'd say half of them, I really enjoyed. Each section is divided according to Ghosts and something else and my favourite section was Ghosts and Time. Some of these stories I wish were longer.

This was an easy, fun little read during October and I'd definitely read more novels by this author.

This is not one of those books you read in one setting. I read 3/4 stories at time and was able to appreciated how well written and how meaningful they are.
They made me think and kept me hooked.
It's not the classic ghost stories but more a set of reflections about different side of human life.
It's the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

i really admired that there were 100 stories in this book, I really enjoyed each and every one. They were all entertaining and I had fun reading this.

I received an e-arc of this book through NetGalley.
This book was an interesting approach to how normal people turn into ghosts, both mentally and physically. It was different from the usual representation of ghosts, which makes it stand out. I believe it is a book that is best read little by little. Some stories invite you to a more profound reflection. Having the stories divided by themes was also a very interesting choice.

The Ghost Variations by Kevin Brockmeier is a collection of a 100 flash stories, all involving ghosts, though the meaning of that word is stretched in some of them. In structure, style, flavor, and tone, the collection reminded me most of Einstein Dreams by Alan Lightman, although it also calls up echoes of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges.

The stories are grouped into various sections, such as “Ghosts and Memory”, “Ghosts and Nature,” “Ghosts and Love and Friendship,” and “Ghosts and Family.” In addition, Brockmeier offers up a (“partial”) concordance of themes, listing all the stories that somehow touch on animals, plants, solitude, heartbreak, technology, and other topics.

The stories run a broad gamut of plot, style, and tone. Some are lyrical, almost prose poem-like; others more grounded and prosaic. Some are moving, others thought-provoking, others humorous, though even these vary in style along a spectrum of slyly witty to bluntly bawdy. One in particular (“Playtime”) is an out and out horror story, though a few may qualify as well, if in less creepy fashion. Depending on their background, readers may as well discover references to or plays on other works or to pop culture. Star Trek makes an appearance, for instance, along with the Twilight Zone, an old HBO series, some classic myths/fairy tales, and I’m sure there are several I missed. If there’s a common thread that runs through nearly all of them, it’s that the dead are often just as lost, insecure, and just as befuddled by their (non) existence as we confused living are.

I had a number of favorites, sometimes due to a neat premise but most often I fell in love with the writing, so most of these fell into the lyrically haunting category. Here, for instance, is the end of “A Story Swaying Back and Forth”: “This — this moment — this was where eternity would take place, not in the glow of paradise, and not in the blackness of oblivion, but in a stillness charged with memory and premonition.” And here is a bit of “A Lesser Feeling”: “They rush here and there, pouring themselves through one emotion after another, like dirt through a row of sieves. Their lives pass so quickly they might as well be ghosts. From any but the most sidelong angle, they seem not to be there at all.” I could quote a good amount more, but I won’t spoil the pleasure of coming across these passages in the reading. I’ll just note that like these two, many of my favorites, beyond the vivid, poetic language, also had a deep sense of warmth and humanity at their core.

As with any collection of short stories, perhaps inevitably a bit more so given the number here the stories do vary in their quality and impact. Some are merely “cute,” others easily forgotten, and a few leave no impression at all. I mentioned how the book reminded me of Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams (one of my favorite books, btw, and one I highly recommend), but that collection is nearly 100 pages shorter, and so is more consistently strong. Here, I wonder if Brockmeier’s goal (I assume that’s what it was) of achieving the nice round number of 100 stories worked against him. I think culling the book by a quarter or so probably would have made for a stronger overall impact, but despite that, the good stories were so good that it’s still an easy book to recommend, though I’d also suggest reading it not in a single sitting, or two, but instead dipping in and spreading the reading out over a week or longer.

“The ghost resided in a country full of clocks. Some of the clocks were trees, methodically adding rings to their trunks. Some of the clocks were breezes, marking a moment or two in the grass they ruffled or the curtains they churned. And some of the clocks were people, their hearts rhythmically pumping out the seconds. Behind the entire living world was the drum of time passing. Silently, from his gap in the air, the ghost listened as it rushed along.”
{Story Twenty Eight: The Whirl of Time}

‘The Ghost Variations’ by Kevin Brockmeier consists of one hundred short ghost stories. But these are not your normal run of the mill ghost stories. Oh, a few of them are, but so many are just…more.

The stories are divided into eleven sections:
Ghosts and Memory
Ghosts and Fortune
Ghosts and Nature
Ghosts and Time
Ghosts and Speculation
Ghosts and Vision
Ghosts and Other Senses
Ghosts and Belief
Ghosts and Love and Friendship
Ghosts and Family
Ghosts and Words and Numbers

There are a few vengeful ghosts here, but for the most parts the ghosts in these stories are sad, or confused, or occasionally quite happy to be ghosts. Some of the stories contain no actual ghosts at all, but the hauntings of memories, or regrets, or desires. Some ghosts are inhuman: the ghost of the trees cut down to build a house, the ghosts of a lifelong bachelor’s nightly self-pleasures, the ghosts of wishes.

Some stories are funny, some are disturbing, many are thought provoking, none are truly frightening. After reading this I imagine to the author to be exceptionally intelligent, a deep thinker. These are intellectual ghost stories. And most of them are brilliant.

‘The Ghost Variations’ has had its original publication date pushed back to March of 2021, so it is still a little way off, but it’s available for preorder on Amazon and worth the wait.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

**I was provided an electronic ARC by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for honest review.**

Kevin Brockmeier brings a plethora of ghost stories in the anthology The Ghost Variations. Brockmeier further divides the anthology into similar themes, which made for a pleasant reading experience.

My issues with this book are very similar to my issues with just about every anthology; some stories you'll love, some you won't care about, and some you may actively dislike. All in all, that produces a middle ground feeling for the collection as a whole. I do like the way that Brockmeier split up the collection by theme, and do enjoy his writing style in general.

My personal recommendation is for readers to enjoy this book a story or two at a time to allow the stories to have full impact. I actually read the book all the way through at once which led to an awkward muddle of stories which likely decreased my enjoyment in the end.

I did enjoy the work overall, and would be interested in more works by this author.

The Ghost Variations turned out to be an interesting read for me, mainly because I'm so mixed on my feelings. This book is a collection of short ghost stories; one hundred of them, to be exact. Having that many stories in the collections means that they really are SHORT stories - only a couple of pages each.

The book is broken down into chapters, such as Ghosts and Memory, Ghosts and Nature, Ghosts and Love and Friendship, with each section containing several stories that fit the theme.

The writing is lyrical, atmospheric, and beautiful, and the stories vary from touching to scary to heartfelt to funny. The most intriguing stories, I felt, fell under the Ghosts and Nature chapter, including the saddest - and my personal favorite - "Elephants."

That being said, each story was so short that I rarely felt satisfied when I finished them. Almost every story felt like it ended abruptly and left me wanting more. I do like that we see so many different variations of the ghost story theme, some of which are very original, but I wish they were longer and more gratifying.

This is a great book to have when you have ten or fifteen minutes to kill, but doesn't really work for me as a sit-down-and-read-for-a-while book. I've never read anything by Kevin Brockmeier before, but based on the prose alone I can't wait to pick up some other titles by this author!

This is a wildly mixed bag. Not for sustained, silent reading, but more for snack reading. So short, each tale is like a ghost story potato chip. Bet you can't read just one.

Kevin Brockmeier is gifted, both with prose and a perspective I find fascinating. The range of ideas presented in these 100 stories is so broad, yet I found almost all of them extremely entertaining. Several of them left me staring at the final words in awe of just how thought-provoking such a short tale can be when executed by a master of the form.

Some may wonder why it took me two months to read a book I enjoyed so much. The truth is, I only allowed myself a few stories at a time because I wanted to make it last.

I truly hope Brockmeier expands a few of these awesome ideas into full length stories, but even if that never happens I’m thrilled I got them in this form.

Beware, these ghost stories are REALLY short !

I dove in this book expecting spooky reads, chills going down my spine and so on ! In fact, it was a bit cleverer than that. We get stories about ghosts, and mostly about normal people who turned into ghosts, both physically or mentally. I thought it nice to explore all the aspects of how people can be ghosts, and what ghosts could actually do IRL, instead of just exploring the traditional representation of ghosts.

Some stories were really deep and meaningful, which I found impressing. However, since I expected a spooky book, I didn't connect much with the more philosophical stories. I must admit this isn't only due to the themes. It's also because the plots are so short ! Every story is less than 5 pages (on Kindle, I don't have the reference for the physical copies), which made me unable to engage emotionnaly with approximately 75% of them. Add to that the fact that I didn't understand all the stories and you get a quite confused Jade !

That being said, I thought the author's writing style was fabulous. I should probably look into his other works if he has any. Even though I couldn't connect with all stories, some of them were so well written I managed to dive in their little world within the 5 pages, which is pretty hard to do !
I also really liked the fact that the book and the stories are divided by theme. You get an "animals" theme, a "creepy" theme, etc. If there are some topics you don't like, you can skip them ! Every theme and story is detailed in an index at the end of the book, so it's really practical !

This could be a read for you if you don't want to engage in a big book, with a looooooooong plot. Here, everything is short and efficient. With so many differents themes in the book, you're bound to find something you like. There's something for everyone, and every taste !

I was not sure what I was going to get when I first chose this book. I half expected a bunch of little horror stories and that is not what I got. I am so happy about that! The 100 little stories are written in such beautiful prose that you are instantly swept off into this world of ghosts. I loved all of the stories of the ghosts and I loved the mix of genres throughout the tales.

I love short stories. However this one was so hard to read. The stories were too short and the stories just ended so abruptly I had to stop to make sure I didn’t miss something more than once. A good majority were not even scary. Very disappointed. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

If we go by The Ghost Variations, perhaps the afterlife is not so different from life; perhaps ghost carry with them the same frustrations, longings, absurdity, or dignity. Kevin Brockmeier tells us 100 campfire stories that are unequivocal talking about something else. The reader cannot help but wonder who the real ghosts are, them or us?

NetGalley ARC

These super short ghost stories are brilliant for reading in short bursts and during period of low concentration. The brevity of the stories allows ideas to be explored that might burst like a soap bubble in a longer narrative.

The stories are in turn terrifying, heartwarming and perplexing (in a good way)..

I'm halfway through and have not found a duff story. It is ideal for examining issues around death and the afterlife and I will definitely finish this