Twilight Ghost

A twilight ghost, we learn early on in Magdalen Nabb’s novel, is ‘a kind of long-lasting memory that … fades away as the first star comes out and the day dies.’ By the book’s closing line, that first star has indeed appeared and the story’s heroine, 11-year-old Carrie, is emerging a more self-assured young woman. At first extremely unhappy when changing circumstances compel her family to move to her grandmother’s house, she is soon involved in a time-slip adventure which – occasionally quite frighteningly – gives her glimpses of how earlier family members had had to cope with their dilemmas and tragedies. It is not a particularly original theme, but Nabb’s lyricism and her confidence in moving between present and historical time raise her story above the more conventional examples of the genre.