Mickelsson's Ghosts
John Gardner
1989 · Vintage Books · 590 pages
About this book
The critically acclaimed final masterwork of John Gardner: an American novel haunted with macabre and cerebral elements. The final novel by Gardner, Mickelsson's Ghosts, originally published in 1982 just months before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident, is a tour de force. The protagonist Peter Mickelsson, a former star philosophy professor at Brown, relocates to Binghamton University. On the verge of bankruptcy, separated from his wife, in questionable mental health, and drinking heavily, Mickelsson decid…
Who this is for
AI · Sample
A patient, character-first epic that asks you to sit with worldbuilding before any payoff arrives. Readers who love long arcs and slow-burn relationships tend to finish it twice; readers chasing momentum often DNF in the first hundred pages. Plan for unhurried evenings.
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A character-driven with strong prose, melancholic and immersive read.
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