I Am The Ghost Here by Kim Samek

Truly, I Am The Ghost Here is one of the best short story collections I’ve read in a long time. The stories are absurd, sci-fi-leaning, woman-centered, and they touch on a huge range of themes: postpartum depression, suicide, motherhood, aging, disability, chronic illness, addiction, climate change, wealth inequality, late-stage capitalism, existentialism, and even more. It sounds like a lot, but Samek manages to weave these ideas together in a way that feels natural within the strange and surreal worlds she builds.

One of the things I appreciated most is how the absurdity of the stories actually makes the themes hit harder. Instead of feeling heavy or overly serious, the stories use absurdist elements to engage in social and political commentary. This combination made them dark, funny, and sad all at once and kept me very engaged throughout the collection. 

I’m generally not the biggest fan of short story collections because they can sometimes feel incohesive but that definitely wasn’t the case here. Each story felt carefully structured, starting and ending at exactly the right moment. None of them dragged on too long or felt unfinished. Because of that, the collection reads smoothly and feels thoughtfully constructed as a whole rather than just a group of disconnected stories.

My favourite was probably the titular story, “I Am The Ghost Here,” where there’s essentially a puppet in the brain controlling someone’s movements. It’s a bizarre premise that really stuck with me. In fact, the other day I found myself thinking about this story again while on the metro, just randomly pondering the idea, before even remembering it was part of this collection. That’s the mark of a good story. 

I also really liked “The Sharpest Knife.” Normally I don’t like when music or fiction reference COVID, because it can pull me out of the story or make it feel too tied to a specific moment in time and I have too many of my own experiences that can maybe get placed onto the content. But here it actually worked really well. It’s the first time I’ve read something that used the pandemic in a way that felt thoughtful rather than distracting, and using absurdist elements was a really interesting way of processing the aftermath of that period.

The environmental themes throughout the collection were also really compelling. Stories dealing with plastic, garbage islands, fires, and environmental collapse, and the darker sides of the tourism industry stood out to me because they managed to capture the strange anxiety of living in a world shaped by those realities. Absurd elements were there but like our entire reality is absurd so why not, let’s go. By adding that humour, it removed a bit of the bleak truth of reality. 

Another aspect I appreciated was how consistently the stories center women’s perspectives. Many of them also take place outside the typical American context that dominates a lot of contemporary fiction, which gives the collection a broader and more interesting perspective.

Overall, Samek did a wonderful job with this collection. Every story felt strong in its own way, and together they form a really memorable and cohesive book. Even after finishing it, the ideas and images from these stories keep resurfacing in my mind, which is always a sign that something has really worked for me as a reader. I look forward to reading whatever Kim Samek puts out next! 

Final Rating: 5/5 and thanks for The Dial Press for the ARC.