Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt

“The ghost stories are also love stories” Siri Hustvedt
 
Ghost Stories is Siri Hustvedt's most personal work yet, a searing and intimate meditation on grief, memory, and enduring love, written in the aftermath of the death of her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster.

It is a patchwork-quilt book that stitches together memories from over forty years of love and life together: journal entries Siri wrote between early November 2023, when Paul first became ill, and 3 May 2024, the day of his funeral; e-mails Siri sent to friends during Paul's cancer treatment; notes Paul sent her over the course of their relationship; and three love letters Siri wrote to him in 1981, when he left her for a period of nine or ten days to return to his former life with his first wife and son.

The book also contains Paul Auster's last ever piece of writing. In the last month of his life, he had began writing what he hoped would be a small book of letters to Siri and his grandson, Miles Auster Hustvedt Ostrander, born on 1st January 2024. Paul was too weak to finish it as planned, but the thirty-five pages he did manage to write are interwoven within Siri's words in Ghost Stories.

The result is an emotional, full-bodied story of Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster's life together, an exploration of how grief unmoors time and how the intimacy of a shared life continues to mark the everyday. 
 
Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt is coming May 2026 and is available to pre-order now.
 
With thanks to Siri and Spencer Ostrander for the use of their family photos.