Synopsis
When the internet collapsed, it took the world with it, leaving its digital ghosts behind – and they are hungry. Former photojournalist Katerina fled the overrun cities to the relative safety of her grandmother’s village on the edge of a forest, where she lives a solitary life of herbal medicine and beekeeping.
When a wordless boy finds her in the marketplace with nothing but her name in his pocket, her curiosity won’t allow her to turn him away. But haunting his arrival are rumours of harvest failure and a rampant digital disease stirring up the ghosts, and the mood in the village starts to sour.
Accused of witchcraft, Katerina and Stefan escape into the forest, searching for his missing father and the truth behind the disease. If there is a cure, Katerina alone might find it, but first she must find the courage to trust others – because the ghosts that follow her aren’t just digital.
Review
We Are All Ghosts In The Forest is a weirdly folkloric, tenderly poetic, multi-layered masterpiece of post-apocalyptic fiction. Lorraine Wilson has composed a modern masterwork that is as powerful in its gentleness as its wildness. She has tamed a peculiar kind of magic and imbued these pages with it.
The story takes place following an event where the internet has moved beyond the digital realm and entered our physical world — where ghosts of memes, recipe sites, Facebook profiles, and cat videos haunt the world as spectres that can possess people, cause sickness, and even bring about death. That’s the setting. It’s mystical, but absolutely clear and easy to picture, providing a wonderful playground to approach themes that stab at the heart of our relationship with the natural and digital world.
The way these ghosts latch onto nature is fascinating, creating hazards in woodland and untrodden paths, and this uncanny synchronicity between nature and technology is richly explored. There’s conflict and truth to be found in our dependence upon things greater than ourselves. For instance, Katerina is the main character who we find navigating this world, mixing herbs and tinctures to ward off digital ghosts. She talks to bees for guidance and seeks answers from fragments of the spectral internet — the equivalent of a Google search here takes the form of beseeching a ghost and interpreting cryptic answers. Is technology taking us over? Is it a sickness to our humanity? Is there a safe way to use it? There’s a huge amount of speculation here, but it doesn’t read like sci-fi or fantasy or anything in between. It’s literary folklore that resonates with modernity, and it’s absolutely breathtaking.
So now we’ve got the setting, let’s talk about the plot. It’s an outstanding example of a simple idea that’s done so well, it captures all sorts of nuance in the way it unfolds. The story follows a woman (Katerina) who finds a child to protect (Stefan). Reluctantly, she’ll be pushed to search for the boy’s father, who may have succumbed to a new form of disease caused by exposure to digital ghosts. Sounds straightforward enough, doesn’t it? But this is so much more than a search and rescue. The idea of otherness is expertly interwoven through the narrative. The way it feels to be an outsider — belonging, but never truly belonging — is expressed so well, it feels tangibly real. Katerina — who casts tinctures to ward off digital maladies — is a woman who’s accepted for what she can provide, but shunned for what she is. She’s not one of the locals in her village. She’s an interloper who straddles the line between being welcome and unwelcome. The way Lorraine Wilson brought a similar perspective to life in Mother Sea, her previous novel, was enchanting, but this isn’t a carbon copy repeat of the bubbling springs her readers have already swum. This takes us into fresh water, with greater depth and weightier resonance. There’s an assurance, confidence, and fearlessness about the writing here, and it’s spellbinding to behold.
Another familiar feature of Raine’s work is the slow simmer of a found family dynamic. This Is Our Undoing took us on a slow burn with a female protagonist who develops a closeness to a young, troubled boy. We see that play out here too, but this isn’t an attempt to replay the hits. There’s something unique and gratifying about the bond between Katerina and her new ward, as well as the journey they take together. The boy may be mute, but their progression towards accepting each other speaks volumes.
Oh, and just in case you weren’t convinced that this book is incredible, it also has a ghost cat as a pet sidekick, which is the dream feline for anyone with an allergy! I dare you not to fall in love with the cat. Seriously. You’re going to want one.
Ultimately, this is a novel that will appeal to fans of Lorraine Wilson. But it’s so much more elegantly crafted than anything she’s released before. This is a levelling up — an elevation that is guaranteed to satisfy existing fans and mesmerise anyone who hasn’t yet discovered this amazing author.
Quick disclaimer: don’t go into this book expecting explosions every few seconds or a barrage of pew pew pews or a litany of jump-scares. It’s ponderously, deliberately paced to allow you sufficient room to absorb the weight of every new detail. To say it is slow is to do it a disservice. To say it doesn’t get your pulse pounding isn’t quite right either. But be patient with the story, immerse yourself in it, and you’ll experience something that lasts a lot longer than a quick-fire thrill — something unforgettable.
We Are All Ghosts In The Forest is speculation for the heart. In the hands of someone else, this could so easily have been cerebral sci-fi, or fantasy horror, or it could have slotted into a much more clearly defined subgenre. Instead, this is a book that I’ve found impossible to quantify — it’s a human story about what it means to be connected to something else, be it a person, the natural world, or a digital one. It transcends convention to provide a unique experience that’s every bit as haunting as you hope it will be. It’s a song. It’s a poem. It’s a truth. It’s a life. It’s a myth. It’s a must. It’s amazing. A signature piece from a singular talent.
Lorraine Wilson has not just written a book, she’s produced a landmark of folkloric speculative fiction, provided an utterly captivating take on the post-apocalypse that redefines what sci-fi can be, and in doing so, she’s accomplished something remarkable. If this is a digital ghost, then it is quite welcome to possess my imagination. Listen to the bees, and they’ll speak of this story as honey for the soul. I suggest you sprinkle some salt to bring it near and welcome it onto your shelf as fast as you can.
And do try not to fall too head over heels in love with the cat while you’re at it.
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