Book Review: Ghost Town - A Liverpool Shadowplay
The funny thing about memory is the act of remembering itself – when we flex these muscles it can be fractured, fraught with double meanings and inconsistencies. Sifting through it is a challenge, and few do it as deftly as Jeff Young in his Costa Prize shortlisted memoir, ‘Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay’.
It’s been a troubled journey to get here; no physical launch to speak of until October 2021, popping up on my radar like its namesake, a ghost of a book. Inside the prose is very much alive, but often shines best when it lifts beyond the veil and uses its non-linear structure to speak to the dead.
A Liverpool boy through and through, Young (a writer for theatre, radio and screen who has worked on numerous art projects) has tried to capture a disappearing Liverpool, but one I and many others can still recognise. Buildings and objects hold a particularly unquantifiable value, like his grandmother’s locks of hair or the since-demolished Futurist cinema. Trips across the city to people-watch are not just urban rambles but pilgrimages. “And I’m walking with [Lowry]… From the age of seventeen, I’ve been following Lowry down back alleys and into derelict cinemas.”
Not all these things are unique only to Young though, and growing up – the acute and instantly recognisable pains of coming of age – are released in urgent bursts of colour throughout the scattered stories. These are the parts that left me breathless, exhilarated. I can hear the music as he lists it, feel the purring power of Mods’ scooters and the nauseating tilt of the fairground. It seems to me that in this intentionally fractured book, childhood starts as embers and adolescence draws the roaring fire of the city.
Despite these chapters of frenetic energy, it would be remiss to not highlight the underpinning of humour, fright, curiosity and study. Young has gained these memories through loss. Loss of loved ones, loss of the Liverpool he once knew, loss of items that held so much meaning as talismans to a former world. “As I wander through the city I realise I am feeling a kind of spiritual loss. My connection with the city I have loved all my life has become frayed.” “Chasing ghosts” made me think about where I came from and what has already been lost, and I’m sure it will for you too.
Bittersweet, packed with reading recommendations and so full of quiet longing that it will hurt you, this is a fitting tribute to a sad, strong and beautiful city, taken straight from the corners of Young’s mind. It made me want to go back to Liverpool; it made me want to call home.
‘Ghost Town’ is available in hardback, paperback and audiobook form from Little Toller Books.
Written by Laura Jane Round
Laura Jane Round is a bisexual writer and performance poet from the Black Country, England. A Liverpool John Moores University alumni, she spent three years on the Liverpool performance circuit. Her debut pamphlet, ‘The Coveted’, was released September 2021 by Cerasus Poetry.
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