We Are All Ghosts In The Forest by Lorraine Wilson
I would like to thank Solaris for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher - Solaris
Published - Out Now
Price - £18.99 hardback £7.99 Kindle eBook
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.
Fantasy and the future are not automatically linked in many people’s minds. While you can argue science fiction is a spin-off genre of fantasy for most people we tend to think the future is for technology (or sometimes the end of it) but rarely do we think of actual magic being in it (insert Clarke Advanced technology quote to explain the odd Star Trek/Doctor Who diversion from that – but we are not discussing that today!) . We can accept the past to be magical where all the myth and folklore is true; we can imagine magic still hiding within our own world in so many contemporary and urban fantasies but few books go past the present day. TL Huchu uses it intriguingly in their excellent Edinburgh Nights series but even that imagines a secret history for our world and now in Lorraine Wilson’s entrancing We Are All Ghosts in the Forest creates a fascinating new future world mixing echoes of the past with a post- apocalyptic future and yet delivers a key message about human kindness. It is also cements Wilson as a excellent storyteller as this is just a pleasure to read.
In the future the internet escaped and broke up into our world. As well as the end of computers, mobiles and digital technology it also created the ‘ghosts’ fragments of the digital world appearing to us as real fragments be they people, images or even stories whispered on the wind. Disturbing, sometimes beautiful and on occasion also able to infect humans with some form of connection sending them mad. Now the world is quieter, bigger and more dangerous.
In what used to be Estonia and near Tallinn Katerina has settled in her grandmother’s house and changed from being an acclaimed photographer to the village’s herbalist (and some would say hedge-witch) she wanders for trade. On her last outing she finds a strange mute teenager named Stefan whose father has written a note telling her he asked Stefan to find her and look after him. She has no idea who either is. Stefan’s arrival is poorly timed though as rumours of a new digital ghost disease running rampant. Suspicions and visions in the village raise their head and Katerina is once again seen as an outsider. Katerina wants to hunker down but all the signs point towards she needs to find Stefan’s father but the wider world and the nearby growing forests are filled with dangers.
There is a brilliant dissonance to reading this story. We have the collapse of our world, a regression to a much lower technology based society where even going the next village is now a long and perilous journey. Memories of what is today’s world are fading and yet while the science fiction reader in me is expecting explanations and resolutions to how the Internet broke up and became these digital ghosts Wilson talks about this as background and as a threat but often without any real explanation. Instead what we have here is more a future folk tale - this is a world magic has come back to and as history shows us that itself created waves of suspicion and distrust.
Katerina has become the herbalist of the area. She has tonics for pain relief, anxiety and many more things that she grades every day in but she also has some other inherited gifts. She can scary into water, she can see the messages of the bees and she can commune with ghosts. Wilson uses the first quarter of the book to just paint this world and as Stefan is a newcomer we get to explore the this little society in miniature. Wilson is painting little scenes of characters, local myths, herb lore and magic and this is the foundation for the rest of the story. It’s fascinating as it’s not quite the dystopia we are used to but at the same time life here is fragile doing well but has weak points, it won’t take too much to unsettle the balance.
In terms of immediate stakes this is a story again where saving the world and restoring modern life back is not the plot. It’s a middle aged woman deciding to help a teenager find his father albeit in a world where there is magic and ghosts. Place this a few hundred years ago and this would easily be a historical fantasy but with motorbikes running on ethanol, broken up concrete roads and the digital ghosts it’s a gorgeous fusion of genres creating something new. Katerina is drawn towards the massive forest where she sees signs via her powers that the father is and here Wilson paints the forest as something alive, something that pulls ghosts to it and there is a fascinating idea of wolves being infected with all the legends and stories of wolves we have so they become sorting more sentient and in many ways more dangerous. One of the most classic dangers of folklore and here they really put the reader on guard. This isn’t a child’s fairy tale it’s an adult one where we are finding the world is more weirder, magical and dangerous than we are used to.
Wilson has in all their books to date been accomplished as using nature and also the science behind it to create a powerful background but also importantly character in itself to each story. This tale is no exception and I loved the fusion of the old world with the new. Witches using bees is old folklore and one all Pratchett fans will be aware of but here as an example Wilson imagines seeing the world though bee’s eyes. How they could possibly predict the future and a recurring motif locally described as a ‘gold-neutrino-F Sharp waveform’ again and again heralds some form of prophecy and connection for Katerina to follow. As we get into the latter half of the book this new digital ghost disease is shown to be something new, dark and dangerous and exactly how in the world can you treat it?
If that was all there was to the story this would be just a very good poetical and enjoyable quest tale but Wilson actually is exploring a bigger theme. Being human, being part of society and doing the right thing - the power of being kind and the dangers of not. Katerina is an outsider as the witch but we also start to notice that she is the only woman of colour in the village and although her family has lived her for generations once again this is seen as making her different. With Stefan being non-verbal it’s very noticeable how the villagers are turning hostile especially as the rumours of a new disease grow. Katerina wants to keep her head down and the urge to help Stefan and not rock the boat is a powerful competing start to the story.
As that progresses though we see exactly how paranoia and suspicion of outsiders grows and grows. It’s noticeable how the story highlights people having to hide their differences be that being gay or neurodiverse which it is noted being white helps too. When people are in trouble rather than help it’s a lot easier to light the torches and pick up the pitchforks and Wilson really makes that danger come alive in multiple points in the story. The question the book asks is though - do you just continue to not act or do you still do what you think is right. Katerina has to put everything she had fought to get on the line and the world kicks her in the teeth. Do you stop or not? It’s a really powerful story and one that she has to do again and again even not always winning. Wilson doesn’t give this a diary tale ending of sugary goodness but it’s a hopeful and optimistic tale that if you can carry on while there are going to be moments of sadness then you can still do some good in the world. Are the ghosts the digital images or all the lost living souls haunted by their pasts in need of some courage as they can’t simply make ephemeral connections via the social media of choice? It’s perhaps not surprising that when images of the past arrive we see protests, images of the Grenfell tower and more showings that our current world is often equally guilty of casual indifference and bias.
There is a wonderful feeling of newness in this story and Wilson has for me created something really new. The use of language is subtle poetry, the exploration of human nature is thought provoking and a world is given a sense of magic both to create wonder and fear. We Are All Ghosts In The Forest is a perfect book to read while the world gets colder and darker to give us a reminder the light can still get in. It also for me shows Wilson is definitely now one of the most exciting U.K. writers around who excels in blending genres and themes to create brilliant tales. Yes I think I can very strongly recommend this!
