We are a haunted species. Memories of our mistakes, regret for what we have – or have not – done, the inadequacies of our responses to straightforward conundrums, our bad judgments of ourselves, all of them follow us relentlessly, accompanied by the intuition that they will outlast us, surviving our deaths no matter what we do to hasten our own demise. Talitha Velkwood was not there when her suburban neighborhood disappeared, in an event that remains inexplicable. Some 20 years on, she’s alive, sort of, scraping the bottom of a hand-to-mouth, minimum-wage existence. The world has mostly moved on from The Velkwood Incident. Talitha tried to leave home, but it follows her still.
With The Haunting of Velkwood, Gwendolyn Kiste reveals herself to be an author able to plumb the depths and heights of emotional, involving fiction. This is a compelling and powerful novel, strikingly original in concept, deeply chilling, but filled with the colors of life, death, love, and memory. Talitha’s narrative is both mournful and joyful.
Talitha is taken away from her life of regret when she’s contacted by Jack, who represents a group of paranormal researchers. They want her to return to her old haunts. The world has let Velkwood pass by because nobody can get into the suburban block. Jack and those working with him believe that Talitha can.
Kiste approaches the story with a melancholy intimacy. Her prose is crisp, her plot is delightfully demented, but most importantly, her aim is true. The Haunting of Velkwood takes readers straight into the unreal even as it carries us forward with a very human heart.
Kiste masterfully turns a visit to an American suburb into an Otherworld journey. Talitha discovers a battered, buffered past where time is lost, and memories are found. Her friends from the neighborhood who also “survived,” Grace and Brett, are also haunted by the choices they all made in a past all would prefer to change or forget. Kiste offers an eye-popping journey, and manages to find a beautiful, all-too-human surreal world at the heart of her book and her characters. The Haunting of Velkwood is a big-screen reading experience of our own smaller-than-life stories.
Happily, Gwendolyn Kiste finds joy in her ability to craft unreal narratives of the highest quality. Here’s a link to our conversation about The Haunting of Velkwood. She is dark of mind, but also incredibly kind. It turns out that a conversation about regret with Gwendolyn Kiste offers a glimpse of memory at its best.
Narrative Species 