No Ghosts
Max Lury
Published by Peninsula Press
The title of Max Lury’s original and compelling debut novel is deceptively simple.
On the literal level, something is so wrong with contemporary life that even the ghosts have stopped haunting it – and yet “No Ghosts” is not so much about the supernatural, or the lack of it, as about the intensely emotional nature of human friendship in early adulthood.
The sense of bereavement Lury explores is the rarely articulated sense of loss when the pressures of life and work mean we drift apart from people that on a certain level we have loved.
Such relationships are especially fragile in times made alien by the overwhelming presence of AI that dominates the plot.
It is a novel that probably could only have been written by someone who has recently emerged from the age of studentdom and flat shares when almost every detail of life is shared with people whose opinion can matter as least as much as one’s own.
It is also mature, intricately woven and finely observed. It poignantly articulates the awkward muddle of guilt and embarrassment that we feel less as time hardens us and it delivers phrases that precisely voice very specific feelings.
The two central friends are Kieran and Harlow and we travel with them to extreme places and extreme states after the third person in the friendship group Annie disappears. The quest to find her involves a great deal of AI and texting and bravely confronts the bleakness and loneliness that ultimately define the human condition. Sooner or later, we all disappear from the face of the Earth and the biggest mysteries have no cosy resolution.
All we can do is make the best of the here and now, which arguably for young people has always been harder than it should be, even before social media came along to magnify the struggles with identity and purpose that can prevent us enjoying our prime.
I find myself thinking of Hamlet, the feigned madness on the surface of deeper insanity, and his father’s ghost, but this novel is in no way derivative. Rather it is a highly original expression of what it is to live in contemporary society.
I look forward to whatever Lury writes next.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
No Ghosts
Max Lury
Published by Peninsula Press
The title of Max Lury’s original and compelling debut novel is deceptively simple.
On the literal level, something is so wrong with contemporary life that even the ghosts have stopped haunting it – and yet “No Ghosts” is not so much about the supernatural, or the lack of it, as about the intensely emotional nature of human friendship in early adulthood.
The sense of bereavement Lury explores is the rarely articulated sense of loss when the pressures of life and work mean we drift apart from people that on a certain level we have loved.
Such relationships are especially fragile in times made alien by the overwhelming presence of AI that dominates the plot.
It is a novel that probably could only have been written by someone who has recently emerged from the age of studentdom and flat shares when almost every detail of life is shared with people whose opinion can matter as least as much as one’s own.
It is also mature, intricately woven and finely observed. It poignantly articulates the awkward muddle of guilt and embarrassment that we feel less as time hardens us and it delivers phrases that precisely voice very specific feelings.
The two central friends are Kieran and Harlow and we travel with them to extreme places and extreme states after the third person in the friendship group Annie disappears. The quest to find her involves a great deal of AI and texting and bravely confronts the bleakness and loneliness that ultimately define the human condition. Sooner or later, we all disappear from the face of the Earth and the biggest mysteries have no cosy resolution.
All we can do is make the best of the here and now, which arguably for young people has always been harder than it should be, even before social media came along to magnify the struggles with identity and purpose that can prevent us enjoying our prime.
I find myself thinking of Hamlet, the feigned madness on the surface of deeper insanity, and his father’s ghost, but this novel is in no way derivative. Rather it is a highly original expression of what it is to live in contemporary society.
I look forward to whatever Lury writes next.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, books, fiction • Tags: Barbara Lewis, books, fiction