The Unwritten Book An Investigation Samantha Hunt by Samantha Hunt 9780374604929, 0374604924 instant download after payment.

From Samantha Hunt, the award-winning author of The Dark Dark, comes The Unwritten Book, her first work of nonfiction, a genre-bending creation that explores the importance of books, the idea of haunting, and messages from beyond

“A thrilling meta-detective novel... The Unwritten Book is a treatise on fiction disguised as a work of fiction... or a work of fiction cleverly hidden in a nonfiction book.”  -  Patrick Brennan, The Chicago Review of Books

'I carry each book I've ever read with me, just as I carry my dead - those things that aren't really there, those things that shape everything I am.'

A genre-bending work of nonfiction, The Unwritten Book explores ghosts, ghost stories, and haunting, in the broadest sense of each. What is it to be haunted, to be a ghost, to die, to live, to read? Books are ghosts; reading is communion with the dead. Alcohol is a way of communing, too, as well as a way of dying.

Through literary criticism, history, family history, and memoir, inspired by W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and many others, Hunt explores motherhood, hoarding, legacies of addiction, grief, how we insulate ourselves from the past, and how we misinterpret the world. 

“One of our most interesting and bold writers... [offers] a characteristically wild effort that defies genre distinctions, flits from the profound to the mundane with fierce intelligence and searching restlessness, and at its best, delves deep into the recesses of the human heart with courageous abandon... An intoxicating blend of humour and pathos.”  -  Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe 

Hunt conveys a vivid and grateful life, one that comes from living closer to the dead and shedding fear for wonder. The Unwritten Book revels in the randomness, connectivity, and magic of everyday existence. And at its heart is the immense weight of love.