THE PAPERBACK EDITION

‘A book of plangent beauty and longing.’ Anthony Quinn, The Observer

‘The memoir has a flinty realism, but the prose is sonorous, lyrical, sensual.’ Paula Byrne, The Times

‘An evocation of a world fast disappearing but never forgotten.’ Ade Blackburn, Caught by the River

‘A stunningly beautiful book about the ways time, memory and life shape and change cities, families and all of us.’ Costa 2020 Biography Award judges

‘What distinguishes this book is Young’s poetic expression of memory – its uncertainty, fluidity and inherent ghostliness.’ Gareth E Rees, Unofficial Britain

‘A riveting read.’ Alan O’Hare

‘…splendidly evokes the Liverpool I’ve known.’ Ramsey Campbell

LONG-LISTED FOR THE 2022 PORTICO PRIZE

Jeff Young takes us on a journey through haunted places of memory and loss, summoning the ghosts of loved ones and long-departed heroes who somehow still occupy the disappearing nooks and ruins of the city. Walking through the last remnants of the places he remembers from his childhood, walking through grief, we are accompanied by a Liverpool of revenants, where Malcolm Lowry drinks in derelict saloons, Thomas De Quincey still roams the Everton hills, Bob Dylan sits in a doorway on Dublin Street, and where visionary architects, poets, punks and dreamers act out a bittersweet shadowplay of longing and loss.

Ghost Town is a deeply personal book of remembering and forgetting, yet when we cross its threshold we also discover the labyrinth of a master storyteller, whose unforgettable characters gather in our thoughts like moths around lamplight.

This new paperback edition contains 16 full colour pages from Jeff’s notebooks.

Read an extract from Ghost Town here

Hear Jeff read from the book on The Clearing here

Paperback edition, out now.