Book Reviews: The Ghost Years by Mutch Katsonga

Trigger Warning: The book reviewed in this post, The Ghost Years by Mutch Katsonga, contains depictions of drug use, attempted rape, and AIDS and HIVs. If you are under 18 years of age, are triggered by such depictions, or otherwise wish to avoid them, proceed with caution.

I have another book review for you, one also filled with tragedy like Twin Flames Rising but also a light at the end of the tunnel. This one, however, is by the author of another book I’ve reviewed on here before, Beyond the Spiral Gates. The book reviewed in this post is called The Ghost Years by Mutch Katsonga.

Homelessness is a nerve-wracking experience. Nowhere to stay for the night, no protection from the cold and the elements, and sometimes no friends or family to turn to for comfort. You add drugs, sex, and violence to the mix, and you have the netherworld of homelessness that the protagonist of The Ghost Years threw himself into as a young adult.

The Ghost Years follows a young man as he falls from the grace of a loving home into the deep despair of substance abuse and life as a vagabond. Beginning with the loss of his mother’s sanity, his life spirals downward until he is a twenty-something-year-old divorced ne’er-do-well, a wall of pride between him and his family and the high of addiction his only friend. How low will he go for that next high? How low will he have to go before he’ll be able to pull his life back together? And will anyone be there to give him a helping hand?

Katsonga creates another amazingly raw account of a life cast aside by the world when he needed support the most. Unlike in Beyond the Spiral Gates, the prison for the protagonist of this story is wide open world itself, a cold and cruel reality that he wants to escape, sending himself right into the arms of alcohol and crack cocaine. While Katsonga paints the picture of a sympathetic young man beaten down by circumstance, the protagonist is clearly no saint, either. He allows his bitterness and despair to envelope him and pushes away the very people who could help him most. He makes stupid mistakes and digs himself a deeper hole into the sewage of the homeless netherworld, but that is exactly what makes him human. The protagonist is flawed, but the tragedy of his younger years and the man that we see him become while volunteering at the nursing home proved to be more than enough for me to care about what this poor man went through.

Being told in first person, this story allows the reader to get up close and personal with the protagonist, his desperation, and his darkest thoughts. After the first chapter, the narration reads as though you are listening to someone tell you his life story, from the conditions surrounding his birth through the lowest points of his life. The first chapter reads does not quite have that same storyteller element, more like the reader is following the protagonist on his rounds through the nursing home, and the shift can be jarring. However, that’s part of what makes it feel more real; it’s as though the protagonist has decided to tell you what got him to this point in his life, to share his heart-wrenching but also inspiring story of recovery.

Still, the narrative style also serves as the book’s downfall. The protagonist is prone to excessive amounts of philosophizing and self-reflection. These passages certainly match the character’s personality and reveals the influence his mother had on him. I really appreciate that effort at characterization. After a while, though, I began to fade in and out while reading these. This attention issue may have just been due to the fact that I’m still sick, but I had to struggle some to make it through the philosophy to make it back to the meat of the story. I love a good philosophical discussion as much, maybe even more than, the next reader. Regardless, I was anxious to find out what happened next, a good sign for Katsonga’s storytelling but a hindrance for the philosophical musings.

The metaphors which Katsonga employees beautifully illustrate the struggles of addiction and homelessness. From Hercules and the Hydra to St. George and the dragon, Katsonga uses his protagonist’s earlier thirst for knowledge to his advantage in these metaphors. While I struggled with some of the philosophical and self-reflecting passages, I still enjoyed the utilization of Greek mythology and Christian lore to express the internal struggles which anyone who has hit their low can understand. Some readers might consider them overdone, but I think that they complemented the protagonist’s dilemma very well.

An unfortunate flaw in this book is the proofreading. I noticed multiple proofreading errors, most prominently misused commas. Some of these errors I could brush off as building the poetic, storytelling voice of the narration. Others, however, I could not. As with all proofreading errors, these are easy to fix just by taking another look at it and uploading a new eBook copy. (The wonders of modern technology, huh?)

Overall, The Ghost Years by Mutch Katsonga is a wonderful, if painful, book. It’s so true in its depiction of homelessness and addiction that this book can be hard to get through. Nevertheless, I highly encourage you to. I feel I have a new understanding of both these issues, as well as the workings of society which perpetuate them. The philosophy and self-reflection did grow a bit tedious even for me, but that only detracts slightly from the general reading experience. If you’re looking for a book that will give you a new view of that poor man sleeping on the park bench—and a new hope that his life can be turned around—then The Ghost Years is for you.

You can buy The Ghost Years by Mutch Katsonga as an eBook and in print on Amazon. Also make sure to check out Beyond the Spiral Gates and look the writer up on Twitter and Instagram.

Do you know of any books I should read? Want your work reviewed on this blog? E-mail me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com or message me on Fiverr and we can arrange something.