'Anyone's Ghost' by August Thompson

Anyone's Ghost

Author: August Thompson

Rating: A

Vibe: Thompson's prose is so gorgeous and emotionally precise that this atmospheric meditation on desire and identity became completely unputdownable. Devastating in the best way.

I finished this book several days ago and I just can't stop thinking about it. August Thompson has written something rare: a debut novel where the writing itself—the sentences, the precision, the emotional clarity—does as much work as the story. Maybe more. This is a book about desire that doesn't quite have a name, about the people who shape us in ways we spend decades trying to understand, and about the ghosts we carry long after they're gone.

Theron David Alden is fifteen when he meets Jake—seventeen, beautiful, confident, everything Theron isn't. They work together at a hardware store in rural New Hampshire, bonding over Metallica, weed, and something neither of them knows how to articulate. Over the next twenty years, they orbit each other: the summer in New Hampshire, a passionate weekend in New York City, drugs and music and a love that refuses to fit into any comfortable category. The novel tracks their collision course with quiet inevitability, and by the end, you're wrecked.

Let me be clear: this is a masterclass in craft. Thompson's prose is stunning—poetic without tipping into precious, emotionally direct without ever being sentimental. He shows instead of tells in ways that made me want to highlight half the book. The dialogue is spectacular, both Theron's internal monologue and the way he navigates conversations with Jake, with his family, with the versions of himself he's trying on and shedding. Thompson captures the slow, painful work of figuring out who you are and what you want with such precision that it hurts.

The emotional arc—from Theron's scared, self-conscious teenage years to his messy, uncertain twenties—feels achingly real. The way family relationships stretch and contract, the distance and nearness of people we love, the way we carry our past selves with us even as we try to grow past them—it all rings true. And Thompson does it without melodrama, without tidy resolutions.

Here's the thing about the "wanting vs. being" tension at the heart of this book: I remember those feelings. That confusion of not knowing if you admired someone or wanted them—or if maybe you were just trying to convince yourself it was admiration because desire felt too dangerous to name. For Theron, Jake is unattainable and magnetic and maybe-straight and definitely messy, and the book doesn't simplify any of that. I found the way Thompson handles bisexuality—Theron's, Jake's, the spectrum of desire that resists easy labels—refreshing. I identify as gay, but I think a lot of people live somewhere on a bisexuality spectrum, and this book honors that complexity without needing to resolve it into something clean.

And look, I know this sounds like every "pining after a straight boy" or "doomed first love" story you've ever read. But Anyone's Ghost transcends its tropes. It's part unattainable boy, part doomed romance, part coming-of-age—but the language elevates it beyond the sum of its parts. Thompson writes with such emotional intelligence and such a keen eye for the small, devastating moments that define a life that the book becomes something richer and stranger than its setup suggests.

Issues of mental illness and depression rumble throughout the entire book, something you can feel in Theron and Jake even when it's never explicitly named. Thompson captures the texture of depression with such grace and specificity that anyone who's been there will recognize it immediately. The self-destruction, the numbness punctuated by sharp bursts of feeling, the way isolation becomes both a symptom and a coping mechanism—it's all there, woven into the fabric of these characters' lives. Thompson doesn't pathologize or sensationalize; he just shows you what it looks like to live with that weight.

The framing device—opening with Jake's death—works beautifully. It doesn't rob the story of tension; instead, it tells you exactly what kind of world you're entering. It's a tragedy, yes, but one full of joy and discovery and the stupid, glorious intensity of being young and feeling everything too much. Knowing where we're headed doesn't diminish the journey—it deepens it.

I simply can't recommend this book enough. I want more from August Thompson. I'll read anything he puts out. This is the kind of debut that announces a real talent—someone who understands how to make language do things, how to capture the texture of longing and loss and the ghosts we carry with us.

Grab your copy of 'Anyone's Ghost'