How Writers Use Ghosts to Explore Grief in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction

Charlotte Taylor interrogates how contemporary YA writers use ghosts in their novels to explore ideas about adolescence and grief.

Abstract

In this paper, I interrogate how contemporary YA writers use ghosts in their novels to explore ideas about adolescence and grief. Ghost stories are a well-known genre that thrill and entertain and in turn, the key purpose of YA Fiction is to provide teenage readers with books that help them make sense of the world. I explore why teenagers might enjoy ghost narratives, to look at the juxtaposition between the youthful reader, full of vitality enjoying stories that deal with death and the afterlife. I look at three contemporary titles that explore ideas about what it means to haunt and be haunted: The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily X R Pan (2018) in which a grieving teen is haunted by the spirit of her mother, who manifests as a red bird; A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge (2017), in which the central protagonist Makepeace is haunted by several spirits including a desolate dancing bear, and AfterLove by Tanya Byrne (2021) where Ash dies suddenly and learns what it is to be the ghost. I look at how these writers craft the ghosts in these stories, explore ideas about grief, and create spectral landscapes.