Ghost Ride

This is how it is when I watch dance, like at the surface level it's hard to understand what I'm watching; but within me some deeper meaning and knowing of exact understanding.

Ghost Ride, as its perfect name suggests, was an ephemeral read for me: the tone and mood somber; strong writing; the story somber? I just don't know. Initially I thought the "apocalypse" was self-imposed, until the girls meet another set of people who seem real enough to prove that maybe something really dystopian is happening here. I couldn't understand, but I could, the story resting in between, forming a ghost of meaning and understanding too.

This is a really cool and different read that reads both like a long short story and a novelette that somehow becomes something altogether anew in between both. It really is a ghost ride.

This story's only issue is that it ends; I felt like I could read about these characters and their weird, oppressive mutual obsession for pages and pages. The prose is smooth and immersive, and the reading experience is claustrophobic. Every space the girls occupy, be it the car or a gas station or a pause by a canyon, feels very crammed, and the reader is left feeling like they should like to have some space to breathe, but at the same time, not really wanting to abandon the safety of the two main character's companionship.

Spoilers: I think the most interesting thing in this story is the thick unresolved emotional tension that, by the end, stays unresolved. This, plus the fact that the story ends when they are in a geographic position where they'll soon run out of west to escape into, gives a feeling of bleakness that makes me think: maybe this is the story, like maybe these sisters are already at the furthermost point they can arrive at, and are unwilling/incapable of moving on from. I wanna know everything about these two, their before and their after, but at the same time it feels like that might be irrelevant in face of the perpetual present time of the story. As I read I kept thinking, "something's gotta give", but that's fake: instead of changing things, everything that happens with them gets absorbed into this monster of a thing that they share. So that was very interesting. I would like to read more about them and see this monster grow.

This is the first story I read by this author, and now I'm curious to read her novel-leght works.