All the Beloved Ghosts

MacLeod’s (Unexploded) collection of stories deftly blends fiction and facts, memory and biography, to delve into the precarious nature of human life. The ghosts here are not literal—except, perhaps, in the mind of one elderly character from the title story and one brief appearance by the late Sylvia Plath. Instead, the visitations of supernatural and fantastic beings in MacLeod’s hands are suggestive of haunting memories and the traces that harrowing experiences leave behind. In “The Thaw,” a girl attends a town dance and on that night of horrific tragedy, has the time of her life. In “The Heart of Denis Noble” a cardiovascular surgeon prepping for heart surgery has flashbacks to his younger days, his first breakthrough research on heart conditions, and the hard lessons he has learned about the vagaries of love. In “There Are Precious Things” the lives of people traveling in a subway car—a single mother worried about her job, a nun on leave to get a hearing aid, a man with Alzheimer’s, among others—are examined. In “Dreaming Diana: Twelve Frames,” the short life and widely controversial death of Princess Diana are revisited by a fan. Finely layered and often teasingly opaque, MacLeod’s captivating book of stories presents a diverse array of voices, each as particular as the last. (Apr.)