Christopher Coake

Do you believe in an afterlife? What happens to your loved one after death? What if that loved one was your child? Do you believe in ghosts? If you lost a child and believe that ghosts are real, would you choose to be haunted by the child? What if you don’t believe in ghosts but someone unknown to you who lives in your old house comes to tell you that the ghost of your son is there, is haunting the house, is calling for you? What do you do then? These questions and more are raised in show more Christopher Coake’s powerful and intense novel You Came Back.

Mark Fife was nearly crippled by the accidental death of his young son Brendan years ago. His marriage to college sweetheart Chloe disintegrated painfully and he almost drank himself to death so weighted down by grief. Seven years on, he is still accepting the loss of his son, the complete wrenching finality of Brendan’s death, but he is living with a patient, good woman, Allie, whom he has decided to marry, tentatively ready to start a new chapter in his life. But just as he starts to move on, a woman named Connie Pelham comes to him and tells him that Brendan’s ghost is haunting Mark and Chloe’s old house. Mark doesn’t believe in ghosts but he can’t bring himself to discount her story, worried that his denial of the existence of this one ghost is a refutation of his beloved son. He keeps most of the situation from Allie and is reluctant to share it with ex-wife Chloe either. He is completely conflicted about his life, uncertain whether to look to the past or leave it behind. He cannot see a way in which to keep both parts of his life connected, certain that it must be one or the other, convinced that he can be the old Mark Fife, husband of Chloe and father of Brendan or the new Mark Fife, fiancé of Allie. He does not understand how to be just one Mark Fife.

As Mark gets swept up in the possibility of Brendan’s spirit still inhabiting their old house, he does not think to include Allie in this life, hewing back to Chloe despite the terrible hurt she inflicted on him after they lost Brendan and naturally turning to her as not only the love of his life but also as Brendan’s mother. Mark must consider whether he believes Connie and her young son about their sightings and what it would mean if they are right about Brendan’s presence. Blindsided by the fact that he is suddenly not so certain about anything in his life anymore, not his engagement to Allie, not his former certainty that ghosts don’t exist, not his divorce from Chloe, not anything really, Mark tries to move forward, making decision after poor decision, hurting almost everyone around him including himself as he grapples with his feelings, desires, and the ultimate truth.

On the surface a novel about the supernatural, this is really a suspenseful look at faith, love, and loss and the ways in which these govern so much of our lives and decisions. The main characters, Mark, Chloe, and Allie are all complex, conflicted, and confused, grappling with this tragedy that will forever define who they are and how they go on. Although wallowing in grief, being sucked backwards by the possibility of his son’s ghost, and not coping well at all, Mark is a very sympathetic character. Watching him want desperately to believe in Brendan’s continued existence is absolutely heartbreaking despite the careless and selfish ways in which he ignores and crushes Allie in his overwhelming desire to find his lost son. Chloe and Allie are less sympathetic but the novel is far more centered on Mark and his internal struggles, only focusing tightly on the women as they touch his life and emotions.

Losing a child is every parents’ nightmare and Coake captures a depth of emotion here that is absolutely staggering. The plot tension ratchets up as the novel progresses and Mark’s skepticism waxes and wanes. And the reader is as undecided about the truth of Brendan’s ghost as Mark himself is as the narrative progresses. The continued, lifelong grief in the aftermath of Brendan’s death and the struggle to still make a happy life are carefully limned and authentic. This well-written and thoughtful novel is gripping and multi-faceted and the reader will clutch at his or her throat as each intense layer peels back in Mark’s quest for peace, acceptance, and understanding. show less

You Came Back is everything you want a literary novel to be - a great premise that draws you in, fully realized characters that provide a deep insight into what it means to be human, and a writing style that gives you the feeling you're in the hands of a talent that won't let you down. Here Coake explores the ramifications of parents who suffered the loss of a child and had their marriage crumble as a result. The novel picks up seven years later when their lives have started to pick up show more again, and the husband, Mark Fife, has made a new love and is ready to get married again. All that gets turned upside down, though, when the owner of the house he used to live in - where his son died falling down steps - finds him to tell him that her son has heard a ghost in the house that seems to be Mark's dead son, calling for his father. The novel offers an amazingly gripping exploration of the personal havoc that news brings. Mark resists at first, trying to stay committed to his new love and trying not to be overcome once again by grief and the guilt he still carries for his imagined responsibility in his son's death. Complicating matters further is that his first wife, before grief soured their relationship, was the great love of his life.

As serious as the topic, this is not a depressing story or one overcome with explaining the mechanics of inhabitants of a ghost world. It's all about living a life when your most precious dreams and loved ones have been taken from you. There are surprises along the way, and I wouldn't say anymore to avoid giving anything away, but Mark Fife is one terrific character and I think any reader would enjoy spending 400 pages inside his minds as he struggles with these issues. I normally enjoy strict realism, and got a little concerned when I heard this was a "ghost" story. But my mind had been opened by reading David Long's brilliant "The Inhabited World." Like that novel, this one is much more about the emotional struggles of living a life full of setbacks and tragedies than it is about ghoulish presences. Coake wrote a brilliant short story collection a few years back and I hope this novel will give him enough success to continue writing plenty more novels and collections. show less

We're In Trouble by Christopher Coake is one of those books - a collection of short stories - that just grabbed me absolutely from the moment I started reading (the opening story, In the Event, was perfectly pitched at me I think, and affected me more than a story's done in a while). Coake's just been named one of Granta's Best Young American writers, and on the basis of this, I look forward to seeing him live up to that in the years to come.

These stories are all about people faced with show more moments of transition, often deaths, and how their loves and lives buckle, bend and either take the strain or don't. Coake's characters stare death in the face and they react in the most human of ways; the book is filled with a sense of over-powering fear, with the possibility of strengthening as a result of it. It's an often bleak read, but there is something redemptive in how many of the characters face their situations; as much as Coake writes of death and how we face it, he also gives a very real sense of love and how it can both shatter and persist. Though not all of the stories carry that tinge of hope, in those that do, it is the strength of the character's relationships that hints at how they will endure.

Some of the stories are more ambiguous...Cross-Country, in which a boy is driven across the States by a man who may or may not be his father ends on a deeply haunting image that juxtaposes a protective love with something far more menacing.

Though they share a common theme - characters in some sort of trouble, facing change and death - the stories are varied in style and tone. This is a writer already working at a high level, and these are the sorts of images and stories that are going to live on in my head for some time to come. show less

Seven short stories about people in trouble after witnessing or dealing with death, with superb dialogue. In Back Down to Earth, during a bedroom chat, a man tells his lover the story of his failure to rescue his dog at the edge of a precipice, and his witnessing the fall, feeling that he should fling himself after his dog, and that his act was so wrong that he had condemned himself. in All Babies Come From Heaven, a lesbian couple arguing about whether to have a baby find their positions show more reversed when one of them witnesses an automobile accident in which a toddler dies. Cross Country depicts the kidnapping of a child from the point of view of the kidnapper, the child, and another child on a different trip with his father. Ambiguities and subtleties abound. In A Single Awe, at a Christmas party, a wife realizes she no longer likes the husband she fell in love with and married because he saved a mother in a terrible accident and suffered burns as a result. I found the final story, All through the house, the weakest. Here, a police chief deals with the aftermath of his best friend killing his wife, his sons, and his inlaws. The scenes around the murder are well drawn. It's just that the murder itself strains credulity.

But all in all, a great debut. However, not something to read when you need some cheer. Because in one way or another, aren't we all in trouble? show less