Ghost Moth

Michele Forbes weaves an evocative story, of family and self, of promises made and broken, and of anger, forgiveness and love. Her writing is filled with luminous images. Meandering back and forth in time, Ghost Moth traces twenty years of a family’s history.

This is an ambitious book, set in part during a period of unrest and danger. Events in 1960s Belfast provide a symbolic counterpoint to the family’s personal turmoils. Friends and family members betray, but the characters stumble towards support and forgiveness. The children struggle to sort out the complex maps to survival within and without.

The everyday is juxtaposed with the occasional watershed moment. Forbes deftly handles situations that could easily turn trite and show more maudlin, and mostly skates past obvious trite turns of plot.

The protagonist, Katherine, seems to be sleepwalking through it all; she lets things happen to her, instead of her choosing her course. She’s therefore less than appealing in some respects, though Forbes gives the reader ample reasons to sympathize with her. The other members of the family are cyphers. The four children obviously aren’t formed enough to have highly complex and developed characters, but they, and Katherine’s husband, seem to exist mostly as backdrops for Katherine’s self absorbed reveries.

All in all, though, this book was worth the read. I’ll be on the watch for more from this author. show less

Somewhere along the way in my reading I came across the myth of the selkie, the seal which can slip out of its skin and assume human form. But it is a common enough myth, especially in Irish lore, that the first scene in Michele Forbes' beautifully evocative novel, Ghost Moth, can't help but invoke echoes of it and the idea that male selkies typically appear to women dissatisfied with their lives. Opening with Katherine swimming out too far on a seaside outing and coming face to face with a seal, an encounter that mesmerizes her and almost drowns her as she alternately panics and freezes at the seal's proximity, its mournful eyes, and her imaginings of its malevolent intent, the novel captures a feeling of lament and emotional remove show more that reflects through Katherine's marriage and indeed much of her life. Is the seal a selkie? Not as written here but knowledge of the myth infuses the scene and sets the reader up to know that Katherine is in fact emotionally paralyzed and her twenty year marriage shows increased glimpses of tension because of long held, quietly nurtured secrets that are starting to bubble to the surface.


The novel weaves two time periods together: the year that Katherine and her eventual husband George were courting in late 1949 and the tense, rife with turmoil, bombings, and religious hatred of 1969 Belfast. George is a firefighter and in the terrible face of the bombings, he must mobilize regardless of Katherine's desperate need for him to stay home with her and the children. Alternating with the angry resignation of their marriage is the plot thread of the seemingly light and carefree time leading up to their engagement when Katherine, a budding amateur singer, was starring in a local production of Carmen and, in fact, indulging in a clandestine affair with Tom, the gifted young tailor creating her costume. The whirlwind secret of Katherine's relationship with Tom in her youth contrasts with the steady, settled married life she leads with George and their four children. But the events of the past are not content to lie dormant; they haunt Katherine's present.


Forbes has mirrored the tensions of the outside world in the claustrophobic domesticity of the Bedford family. The eruptions and the admissions of culpability are unexpected, indiscriminately hurtful, and permanently damaging. The writing throughout is intricate and lyrical but flashes of anger and belligerence break through. The back story of Katherine's affair is slow and seemingly unconnected to the reserved and distant Katherine of the later plot, at least until the shocking and unpredictable reveal. Even with the startling truth though, there is a ghostly, evanescent feel to much of the narration. Forbes has captured beautifully the tensions pulling like taffy at the Bedfords' marriage and the way in which children intuit that which remains unsaid. Replete with imagery that sometimes overwhelms the story, this novel, much like the seal did for Katherine's character in the opening scenes, mesmerizes readers, wrapping them lazily into the tale until there is no escape but by turning the final page. show less

Katherine is a housewife, mother of four young children, living in Belfast during the 70’s. The depiction of Katherine’s children, and of the mother-child bond is very well done. The backdrop of the story is the anti-Catholic sentiment and political violence of those times. The narrative alternates between Katherine’s current life, and her memories of her young womanhood, when s/he was an aspiring opera singer and involved in a passionate love affair.

The book is well-written, and held my interest, but the plot seemed clunky. Katherine gives up her glamorous life for marriage to George. I never did understand why she chose George, who adores her, but is a stiff and unromantic. The ending seemed to come out of nowhere.

Ghost Moth is a very lyrical debut novel, though it didn't quite feel like a novel. The author's style, the compactness of chapters, made this work feel closer to a collection of short stories, but the arc connecting beginning to end was certainly one. So while the succinctness and tone reminded me of a collection, and while some of the chapters could stand alone, it would be inaccurate to call Ghost Moth anything but a novel.

Michèle Forbes' debut is profuse in language. She can form a very beautiful sentence that not only stands in sheer beauty, but resonates for pages. With this language as a backbone, she pieces together lovely scenes that work well into the book as a whole. Overall, Ghost Moth is a great story.

If there's one thing show more I would critique about this book, it would be the fleshing out of its characters. I don't know them well enough or understand their actions. This is most prominent when tragedy strikes young Katherine. Why do we not see inside her mind at this moment? Why do we not see her physical reaction? Why is the reader left with nothing? If we knew Katherine better, we could make assumptions, but we don't know her. Throughout the story there are too many questions left dangling because I didn't feel I knew the characters well enough. What does Katherine see in Tom? What does she see in George? Why doesn't she offer more information to the policeman? Sometimes, it's as though the author is stepping away from the confrontation, avoiding a dramatic scene by ending it before the reader is given answers. When George and Katherine share their confessions, the author takes the easy way out and quickly moves onto the next scene. This, as a whole, was my only issue with this novel.

I did appreciate the perspective of Elsa. At first, it was a bit jarring as this seemed to be Katherine's story, but in the end, I though it was a bold and smart move. It added a layer to the story that would've been sorely missing without.

So overall a great debut. I can't say the story will stay with me for long, but this has more to do with the characters than it does the story itself. I liked the story they had to tell, but just didn't feel like their hearts were into it. show less

There are places in Ghost Moth where heartwarming and heartbreaking intersect. The beauty of language describing hate and despair gives way to a deep understanding of compassion and love.

Set in Belfast, this lyrical debut novel by Michele Forbes skips between 1949, when our heroine Katherine is an amateur actress in a local theatre company, and 1969 when she has a young family and we are propelled into “the troubles”, as sectarian violence in Northern Ireland came to be known. The world of Belfast in the 40’s — full of passion and theatre and worldly excitement — shows us a young Katherine attempting to balance her life between the practical advances of her stolid fireman suitor George, and a sudden romance with the theatre show more tailor Tom, responsible for the magnificence that is her costume for Carmen, in which she plays the lead role.

In the 60’s her life is as much filled with confusion and guilt as it is love and redemption provided by her young family. Trying to provide a normal life for the girls as they grow is constantly sideswiped by the hatred and violence that overcame Northern Ireland during this period.

Ghost Moth is a book of heartbreaking sadness that nevertheless affirms the brighter possibilities in life. show less

The story opens with a woman, Katherine, who when swimming out of her depth encounters a seal. What begins as an encounter with nature becomes something more chilling, hinting at the depths of the story about to be told.
“…it is his eyes – the eyes of this wild animal – that terrify Katherine the most; huge, opaque and overbold, they hold on her like the lustrous black-egged eyes of a ruined man.” Katherine’s fear when encountering the seal is a mystery until much later in the book, when we understand the memories it disturbed.
‘Ghost Moth’ by Michèle Forbes is the story of Katherine and George, the beginnings of their love in 1949 and its endurance until death in 1969. The setting is Belfast: in 1949, post-War when show more Katherine sings Carmen in a local opera production and meets Tom, the tailor who sews her costume and flirts with her. Tom, who forces Katherine to examine the nature of her feelings for boyfriend George. Tom, who tempts her so she can never forget him. And Belfast, wrought by The Troubles in 1969 when even Katherine’s small children are challenged on the street for being of the ‘wrong’ religion. Katherine cannot forget Tom.
The novel examines the nature of love set against a city in 1969 where hatred is demonstrated every day on the streets with burning buses and ransacked shops. Can love ever be forgotten? Should young love be allowed to affect a marriage, years later? And is it better to tell the truth when the truth hurts, or protect your loved one by remaining silent?
In 1949, Katherine and Tom share quiet moments together as he makes her Carmen costume. Katherine forgets her new fiancé, George, in the eroticism of Tom taking a measuring-tape to her body. He describes to her how he will construct her dress. “I’ll insert the bone through the aperture of the casing, sliding it firmly upward all the way to the top of the seam. I’ll draw the bone back just a little, if I need to, so that it won’t force the material. The spring of the bone must always be right.” Compared with this sensuality, volunteer fireman George is a pale alternative.
But one night, before the night’s performance of Carmen begins, something happens which changes the lives of this love triangle.
The title of the book refers to the pale moths which Katherine’s father told her: “…that some people believed that ghost moths were the souls of the dead waiting to be caught, and some people believed that they were only moths.” For me, the double symbolism of the romantic moths and chilling seal was too much. Just one of them would suffice. I think I prefer the seal.
Read more of my book reviews at my blog http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ show less

I know a book is really good when it leaves me grieving for hours after finishing it. I knew a few pages into chapter 2 that this book was going to be a tearjerker. And I was right! However, there were so many depressing and unpredictable layers, I ended up crying for completely unexpected reasons! I actually really like tearjerkers, so I did not mind the tears. It's a really raw and honest read--I can't believe it is Forbes's first novel. I hope she will be writing more.

I received a copy to review through Librarything,