Guestbook: Ghost Stories: Leanne Shapton and Adam Thirlwell

In her latest work Guestbook: Ghost Stories (Particular Books) Leanne Shapton, through a series of stories and vignettes, encounters the uncanny. Are our experiences of ghosts and the unworldly mere fantasies of the mind, or are they solid evidence of the supernatural? In a book designed, curated and illustrated by Shapton herself, she provides some, but by no means all of the answers. Toronto-born Shapton rose to literary prominence with her genre-defying Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, published by Bloomsbury in 2009. Her subsequent works, including Was She Pretty?, Swimming Studies and Toys Talking, have continued to baffle those readers and booksellers who like to know exactly which shelf to put a book on. She was in conversation with novelist and critic Adam Thirlwell.