When My Ghost Sings by Tara Sidhoo Fraser

When My Ghost Sings is a creative and lyrical memoir of one woman’s medical miracle and her remarkable experience of recovery.

Prayers are answered and the young author is given a second chance after surviving an unexpected stroke. Her mother is overjoyed, and her partner—known only as “the boy”—is grateful. But second chances are not always so easy. Her past self, dubbed “Ghost” refuses to let Sidhoo Fraser move forward and every attempt to do so becomes a painful exercise in letting go.

Sidhoo Fraser’s depiction of her former self is striking. Ghost clings to the author. She lives beneath the author’s skin, scratching at her throat, desperate to be heard—to be remembered. It’s a visceral and frustrating and beautiful description of what it’s like to be so changed after a major medical event/trauma; no longer the person you were, yet not able to let that person go. Desperately wanting to remember, but not being able to connect the dots of the past.

Not only is it frustrating for Sidhoo Fraser, but those who love her most—partners who also know what it’s like to lean into a new identity—also suffer as they struggle to support her in her recovery, letting her be who she is, and not who she was.

This memoir is lovely in its honesty and in its poetic prose. Entirely fascinating and moving, When My Ghost Sings will break your heart, lamenting what once was. But it will also leave you full of hope for what lies ahead. Worth the read!

 Thank you to Arsenal Pulp Press for providing a review copy.

When My Ghost Sings: A Memoir of Stroke, Recovery & Transformation by Tara Sidhoo Fraser Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023 ISBN: 978-1551529271