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Ghost Driver
Malory walks home after an ordinarily gruelling night out, having escaped the company of her associates. Something ripples in the darkness. The shape of a figure. So begins a chain of events with the texture of dream plasma. A story of persecution mania. Professional ignominy. A sudden disappearance. The terror of seeing oneself too clearly...
Part horror story, part tragicomic nightmare, Ghost Driver is a slim shudder of a novel about a woman who has taken every wrong turn available to her.
Part horror story, part tragicomic nightmare, Ghost Driver is a slim shudder of a novel about a woman who has taken every wrong turn available to her.
176 pages, Paperback
Published September 30, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 12, 2026
Longlisted for the 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize
Ghost Driver is the debut novel of Nell Osbourne, a poet, novelist & researcher of experimental literature & feminism, and is MOIST BOOKS entry for the 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize.
This is a highly distinctive read - comparisons are hard, although it's subversive, and at times surreal, take on modern life reminded me of Isabel Waidner - some of the author's own references are included in a list at the end of my review.
It's set in a near-future world where municipal England has increadingly disappeared into commercial development, and the subject of the novel, Malory, works, as the novel opens, in an amorphous corporate/academic and Kafkesque entity, The Institution:
The Institution was like a tumour that had slowly taken over the city, had devoured it by acquiring more and more land, then building more and more austere white cubes with restricted access and sharp corners upon that land. Just like a tumour, The Institution was both educational and parasitical, rebuilding the body’s body, as an idea, from the inside out, in such a way that defied the very idea of the body as a shared enterprise. It was also a secure centralised hub for commercial distribution. It was also an inclusive meeting place for diverse people of all nations, whilst respecting the global sanctity of those rules created and upheld by wealth, convenience, and hypocrisy.
Although this isn't a story of capitalism vs art and academia per se, perhaps more how they come together. In the interview linked below, the author refers to the University of Manchester's property development as an example (see e.g. here) and Malory acknowledges:
Sensitive and artistic intellectuals had been enthusiastically welcomed into the folds of The Institution from the very beginning. They operated its drearily impersonal cogs with a kind of sanguine torpor, their art and writings no evidently worse or better.
But Malory herself is not such an individual - introverted (the author refers to Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert as an inspiration), and suffering from chronic pain, whose source is undiagnosed, she simply can't manifest the 'warm fuzzy-feelings' that the Institution requires:
Malory was failing to progress in life. She had received multiple warnings at work for poor institutional behaviour, for perceived miserabilism and, as she had inferred from the vague language used to describe her infractions, for failing at collegiality. She was far too sticky, she was fundamentally viscous in some indefinable way, everything was sticking to her and in that way, she was also making things uncomfortable and awkward for everyone else. An institutional colleague should strive to achieve the opposite effect, to impart the workplace with a kind of frictionless ease; the interpersonal plane should resemble an experience that was cushiony and nothingy and would fade quickly from memory. But Malory didn’t know how to restructure her personhood in any workable way. She was wracked with a malcontent that felt like a windstorm threatening to carry her off the edge of the cliff.
A novel that is hard to review - although below I link to two writers who've done it more justice than I can - but which demands to be read.
Interview with the author
https://www.tank.tv/magazine/issue-10...
Two illuminating reviews of the novel
https://www.culturematters.org.uk/bod...
https://corridor8.co.uk/article/nell-...
MOIST BOOKS
MOIST BOOKS exists to put a dampener on the mainstream 'literary' gatekeepers, juicing up the tentative fumblings on the fringes.
Inspired by the North American DIY publishing traditions that grew out of art, music, and LGBTQI+ scenes, MOIST publishes works of literary fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry in series of threes. Each of these ‘seasons’ is loosely based around a common theme, and seeks to acknowledge a diverse range of lived experiences, educational backgrounds, and cultural reference points. This shouldn’t be read as a euphemism for poverty porn or ‘bake-off blandness’ however, but as a preference for formally innovative, emotionally immediate books, and a vibe that is as much global as it is local.
The author's list of some works which informed Ghost Driver
~ ‘Ice’ by Anna Kavan, 1967.
~ ‘Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell’ by Spitzenprodukte (Huw Lemmey), Montez Press, 2019
~ ‘The Driver’s Seat’ by Muriel Spark, 1970.
~ ‘Vengeance is Mine’ by Marie NDiaye, 2023.
~ ‘Blood and Guts in Highschool’ by Kathy Acker, 1984.
~ ‘Yes, I Am A Destroyer’ by Mira Mattar, MA Bibliotheque, 2020 / Litmus Press (upcoming), 2025.
~ ‘I Don’t Care’ by Ágota Kristóf, 2005. trans. Chris Andrews, Penguin Books, 2024.
~ ‘The Seers’ by Sulaiman Addonia, Prototype, 2023
~ ‘The Descent of Alette’ by Alice Notley, 1996.
~ ‘Lodgers’ by Holly Pester, Granta, 2024.
~ ‘The Weight of Things’ by Marianne Fritz, 1978. trans. Adrian Nathan West, Verso Books, 2017.
~ ‘Holes’ by Hilary White, MA Bibliotheque, 2024.
~ ‘Hangsaman’ by Shirley Jackson, 1951.
~ ‘The Employees’ by Olga Ravn, 2018, trans. Martin Aitken, Lolli Editions, 2018,
Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize judge Stu Hennigan writes:
A shape-shifting gem powered by an effortlessly hip voice that crackles with restless energy. Its boundary-blurring blending of the personal with the political, and the uncanny with the mundane, is as beguiling and fresh as modern fiction gets.
Ghost Driver is the debut novel of Nell Osbourne, a poet, novelist & researcher of experimental literature & feminism, and is MOIST BOOKS entry for the 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize.
This is a highly distinctive read - comparisons are hard, although it's subversive, and at times surreal, take on modern life reminded me of Isabel Waidner - some of the author's own references are included in a list at the end of my review.
It's set in a near-future world where municipal England has increadingly disappeared into commercial development, and the subject of the novel, Malory, works, as the novel opens, in an amorphous corporate/academic and Kafkesque entity, The Institution:
The Institution was like a tumour that had slowly taken over the city, had devoured it by acquiring more and more land, then building more and more austere white cubes with restricted access and sharp corners upon that land. Just like a tumour, The Institution was both educational and parasitical, rebuilding the body’s body, as an idea, from the inside out, in such a way that defied the very idea of the body as a shared enterprise. It was also a secure centralised hub for commercial distribution. It was also an inclusive meeting place for diverse people of all nations, whilst respecting the global sanctity of those rules created and upheld by wealth, convenience, and hypocrisy.
Although this isn't a story of capitalism vs art and academia per se, perhaps more how they come together. In the interview linked below, the author refers to the University of Manchester's property development as an example (see e.g. here) and Malory acknowledges:
Sensitive and artistic intellectuals had been enthusiastically welcomed into the folds of The Institution from the very beginning. They operated its drearily impersonal cogs with a kind of sanguine torpor, their art and writings no evidently worse or better.
But Malory herself is not such an individual - introverted (the author refers to Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert as an inspiration), and suffering from chronic pain, whose source is undiagnosed, she simply can't manifest the 'warm fuzzy-feelings' that the Institution requires:
Malory was failing to progress in life. She had received multiple warnings at work for poor institutional behaviour, for perceived miserabilism and, as she had inferred from the vague language used to describe her infractions, for failing at collegiality. She was far too sticky, she was fundamentally viscous in some indefinable way, everything was sticking to her and in that way, she was also making things uncomfortable and awkward for everyone else. An institutional colleague should strive to achieve the opposite effect, to impart the workplace with a kind of frictionless ease; the interpersonal plane should resemble an experience that was cushiony and nothingy and would fade quickly from memory. But Malory didn’t know how to restructure her personhood in any workable way. She was wracked with a malcontent that felt like a windstorm threatening to carry her off the edge of the cliff.
A novel that is hard to review - although below I link to two writers who've done it more justice than I can - but which demands to be read.
Interview with the author
https://www.tank.tv/magazine/issue-10...
Two illuminating reviews of the novel
https://www.culturematters.org.uk/bod...
https://corridor8.co.uk/article/nell-...
MOIST BOOKS
MOIST BOOKS exists to put a dampener on the mainstream 'literary' gatekeepers, juicing up the tentative fumblings on the fringes.
Inspired by the North American DIY publishing traditions that grew out of art, music, and LGBTQI+ scenes, MOIST publishes works of literary fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry in series of threes. Each of these ‘seasons’ is loosely based around a common theme, and seeks to acknowledge a diverse range of lived experiences, educational backgrounds, and cultural reference points. This shouldn’t be read as a euphemism for poverty porn or ‘bake-off blandness’ however, but as a preference for formally innovative, emotionally immediate books, and a vibe that is as much global as it is local.
The author's list of some works which informed Ghost Driver
~ ‘Ice’ by Anna Kavan, 1967.
~ ‘Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell’ by Spitzenprodukte (Huw Lemmey), Montez Press, 2019
~ ‘The Driver’s Seat’ by Muriel Spark, 1970.
~ ‘Vengeance is Mine’ by Marie NDiaye, 2023.
~ ‘Blood and Guts in Highschool’ by Kathy Acker, 1984.
~ ‘Yes, I Am A Destroyer’ by Mira Mattar, MA Bibliotheque, 2020 / Litmus Press (upcoming), 2025.
~ ‘I Don’t Care’ by Ágota Kristóf, 2005. trans. Chris Andrews, Penguin Books, 2024.
~ ‘The Seers’ by Sulaiman Addonia, Prototype, 2023
~ ‘The Descent of Alette’ by Alice Notley, 1996.
~ ‘Lodgers’ by Holly Pester, Granta, 2024.
~ ‘The Weight of Things’ by Marianne Fritz, 1978. trans. Adrian Nathan West, Verso Books, 2017.
~ ‘Holes’ by Hilary White, MA Bibliotheque, 2024.
~ ‘Hangsaman’ by Shirley Jackson, 1951.
~ ‘The Employees’ by Olga Ravn, 2018, trans. Martin Aitken, Lolli Editions, 2018,
Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize judge Stu Hennigan writes:
A shape-shifting gem powered by an effortlessly hip voice that crackles with restless energy. Its boundary-blurring blending of the personal with the political, and the uncanny with the mundane, is as beguiling and fresh as modern fiction gets.
Read
December 27, 2025full to the brim with wonderful sentences, massive flies and slime. an all together different kind of architecture, a commune of ghosts with bent spines.
i too once almost drank a slug - probably have without knowing.
all writers working in universities should gather in a circle and hold hands(with me).
i too once almost drank a slug - probably have without knowing.
all writers working in universities should gather in a circle and hold hands(with me).
December 12, 2025
Debut that keeps you hooked to the last page
I like debut novels, more than any other book they have the power to surprise. When I read the blurb on the back of Nell Osborne ’s debut, Ghost Driver , I was sold, my expectations raised sky-high. They never came down, not crashing, not even gradually, as I started reading.
Ghost Driver is dark, Ghost Driver is comic. It feels weird, but also weirdly familiar. It’s different and addictive. The prose is brilliant, flowing, keeping you hooked from one line to the next, from chapter to chapter, to the end.
Nell Osborne’s, Ghost Driver: Five stars (the maximum of six for exceptional books on my own review site), and on my want-to-read-again-shelf.
I like debut novels, more than any other book they have the power to surprise. When I read the blurb on the back of Nell Osborne ’s debut, Ghost Driver , I was sold, my expectations raised sky-high. They never came down, not crashing, not even gradually, as I started reading.
Ghost Driver is dark, Ghost Driver is comic. It feels weird, but also weirdly familiar. It’s different and addictive. The prose is brilliant, flowing, keeping you hooked from one line to the next, from chapter to chapter, to the end.
Nell Osborne’s, Ghost Driver: Five stars (the maximum of six for exceptional books on my own review site), and on my want-to-read-again-shelf.
December 23, 2025
My sinterklaas gift was a very weird but pleasantly written tingy
January 26, 2026
This was surreal and beautiful and I was hooked from start to finish.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews