Kindred Spirits

Kit Dobson’s debut novel, We Are Already Ghosts, revolves around several members of the Briscoe-MacDougall family, as they convene at their “comfortable, well-worn” lakeside cabin in south-central Alberta during the summers of 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011. Over two decades, they face good and bad fortune, feel enthused and stagnant, make decisions and have decisions thrust upon them.

The experimental narrative jumps between multiple characters’ inner monologues. Verbs like “feeling,” “hoping,” “imagining,” and “remembering” appear frequently. Thoughts possess depth uncaptured in articulation; when dialogue makes a rare appearance, it tends to contradict or minimize the thinking that preceded it. In this way, Dobson suggests, the version of ourselves that the world knows and history records never captures the complete picture. “We are already ghosts” because we exist somewhere between alive and dead, haunted by “spectres and shades.”

Early in the...