Ghost on the Highway’s ambitious mission is to lead the reader on a night time journey through dream-like encounters and a verbal puzzling of reality. The book is led primarily by Heather E Hutsell’s tale Awakening Alice, a worthy continuation of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland adventures. This story is interspersed with poetry by three other authors, each chapter leading the reader down a different path or off exits on the book’s delirious highway. The verse often offers a kind of insight or commentary upon the psychological state of Alice through her bizarre and entertaining encounters with the shape-shifting logic-bending inhabitants of Wonderland. Alice’s journey is one of a young woman rather than a wide-eyed innocent girl. She still maintains her good natured mild-mannered curiosity, but also finds herself subject to the emotional flux which comes with a gradual sexual awakening. And, like the original tales, Hutsell doesn’t shrink from the surprising violence which occasionally strikes within this hallucinatory landscape. Half way through the story, Alice becomes enamoured with a man who is both a Jack and The Sandman that invokes sensuous sleep. New found romantic stirrings bring with them a tangle of complex conflicts, foreboding danger from another man and the searing jealousy from the imposing, polygamous, intensely-drawn Queen of Spades. Alice must overcome a number of intellectual and physical challenges which often seem to place her in mortal danger, but she finds that through wit and ingenuity she’s able to survive. In the story’s climatic encounter between two queens, Alice witnesses her nemesis temporarily subdued and the events of the story twisted in upon themselves distorting time’s apparent linear drive.



This book dips into the intangible reality of the unconscious, shedding light upon the emotional impulses and spiritual yearnings which work in the mysterious corners of existence. Hutsell’s impressive talent gives the classic character of Alice vigorous new life and masterfully paints the shifting ephemeral landscape of Wonderland. She cleverly uses language for her own purposes, to enliven the intricate story she’s created for the enduring heroine and her dynamic cast of characters. It’s worthy to note that although the poems meld harmoniously with the surprising events in Alice’s tale, many have the muscle to stand on their own. In Nihiline’s “repeat repetitive repetition” the words blend together, whirling at an increasing pace to reflect the emotional enormity of experience and overwhelming knowledge. Wehmann’s “Soul Serenity” poignantly describes the all-encompassing but unseen impact that romance can have. Walters’ “Dream Deep” seems to illuminate the night-time sensibility where individuality and reason are blurred, a notion at the very heart of this book.



Daring, inventive and unsettling, Ghost on the Highway is a compulsive read best savoured in the midst of some lonely lamp-lit night.




Posted by Eric Karl Anderson