Memoir'Ghosting" is the term used when someone - usually a celebrity - "writes" their autobiography, aided by a professional writer, who is usually well paid for the job. A good ghostwriter will convincingly capture the voice of the subject and get the story down in a brisk, entertaining fashion.
The book (usually) goes on to sell lots of copies for a brief period, and then it (usually) gets remaindered. Nobody is pretending it's high art, but the symbiotic relationship between celebrity and ghostwriter is a long-established and acknowledged one within the publishing trade. Sometimes the ghost gets a credit and sometimes not, depending on the size of the ego of the person being ghosted.
One ghost who never got a byline was a Scottish woman, Jennie Erdal. Erdal was a sort of super-ghost: she wrote not only books of interviews with famous people, but also love letters, business correspondence, newspaper columns and, strangest of all, novels. They were all for the same client - the rich, flamboyant Palestinian-born publisher, Naim Attallah, who owned Quartet Books and the Women's Press. Attallah wanted the additional kudos of being a published writer himself, so he paid Erdal to write for him.
Erdal worked for "Tiger", as she calls him, for 15 years. Ghosting is not just the story of her peculiar professional life, it is also her own story. When her husband left her, she had three small children to care for and, although she already had serious qualms about working for Tiger, her financial situation removed the choice from her. Tiger was so delighted with the results of her non- fiction that he decided he also wanted to be a novelist.
That's right: he outlined to Erdal what kind of novel he wanted, and she wrote it - and then a second one. The entire book is fascinating, but the chapters about ghostwriting a novel are both surreally funny and in some ways very unsettling. How could you be so shameless as to pretend that you had written two novels? Why would anyone want someone else to take the credit for their work? Why not write your own novel under your own name? What does it say about you as a person - and your relationship with the "author"?
They are not comfortable questions to answer, because whatever way you look at it, they don't reflect particularly well on the self-esteem of either party. Erdal writes affectionately and non-judgmentally about Tiger throughout the book, but he comes across to the reader as a spoilt, demanding, egotistic, sexist, control-freak nightmare. He took her to his house in France to write "his" novels, and then would not leave her alone, constantly demanding that she keep him company, to the extent of insisting that she get up absurdly early to have breakfast with him because he hated eating alone.
There is a lot more going on in this book than just an inside look at a little-known area of publishing. Erdal is a complex, intelligent personality whose life came to resemble her job. She became a ghost herself, unable to assert herself, and she captures the ever- increasing claustrophobia of their working relationship brilliantly. She became dependent on Tiger not just for money but for a sense of her own value as a person. The insidious cycle of co-dependency was broken only when she married again, turned down a proposal to write Tiger's third novel, and left his employment completely.
Ghosting is one of the oddest books currently around, but it's wonderful for that, and beautifully written. It's the first time we've seen Jennie Erdal's real name on the cover of a book she's written, and hopefully it won't be the last.
Rosita Boland is an Irish Times journalist and a writer
Ghosting: A Memoir By Jennie Erdal Canongate Books, 270pp. £14.99
