A Summer Day In The Company Of Ghosts

Some books invite you on a journey; others quietly rearrange the furniture of your mind while you’re not looking. A Summer Day in the Company of Ghosts by Wang Yin does a bit of both—though “journey” here is less about distance and more about drifting through memory, language, and the occasional philosophical shadow that may or may not be following you.

This is poetry, but not the kind that politely announces itself with neat meanings and tidy conclusions. Instead, Wang Yin offers fragments, observations, moments that feel both precise and elusive. There are ghosts here, certainly—but they’re not rattling chains or leaping out from behind curtains. They linger in the edges of thought, in history, in absence, in the strange way the present is never entirely free of what came before.

The tone is deceptively calm. A summer day, after all, sounds harmless enough. Yet beneath that gentle surface runs something more reflective, even quietly unsettling. Time slips. Meaning shifts. A line that seems simple suddenly isn’t. It’s the literary equivalent of sitting in the sun and realising, after a while, that the light has changed and you’re not quite sure when.

This 2022 New York Review of Books edition, in near fine condition, is a beautifully produced modern volume—clean, crisp, and entirely ready to sit on your shelf looking thoughtful. It’s the sort of book that suggests depth even before you open it, and then rewards that suspicion by delivering exactly that.

Ideal for readers who enjoy poetry that doesn’t rush to explain itself, who appreciate atmosphere over instruction, and who are happy to spend time in the company of ideas that hover rather than land. Not so much a quick read as a quiet encounter—best approached with patience, curiosity, and perhaps a willingness to be gently haunted.

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