Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda is a hauntingly beautiful collection of short stories. In each of these stories, the ordinary flirts excessively with the supernatural. It’s very unsettling, but very human too.
Altogether, there are twelve stories in this collection, but a few struck me so deeply that I had to sit still, staring into space, just processing the weight of what I’d read.
Ghostroots begins with Manifest, where a young woman’s body rebels against her, erupting with pimples around the same time when her mother starts calling her by her late grandmother’s name, “Agnes” and projecting her fear and past trauma onto her. This particular story inspired me with multiple prompts. It got me thinking if we can ever really escape the ghosts of family, especially when superstition and spirituality come into play.
Another story in Ghostroots is Contributions, where an esusu group (which is a traditional Nigerian savings circle) functions like a lifeline, but is in fact, a trap. When a new member disrupts this fragile balance, the group’s strict rules spiral into a very dark display of power, even to the extent of collecting body parts. At the surface level, this is one weird story, but I find it a sharp critique of African communal systems and their sometimes cruel enforcement.
In The Hollow, an architect who is tasked with renovating an old house expects a simple job: renovate, restore, and leave, but finds herself caught in its grief-stricken walls. In a way, I think this story is really about how spaces hold the memories we’d rather forget, like cobwebs that cling to you.
And then there’s 24, Alhaji Williams Street, a bustling, vivid snapshot of the average Lagos urban life. But the occupants here are thrown into chaos when young boys begin to die one after the other, of a strange fever.
My best of all is Girlie, which is told from the perspective of a young housemaid quietly enduring her place in a household that needs her but never truly sees her, until a woman she never expects, kidnaps her, and tries to make her hers.
There’s also The Dusk Market, a masterpiece in itself. The whole story reads like a perfect metaphor for the things we trade and the things that trade us. Growing up, I’ve always heard superstitious stories about these things happening, and someone once told me that if you walk into a market at night, bend over, and view the market from between your legs, you’d see people floating about, walking on their heads. I’ve never tried that and probably never will, but I got hit with nostalgia as I read this story.
At the heart of Ghostroots is the exploration of identity; how it’s shaped, inherited, and distorted by external forces.
What I admire the most about this collection is that Aguda also frequently returns to themes of motherhood, femininity, and societal roles. She presents women as burdened, yet, resilient in the face of these struggles. It’s always refreshing to see women creating strong female protagonists, bcause, call me biased, but like Chimamanda Adichie once said, only women can perfectly understand the female experience.
There’s also a palpable sense of place in these stories; Lagos, on the one hand, all buzzing streets, and then the intimate, domestic spaces of the people, almost feel like characters themselves. Aguda is a master at creating mood; you feel every shadow and flicker. I felt it best in Girlie, like I could feel Iya Tomato standing over me, breathing over me, it felt so real.
I appreciate the author’s ability to handle these heavy themes without drowning the reader in despair. I also like that Aguda doesn’t romanticize Lagos in the way many writers seem to; her Lagos is a city of contradictions, where hope and despair can exist side by side, even with spirituality thrown in the mix. Many would label this collection as speculative or weird, but to me, it feels deeply rooted in reality, it feels as close to reality as it can get. It is surrealism with purpose because the supernatural elements in her stories never feel gratuitous. Instead, they amplify the characters’ internal struggles and even make the strange feel necessary.
If there’s one thing that didn’t quite work for me, it’s the ambiguity of some endings. They feel abrupt, almost like someone closing a door just as you peek in. And while I get the appeal of a cliffhanger, sometimes I just didn’t want them to end. For instance, what happens to Girlie after Iya Tomato? Does she escape? Does she find peace?
Recently, I’ve read too many stories that feel overly simple, too safe, and unchallenging. Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda snapped me out of that haze. It made me sit with discomfort, forcing me to question, to feel, to linger. And now that I’ve closed it, I feel haunted, but in a good way.
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