A review by readthesparrow
The Ghost That Ate Us by Daniel Kraus

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Spoilers may be included in this review, as it includes quotes and discussions of some plot points. For the most part, the plot points and characters discussed are minor spoilers or are elements included either in the summary or the preface to the book. The discussion of the ending of the book will include major spoilers for the ending and plot, however.

 

Burger City is every unhealthy American burger joint rolled into one. It has everything: beef, more beef, French fries, milkshake-adjacent slush, and a ghost. After a brutal murder occurs in the little restaurant off a highway in Iowa, strange things start happening. Objects move by themselves, machinery breaks down, disembodied voices speak through the drive through headset. Younger members of the staff—struggling with the tragedy of their everyday lives—become obsessed with gathering evidence that the ghost exists. The situation grows quickly out of control, leading to the tragic murder of six employees.

The Ghost That Ate Us is a mockumentary-style novel, utilizing several genre markers of true crime not only to criticize the genre itself but also to blur the lines between the novel’s fiction and our reality. The footnotes mix non-fictional sources (such as death rates in Iowa, quotes from political figures, and information about methamphetamine abuse) with fictional sources (such as court transcripts, academic articles, and news coverage). Daniel Kraus also uses a strategy employed by some true crime authors wherein their own experience of researching and writing the story become part of the narrative (think books like The Monster of Florence and I'll Be Gone in the Dark). Of course, in Kraus’ case, it is a fictional version of himself (who is nevertheless fairly close to his real self as far as I can tell in terms of career). These two elements do an excellent job of not only making the narrative believable but also are wonderful world-building, with non-fiction sources creating a solid basis in the real world which the fictional sources build upon.

 

Just as any non-fiction true crime book, The Ghost That Ate Us contains several photographs intended to be of people, places, objects, and events related to the Burger City tragedy. Of all the mockumentary elements, this is the weakest, with many photographs being unbelievable. Some—such as photographs of the interviewed survivors—look like stock photos. They sometimes do not match up with the text descriptions, either. For example, Clemens is described as having “curly black hair [which] has expanded into a bramble undelineated [sic] from his knotty, chest-long beard” (66). The picture supposed to be his on the following page throws him into shadow, making most of him difficult to make out save for his beard which is certainly not “chest-long”. Other photographs just look unprofessional, such as the photographs of the Trucker’s New Testament Bible and The Poltergeist by William Roll. Both contain the photographer’s hand partially in frame, making it look like they were taken without the kind of thought and care I would expect from someone meticulous in all other elements of writing. They don’t just look unprofessional—they look completely careless. In the Roll book, the photographer hasn’t even removed the Thriftbooks sticker (one of my favorite places to buy books, but I digress) from the spine. I’m half sure that the New Testament Bible photo is photoshopped. What makes it worse is that there are good photographs of books, such as the IDEAS book on page 223. Even small elements—looking too professional, like the stock photos, or too unprofessional, like the book photos—can break immersion. 

That said, the issues I have with the photographs is the smallest issue I have with this book. The bigger issues I have are the treatment of the characters of color and the ending.

As I discuss my issues with the writing for characters of color, keep in mind that I am a white reviewer. Don’t take my thoughts as the end-all be-all to these characters. This is just what I noticed while reading and my opinion, so please do feel free to disagree or point out if I’m incorrect or missing anything.

The treatment of Tamra strikes me as having major issues. Her introduction on page 28 is “First is today’s shift manager, Tamra Longmoor, the restaurant’s only Black employee. Her Burger City uniform is a size small so as to detail her muscles.” She is “the one Burger City employee you didn’t fuck with, didn’t even joke with. She had no detectable sense of humor, and if you pushed her an inch further than she liked, she turned on you with the wrath of God, spitting chapter and verse” (159). She’s “the best shift manager on payroll” who “always gave the 180% Nutting asked for” (159). In other words, she’s a strong (in physicality and personality) Black woman, who is fanatically Christian and completely humorless. My time in book and writing spaces online has exposed me to a lot of criticism and discussion around portrayals of black women in fiction, so when I saw this it struck me as so obviously racially insensitive and drawing on harmful tropes. She is a minor character, meaning she rarely makes an appearance in the narrative, but the times she does mostly center around these very shallow elements. While other character certainly also draw on shallow or somewhat harmful tropes (such as Amy Mold, whose main trope is as an angry feminist), the difference is that their characters are fleshed out. They are given more detail and nuance. Tamra Longmoor never becomes anything more than a strong, religious, serious Black woman, and then she (probably) dies offscreen trying to rescue a white girl. I really do think that this book would have been vastly improved with a sensitivity reader or if an editor had caught this.

 

That brings me to my second major issue with The Ghost That Ate Us: the ending. SPOILERS AHEAD, I tried to hide it with spoiler tags but they're just not working. So. Be warned.

The final section of the book is framed as a hurried, last-minute addendum, containing additional research done into the perpetrator of the murder which set everything off, Scotty Flossen, and a final visit to Kit Bryant. 

I hate it.

The final section leaves no questions, no room for interpretation or uncertainty. It shoves the solution down your throat in an awkward, heavy-handed way that completely breaks all immersion. It felt like Kraus didn’t have faith that his readers are smart enough to pick up what he was putting down. Instead of letting us conclude that yes, Kit was indeed possessed by the ghost, he not only said that Kit was possessed by the ghost but traced exactly what caused the haunting and how it happened (a cult Flossen was evidently a part of). I already despise it when stories dump the answers in the reader’s laps at the last second, but I especially despised the final scene with Kit.

I will not lie: the final scene is gross. It’s greasy and nasty and full of bodily fluids. I can only compare it to Junji Ito’s Glyceride. The nastiness of it is not what I disliked about it. What I disliked about it is the ways in which it caps the book’s handling of body weight. All of the survivors are thin. No fit, not healthy, but very thin. Their weight loss is described at length as a strategy to get the readers to empathize with them. Meanwhile, Kit’s weight and weight gain is used as a strategy for the readers to dislike him. In the final scene, visits a now bedbound Kit and is disgusted by how unclean, greasy, and fat Kit is. The way his flesh moves and how absolutely disgusting it is described in excruciating detail.

 

I don’t think Kraus was trying to do this, but it’s another example of him using another insensitive, overplayed trope. In character design, often fat = evil, bad, and ugly and thin = good. Yes, there are reasons for Kit’s weight gain and the victim’s weight loss. Yes, those make sense with the plot and thematic goals. Regardless, it still fits into that trope. Without this final scene, that wouldn’t be so bad, but with this final scene it becomes a more glaring problem. I don’t think it’s possible—or feasible—for authors to catch every mistake or know every nuance, issue, and harmful element of every trope under the sun. However, it is something that impacted my enjoyment of the novel. Sensitivity readers or a similar service that could have suggested revisions would have gone a long way towards vastly improving the book.

The Ghost That Ate Us would have been much improved without the final section. The book’s main themes revolve around consumption. Consumption of food, consumption of mind, the effects of being consumed by hopelessness, by helplessness, by fear. How systems under capitalism consume minimum wage workers. Capping all of that off with “oops, no it really was a ghost all along, and now that ghost has infected me, oh no, you gotta destroy the book before it gets you too!1!1!!” (yes, Kraus does beg the reader to actually burn the book) weakens those themes. There is no subtlety in its execution, no grounding or connection to reality that makes the rest of the book effective. It takes the fault of the tragedy and places it more firmly in the supernatural court, dramatically weakening the criticisms of capitalism, fast food, and true crime.