Ghosted

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses eating disorders, unsuccessful fertility treatment, and homophobia.

Sarah Mackey is one of Ghosted’s protagonists and is a complex character who develops throughout the novel. An early character trait that Walsh uses to portray Sarah is that she is torn between “the competing forces of protectiveness and powerlessness” (6) in her drive to protect her younger sister, Hannah. After the accident, she keeps her distance from children as much as possible, and her refusal to have a baby is one of the catalysts for the end of her 17-year marriage to Rueben. Before the events of the novel, Sarah’s life is in two distinct parts: before the accident, growing up at Frampton Mansell in England as Sarah Harrington; and after the accident, with the successful life that she has since built in LA as Sarah Mackey. Reflecting on the connection between how she feels after being ghosted and the trauma of the accident, Sarah thinks:

[T]here were so many blanks in my memory of that awful day. Distance, or trauma, or perhaps the vast difference had helped me block out a lot of what happened. And yet the feelings I was having now, I knew them.