Anya's Ghost

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Anya's Ghost is a single-issue graphic novel by Vera Brosgol. It features Anya: an insecure, dowdy teenager, born of Russian immigrants, who finds herself struggling with the day-to-day trials of high school life, like her crush Sean and mouthy friend Siobhan. One day, she falls down an abandoned well and discovers the bones of a young girl who fell down there before her... As well as the ghost of said girl, still haunting the well she died in ninety years prior. The ghost, Emily, turns out to be pretty friendly, and the two eventually become good friends, as well as partners in crime. (Anya uses her invisible buddy to cheat on tests, keep watch while she's smoking and spy on classmates.) Of course, these sort of things rarely end well, and soon Emily proves more of a problem than a friend. Coming of Age Story: For Anya as she struggles to deal with highschool life and become a more mature person, with goals beyond impressing boys or looking cool. Ceceri, Kathy. Review of Anya's Ghost, by Vera Brosgol. Wired, 31 May 2011, www.wired.com/2011/05/review-anyas-ghost/. Accessed 7 Mar. 2018.

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Not Good with Rejection: Taken to dark extremes with Emily. The guy she loved rejected her and called her ugly...so she murdered him and the girl he turned her away for. So this ended up being a cute, well-drawn and well-told story about a disgruntled teenager learning some useful things about dealing with people, both living and dead. I guessed one twist I've lived long enough, read enough suspense novels, and watched enough TV movies to recognize an off-balance, obviously lying ghost when I meet one, but it was still well done, and tied in well with another story line, so I didn't mind.

Let's get this out of the way first: Anya Borzakovskaya is awesome. She's got the normal teenage insecurities going on and her desire to blend in is compounded by being a Russian immigrant. She looks around her and sees skinny, blonde and effortless perfection compared to her love handles, cultural heritage and social awkwardness. She's negative and snarky, so focused on conformity she's unable to appreciate the unique aspects of her life and the good things that come with it. Insecure Love Interest: Deconstruction. Elizabeth Standard is one of the prettiest, most athletic girls in school, dating one of the more popular boys, Sean. Everything about her seems to be perfect, and despite how jealous Anya and the other girls are of her she appears to be a nice and carefree girl. Then at a party Anya learns that Sean is a creep who sleeps around with other girls (even his friend's girlfriend) with Elizabeth not only knowing but keeping watch; Anya, who come to the party to steal Sean from Elizabeth, couldn't bring herself to sleep with Sean and hurt Elizabeth. Before Anya leaves the party, she asks Elizabeth why she lets Sean treat her like that, and Elizabeth tells her that while she appears happy, she really is miserable and insecure, and the only person that makes her really happy is Sean. Because she loves him, or as she admits, thinks she loves him, she's willing to do anything to keep him in her life, even though his cheating and her covering for his cheating is hurting her.Everyone has problems. Even the person or couple you envy for being "perfect", could in reality have bigger issues than you have. Manipulative Bitch: Emily's Evil All Along reveal. She was manipulating Anya to do what she liked in the world of the living. Than no friends. Or, maybe, there may be some tiny, hidden problems lurking in the past. And it may be that soul sisters womances, with 90 years of cultural evolution between them, don´t suffer from the different social norms. Although this would make a great plot device too to contrast and satirize the whole society and stereotype thing. But it´s more a Ambiguous Situation: Emily claims to have died after fleeing from a maniac who murdered her parents and then falling down the well. Actually, she was hunted down by an angry mob after burning down the house of the guy who rejected her with him still inside, but we don't know if she was killed by the mob and her body was thrown into the well, or if she fell into the well while fleeing and died of starvation/dehydration in there instead.

What did not work- I’m just not a fan of ya books or for that matter graphic novels. If I was going to read a ya book, I’d rather read a book of prose, not pictures as I like to imagine everything in my head. Nice Guy: Sean's pretty nice to Anya about her fall in Gym class even though all the kids laughed at her for it, among other nice behaviors. Subverted at Matt's party, where he's shown as a cheater who doesn't care who he hurts by sleeping around. Vera Brosgol was born in Moscow, Russia in 1984 and moved to the United States when she was five. She received a diploma in Classical Animation from Sheridan College, and currently works at Laika Inc. in Portland, Oregon drawing storyboards for feature animation. Cute Ghost Girl: Emily's more of a mousy, spindly kind of cute, but still distinctly adorable. Until her true colors start to shine through, and she becomes more scary than cute.Evil Counterpart / Not So Different - Emily is the evil counterpart to Anya. She starts out mellowed out pretty well after ninety years sitting in a well to think about what she's done, but when Anya teaches her her own high school lifestyle she reawakens the beast, and the beast turns out to possess exaggerated versions of all of Anya's negative traits: Emily is obsessive over boys (but unlike Anya, she is a Yandere), sees existing girlfrends of 'mark' boys as not human individuals who deserve respect as such - but just competition (but unlike Anya, she is inclined to murder them), lies and manipulates (but not just about her last name, she lies about her entire past). The mirroring is even physical: she dons Anya's hairdo and starts smoking "ghost sigarettes", presumably a mimicing of Anya's bad habit. In the end, we even get an explicit You're Just Like Me speech from Emily - and Anya partially concedes the point, stating that she is enough like her to at least understand her.

Returning home to confront Emily, Anya finds the bone missing and discovers that the ghost’s powers are much more extensive than she was led to believe. Emily is capable of moving solid objects and even hurting people. She confesses to Anya that the reason she has been helping her at school is because she wants to give Anya the life she never had, which is why she has been so adamant that Anya should seduce Sean by any means necessary.wait, what does that say? Oh. That's the Cyrillic alphabet. This girl's mom is very old-country Russian. Cute. But now I want to know what that food is, and I can't even sound it out..." YMMV • Radar • Quotes • ( Funny • Heartwarming • Awesome) • Fridge • Characters • Fanfic Recs • Nightmare Fuel • Shout Out • Plot • Tear Jerker • Headscratchers • Trivia • WMG • Recap • Ho Yay • Image Links • Memes • Haiku • Laconic • Source • Setting I'm liking this. I – whoa, okay, that was kind of scary. Ooh – I'll bet she wishes she'd hung on to that 'fattening' food now..."