Fading Fast
Connoisseur
The Apple Tree by Daphne du Maurier originally published in 1952
This long short story is billed as a ghost story, but you have to decide as the surface story is more of a psychological thriller than traditional spirit tale.
A middle-aged man loses his wife and, through third-person narrative, we learn that their marriage was an unhappy one in a very British way of surface politeness, quiet suffering and some vicious passive aggressiveness. Who's at fault? Probably both as he's a generally inactive guy who likes things done for him, but also just likes to be left alone; whereas, she's a doer who resents if her every action isn't acknowledged with applause.
Overtime, they had settled into an unpleasant armistice of living together for practical reasons, but apart emotionally. He would escape from her to his study; she would escape from him by going to committee meetings or seeing friends.
The story opens a few months after her passing where he's content to have the house to himself as we are sure she would be had he passed first. But then he notices an ugly, craggy apple tree in his yard - amidst all the healthy apple trees - whose existence begins to irritate him in an eerily similar way to how his wife irritated him.
From here the story becomes one of man versus tree, at least in his head. The view from his bedroom window is spoiled for him because of the tree's ugliness. The gardener objects to his suggestion to cut it down arguing that it's still alive and bearing fruit. The fruit it does bear is, only to him, inedible. When a dead branch of the tree is cut up for firewood, he finds the smell it makes in the fireplace intolerable; whereas, others enjoy it.
On it goes in this tale of man versus tree with him getting more and more desperate to get rid of the tree. As his antipathy increases, we begin to wonder how much of this is in his head or if the tree really is haunted with the ghost of his bitter dead wife. The ending is effective if not a complete surprise leaving you to decide if it was a ghost or mental anguish at work.
It's a quick one- or two-sittings read that's enjoyable enough for what it is. I bought the Biblioasis edition, which is part of a ghost-story series. The book, while paperback, had a nice hand feel to it with thick pages and a few wonderful sketches, similar to the cover one above, spaced throughout. For seven bucks on Amazon, if you enjoy the look and feel of physical books, this is a fun one to get.