ghost of a chance

A Russian state official said the decision to surrender Kherson “means there is still rational thinking in the command. If the president is part of this, then there is hope, though the ghost of a chance, that he is ready for talks.”

Such a novel doesn’t sound like it has a ghost of a chance, but Karunatilaka is used to beating the odds.

Despite every setback, racist put-down and disgusting come-on, Lutie never wavers in her quest, but such faith in the American dream leads to disaster: As Ann Petry writes, Lutie’s son “didn’t have the ghost of a chance on that street. The best you could give him wasn’t good enough.”

If they were sucked into the center of the whirling wind-top there wasn’t a ghost of a chance.

Even the modest, painless actions we could have started with, such as means-testing, or small, distant future increases in the age of eligibility, or correction of the system’s over-adjustment for inflation, have never had a ghost of a chance.