Customer Name: S. Caughie
Date Of Review: 2008-11-30
Review Summary: Good, with a few gaping holes.
Review:
I admit, I'm bemused by this book. On one hand, I wanted to slap down five stars because it was so very compelling - I read it in two days, which is no mean feat when you're the working mother of two small children! But at the same time, while reading I kept having moments of, 'Hold on, that's just too implausible, even for a book about body-hopping ghosts.'
I think - at the risk of sounding flippant - that this book suffers for being the author's first novel. If it hadn't been, I suspect many of the things in it that struck me as rushed, superfluous or confused wouldn't have been there. I also think that the chosen (or assigned?) genre ended up being a detriment: yes, it's set in a high school, but the themes are very much adult ones. And no, I don't mean the sex, but rather the motivating factors of the main characters: a mother's love, a soldier's guilt, a loveless marriage, the regret of those approaching middle-age. I have to wonder what this novel might have been if those themes had been allowed the more generous time and space, the greater depth of an 'adult' novel?
Likewise I was annoyed by the ending, which tried to cram far too much into too tight a space, much of it frankly ridiculous. (Spoilers following!) I could just about buy Jenny's pregnancy, though it seemed a bit gratuitous, but the idea of Helen being able to feel the movement of a three-day-old fetus was absurd. Likewise the sleeping pills: seeing as Helen was already dead, what was ODing going to accomplish other than further devastating Jenny's ruptured family? And Billy came over as far too mature and together in the final scenes, given his past and how little information he had to go on.
I guess the fact that I've written this much about it must say something to the book's credit. It's certainly compulsive reading, and very well written. In the end, though, I just wanted it to ring a bit more true.