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Tag: ghosts in fiction

Ghost Novel Review in Honor of Read an Ebook Week: Ghost Island

Ghost Novel Review in Honor of Read an Ebook Week: Ghost Island

Ghost Island by Bonnie Hearn Hill Kindle e-book So, you’ve been hearing a lot about ebooks and are wondering if you should try one. But wait, you’ve also heard ebooks are sophomoric, self-indulgent, self-promoting drivel by authors who couldn’t get a traditional publisher’s attention if they handed out manuscripts clad in red spike-heeled pumps and see-through raincoats. Let’s talk about it. Normally, today’s post would be Writer Unleashed, but in honor of Read an E-book Week (March 4-10), I’m shuffling…

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Ghost Novel Review: Midnight Bayou

Ghost Novel Review: Midnight Bayou

Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 352 pages. This book encapsulates Roberts’ strengths as a writer: eerie setting, mysterious mansion, endearing characters. Declan Fitzgerald renounces a glam, power-packed lawyer’s existence for decaying Manet Hall on the edge of New Orleans. Of course, New Orleans with its French Caribbean history is the perfect locale for all things surnaturel. And, in fact, ethnic and class conflict is the basis for the murder that preceded the hauntings. Declan, in the…

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Book Review: The Distant Hours

Book Review: The Distant Hours

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton Atria Books, 560 pages. I hesitated to review this book because the supernatural element is so subtle–as subtle as the wisp of a ghost’s gown, a ghost more suggestion than apparition. Yet within these pages you will find whispering stones and unexplained stains and distant laughter. Even a ghostly glimpse here or there. Or was that merely a trick of the light? Things go bump in the night, but, generally speaking, they assume humanoid…

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Book Review: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Book Review: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

  The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski Publisher: Harper Collins, 562 pages Format: Hardcover Source: Purchased What it’s about: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle begins, unexpectedly, in 1952 Busan with a secret night meeting between a US serviceman and a Korean herbalist. The service man offers penicillin in exchange for poison. The herbalist says, “I think here we trade one life for one life” (5).     The prologue ends without naming the serviceman, and chapter one begins with…

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Ghost novel review: Her Fearful Symmetry

Ghost novel review: Her Fearful Symmetry

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger Review Part Two Endings are so hard, aren’t they? At Laurie’s monthly book group, concerns about conclusions run high. When I listen to people describe a book, satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the ending always figures into the discussion, which generally falls into three categories. The first category involves quilting metaphors. I hear, “the threads were tied up too neatly” or “not tied up neatly enough” or “story threads were left hanging.” In the second…

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Ghost Novel Review: Beloved

Ghost Novel Review: Beloved

Beloved by Toni Morrison Publisher: Plume, 275 pages Format: Paperback Source: Purchased What it’s about: Set in the south in the years before and after the Civil War, Beloved tracks the ravages of oppression across one matriarchal line—that of Baby Suggs, Sethe, Denver, and their sons and lovers. The novel depicts in unflinching narrative the horrors that slavery wreaks on individuals and families. There are chain gangs, routinized torture, and callous indifference. We know, for instance, that Sethe’s baby daughter,…

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Ghost Novel Review: The Little Stranger

Ghost Novel Review: The Little Stranger

  The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters In many ways this book reminded me of Jane Eyre—the retrospective narrator, the gloomy atmosphere, the decaying mansion. Minus, of course, lapses into Dear reader confidences. Just as Bronte did before her, Waters renders the crumbling mansion’s inhabitants with subtle shifts—Mrs. Ayres, increasingly desperate to maintain the veneer of the landed gentry; Roderick Ayres, desperate to preserve himself inviolate; Catherine Ayres, desperate to keep it together despite a malevolent supernatural presence. And then…

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