Ghosts of Harvard
Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella
When Cady hears disembodied voices, she fears she is suffering from the same paranoid schizophrenia that drove her brother, a Harvard student, to take his life. Who can blame her?
Fear is a character in this novel. Fear of the unknown, fear of things that go bump in the night, fear that, in fact, the things you think go bump in the night are only going bump in your mind. Fear of fear. It is fitting that one of the two epigraphs at the beginning is from existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre–a guy who knows something about the kind of fear that crawls up into our minds and messes about.
But more than fear drives Cady. She is also driven by guilt. Why did she not see the signs that her beloved brother was so close to suicide? Why did she turn away from him at times when his paranoia invaded her life? Why didn’t she investigate the source of his fears while he was still alive?
Accompanied by fear and guilt and despite her parents’ objections, Cady enrolls at Harvard to untangle the mystery of her brother’s final days. She visits the campus sites her brother frequented, questions his friends, tracks down his professors.
And that is when the voices begin. Three different voices from three different eras in Harvard’s history enter Cady’s mind, and she struggles to understand what’s happening to her. In her quest to understand, she wrestles with whether she’s entered some parallel time continuum or is the subject of haunting by three ghosts of Harvard. Or whether she has, in some delusional state, made the voices up entirely and is therefore following her brother’s footsteps not only physically but also mentally.
Ghosts of Harvard is a book for those who love history, and particularly for those who enjoy learning about the history of Harvard. Ghosts of Harvard is also for mystery lovers and ghost aficionados. I sometimes found myself angry at how Cady’s single-mindedness caused her to hurt her friends and neglect her studies (and here’s an existential question: Is it cheating if a ghost helps you with your homework?). I also found myself bogged down at times with quantities of internal dialogue, much of it repetitive, that I felt slowed the book’s pace.
Ultimately, however, I totally loved what the author did to create an exciting climax and a satisfying ending (and endings are so hard to pull off). Although the climax and ending were unexpected, I later understood and appreciated the clues the author sprinkled throughout the novel. As my brother, a nurse who worked with psych patients, often told me, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.”
I received a copy of The Ghosts of Harvard from Netgalley.
