Book Review: Ghost Child by Caroline Overington
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This could easily have been a true story (in fact, I sought out the statement at the front of the book that declared it was fiction just to make sure). It has an awful sense of realism about it and maybe that’s why the story itself ends up being almost inconsequential. More than anything else, this is a character study, an extraordinary character study presented in beautifully simple writing by a very fine writer.
Lauren Cashman, now known as Lauren Cameron, has lived a tragic life. The oldest of four siblings, she was six when her five-year-old half-brother Jacob died from a depressed skull fracture that caused a massive brain injury. Her mother and her mother’s de facto were sentenced to fifteen years in prison for manslaughter. And Lauren and her two remaining siblings were split up and sent to various foster carers. The younger brother, Harley, was lucky and was placed with a couple who became his permanent family. The two sisters were placed with many, many foster carers over many, many years. None of them became permanent.
When we first meet Lauren, it’s twenty years later and she’s been caught up in a coronial inquest that is completely irrelevant to what went on when she was a child but, of course, nothing is completely irrelevant to what went on when she was a child because it permeates her whole life, her whole existence, her whole sense of herself. Almost immediately, the story pivots back to the events of her childhood. And then through a variety of participants – the detective, reporters, social workers, the doctor who tried to save Jacob, the local priest, the shopping centre photographer who took the portrait of the children that appeared on the front page of the papers as the news of the attack broke, foster carers, even the kids themselves – the details unfold. They are told almost as if the people are witnesses recounting the events for a book being written twenty years later and I think that was a deliberate choice by the author. “Look,” she is saying, “look at how affected and devastated all these people still are all these years later.”
Some of the characters narrate multiple chapters. Others appear only once and then recede into the background. But each person plays an important role in adding their perspective to the mix and everybody has distinctive voices, a unique way of telling their part in the story. There is no chance of mixing up in your mind who is telling the story from chapter to chapter. And there’s certainly no chance of getting bored by a narrative monotone because there isn’t one; it’s a triumphant tapestry of each person’s take on the situation.
The story doesn’t have the jaw-dropping twists and turns of some of Overington’s other books. When the big reveal comes about how Jacob actually died, who it was that caused his injury and why, it isn’t that much of a shock. It’s almost as though there has been an unspoken understanding throughout the whole book between the writer and the reader that everyone knew this is where we would end up; but it was the journey that was important, not the destination.
I feel like this review is very vague but Ghost Child is not a book that lends itself to a summary of the main plot points that will draw potential readers in with questions about what happened. It is, however, definitive evidence of Overington’s significant talent as a writer.
Still, if you’ve never read her work, I wouldn’t recommend starting with this book. Start with I Came to Say Goodbye and leave this for later when you’ll be able to see that while it isn’t her best, it’s still very good. And perhaps more importantly, that it’s a critical commentary about those who fall through the cracks.
3.5 stars
*First published on Goodreads 3 January 2019
