From the Bookshelf of Tyler Public Library…

[close] Whoa! I loved this book! Why? First of all, I could not put it down. Who doesn't love a good ghost story/mystery? Second: Oliver has an outstanding command of the English language. And she can really turn a phrase. Third: well-plotted story with engaging characters.

Insightful writing: "Parents teach us our first lessons about love: that you sure as hell don't get to choose it". P.31

Touches of humor: “in her large gray cashmere jumpsuit, she looks like an overgrown dust mite". p. 58

Poetic prose: "sometimes ideas converge---memory and present, wish and desire, silhouette shadows of people we have known. This is the closest we have come to dreaming". P. 72

" It was unfair that people could pretend to be one thing when they were really something else. They would get you on their side and then do nothing but fail, fail, and fail again. People should come with warning labels, like cigarette packs: involvement would kill you over time". p. 70.

Richard Walker, estranged from his children and ex-wife, has died after a lingering illness. And so the Walkers return, en masse, to clear out the house, read the will, and bury the dead. Caroline, the ex, drinks too much; daughter Minna is a beautiful, but unhappy twenty-eight year old single mother who tries to vanquish her loneliness with constant, meaningless flings and unnecessary plastic surgery; son Trenton is a sensitive, awkward loner who hears voices and doubts his own sanity. Family secrets and loneliness are the ever- present themes, with the mysteries unfolding in separate rooms within the Walker household.

Told alternately amongst the family voices are the voices of two resident ghosts, Alice and Sandra who suffer as they observe the struggling Walkers. Highly recommended for fans of Alice Sebold, Karen Walker, and Audrey Niffennegger.