In most ghost stories, a house is haunted, or perhaps an object, the echoes of past tragedies captured in musty rooms or a threadbare doll. In Bell's intense if uneven debut novel, however, the haunting occupies not so much a physical space as the broken bonds between fathers and sons.
Thirteen-year-old Michael Kimmel's family is wealthy, but hardly comfortable, and in many senses undernourished. Facing an upcoming ballet recital, his older sister, Julia, is too nervous to eat-fearing that her daughter is anorexic, their mother stops eating in turn. Their overworked father thrives on protein shakes, perfectionism and canceling the family vacations at the last minute. Michael retreats from all this stress into the rule-governed chaos of video games.
Then one night Michael's father comes home with cracks in his armor: "My dad is someone who is never late, who is never wrong, who is never sad. But just then, he looked like he was maybe all three."
Michael's grandfather is dead.
The family's reaction is strangely muted. Michael hasn't seen his grandfather for years, since a break between father and son that he's too young to remember. But as in any ghost story, the past isn't dead. Soon the grandfather's spirit is haunting Michael, drawing him into a demimonde of the restless dead, where family history (and family secrets) are revealed.
Being haunted is not healthy. Michael returns from these "slips" shaken and half-frozen. Without meaning to, his grandfather is sucking the life out of him.
Ghosts, of course, always want something-the trick is finding out what. Ghost stories are puzzles, games played to uncover a hidden past. So it feels both inventiveand logical when Michael approaches his haunting like a new video game.
He collects an assortment of allies: his former best friend, his big sister, a bully, a paranormal geek and a professional psychic. He learns the rules of the afterlife, and braves deeper levels of his grandfather's memories. Ultimately, Michael discovers the roots of his unhappy relationship with his own father, and the truth of what the ghost is looking for.
Bell's spare prose evokes a tightly wound family, and elegantly renders the world from Michael's gloomy, nescient point of view. But the book's paranormal set pieces often feel muddled-the mechanics and geography of the demimonde don't become clearer as the game is played. (There's a River of the Dead, and tunnels under the river, I think.) But the story succeeds in that its paranormal dynamics echo the real world's. Breaks between father and son, parent and child, do play out in the next generation.
Families really are haunted by the past, in a way that houses are not.
Scott Westerfeld is the author of the Uglies, Midnighters and Peeps series. His next book is Bogus to Bubbly, an Insider's Guide to the World of Uglies (Simon Pulse, Oct.).
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Gr 6-8
When his estranged grandfather passes away, Michael Kimmel, 13, begins to feel a weird eeriness that develops into moments where he "slips" into the world of his grandfather's memories. He begins to communicate with the deceased, learning more about his sad and dysfunctional relationship with his son, Michael's father. Each "slip" into the dead man's mind brings the teen dangerously closer to his own passing as he becomes increasingly unable to "slip" out of "the river of the dead." First-time author Bell has created a gripping supernatural fantasy and psychological drama, blending family controversies with coming-of-age issues of peer acceptance and success. Michael's concerns over his height and abilities on the basketball court are continually overshadowed by his own strained relationship with his demanding father. Michael is a well-developed protagonist balanced by four supporting roles: his older sister, Julia; best friend, Gus; and new friends Ewan and Trip, fleshing out a teen-centered story with adults clearly taking an ancillary role. Persuasive descriptions of Michael's physical pain and psychological exertions climax in a vivid death-defying scene. An interesting short addendum on the fact or fictions of "time slips" will keep readers wondering about the plausibility of a loved-one's connection between death and life.-Rita Soltan, Youth Services Consultant, West Bloomfield, MI
This debut novel features a unique ghostly concept but ultimately fails to deliver. When 13-year-old Michael's grandfather Saul dies, no one in the family grieves much. His austere manner alienated them years before. Then Michael, the narrator, "slips" out of his body into the river of the dead and discovers Saul seeking resolution to his unsatisfactory life and lonely death. Michael is drawn to Saul and wants to help him, finding obvious parallels between the older man and his own rather distant father. Classmates assist Michael as the slipping events become more frequent and harder to control: Ewan, who warns him that he can easily be trapped forever in the river of death; Gus, his former best friend; Trip, a stereotypical jock; and Michael's sister Julia help him learn more about slipping, and pull him back from death at the climax. Insufficiently developed stock characters, a predictable conclusion and the use of dialogue to explain the complicated denouement decrease the plausibility of this tale and may make readers want to slip into something scarier. (Fiction. 10 & up)
