Muriel and Zachary are newlyweds living in their newly purchased old farmhouse in small-town Vermont. She has just defended her dissertation on translations of Mukei Korin's erotic Japanese poems; that she brings this work home is a boon for their marriage. He is a private detective investigating the disappearance of a local girl who's been missing for months. They bought the farmhouse from semi-famous painter Lorca, a recent widow whose husband, Simon, had a heart attack and tipped overboard on a ferry en route to Nova Scotia.
The first surprise of Howard Norman's (The Northern Lights, What Is Left the Daughter) riveting novel The Ghost Clause is that their stories are told in the voice of Simon's ghost. He still occupies the farmhouse, and feels very involved in the lives taking place there now.
Supremely enjoyable, this novel is about the intersections of lives. Finely detailed in its particulars and simultaneously revealing of grand-scale humanity, the story is both poignant and frequently gut-laugh-funny. Norman's prose is inspired; Simon's narration is adorned with lyric moments: "A hammock of moon was traveling pale in hazy light," Simon observes of an evening at home with Lorca when they were still alive together; there is more poetry here than Korin's.
The Ghost Clause is one of the best kind of novels, excelling in every way: it's delightful at line level, humorous, absorbing in individual stories and wise on a higher plane. A book for any reader who cares about people. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia