Ghost Book

This was a random book I selected at my last library visit. I never heard or read of the author before.

The story is about a common, unexciting guy, David. Everything we read about him is...unexciting. His young love and marriage and eventual divorce to Bethany is...unexciting. Post divorce he moves to a common, unexciting kind of boarding house. He lies to his mother about his job at the bank, making it into a higher level position, which it's not. When the bank has a reorganization, he gets let go, despite his quiet, but explemplary work; he is depressed, confused and in denial, afraid to tell his mother because he does not want to disappoint.

He picks up a temporary job as an apprentice at a mortuary/funeral home, which he observes and learns and becomes fascinated with the trade and the colorful people he works with. This starts to get a little interesting and...exciting. His mother still thinks he works at the bank!

The reader is exposed to some of the back and front room procedures of a funeral home as well as his relationship with the agoraphobic owner and his younger wife. This gets more interesting...and exciting.

David has continual dreams and flashbacks of his life; his deceased father, his school days and friends (not many), his parents' marriage, his failed marriage, his current love interest, Ellen, etc. While he sits in peace and quiet in front of a dead body in a coffin in the slumber room, waiting for visitation by a grieving family, he sees, or thinks he sees (a trick of the light?) some kind of phenomena in the air. Is it the soul of the deceased? Is it an apparition? He does not know nor can he comprehend what it is he has seen. And here the s__t really hits the fan. He makes the mistake of sharing this "mist/smoke" experience with someone who can't keep their mouth shut and the next thing you know, it's the biggest news in town. Must be a very small town as this becomes the news of the day and is...very exciting!

Mouths keep blabbing on and this turns into a three ring circus with the funeral home and David becoming a celebrity of sorts; reporters are calling, Tv stations want to interview him, he's on the front page of the newspapers, but the worst is his getting sucked in by The Society of the Second World, "an organization that seeks a comprehensive view of existence," and includes paranormals, physicists, theologists, scientists, biologists, analysts, researchers, etc. I did get myself very lost in all this data and posturing (professional and unprofessional), it made my head hurt especially reading thru this part so late at night! So I skimmed through some pages here and there. I'm not a highly educated person with any bit of a background in any of this stuff, although don't we all wonder if there is a second world out there when we pass on from this life?

So in the end, we have to ask what is real and what is not? What do we imagine and what actually is real? What is Hocus Pocus?

What happens at the end IS real, startling and sad. David has stupidly brought himself and others into something he saw or thinks he saw, something unknown (and now so publicly exciting); something that has completely spiraled out of control.

I'm going to go outside my box and read some of the authors' other books, however if they are too technical, I'm going to pass. Alan Lightman, a novelist, is also a theoretical physicist and served on faculties at Harvard and MIT, so there is a potential for his writings to be a bit too heavy for me and MY common mind. 🤔 We'll see.