Imagine my surprise...

I’ve this small pile of books in the corner of our bedroom. They’re books I picked up because the title or cover art drew me in with promises of wit, high jinks and sci fi/fantastical adventure. Not terribly bright of me, I must say!

I picked the first off the stack and, imagine my surprise when the ghosts, referred to in the title, proved to be purely metaphorical. Yes there’s definitely wit though it’s more in the lugubrious versus wry vein.

This is the story of three sisters, born and raised in New York, now all in their 40s who, after lives filled with disappointment and pain, once more live together on the Upper West Side. 

They’re writing a family history, a memoir, a “quasi-confessional.”

We plan to record all the sorrows and stumbles as well as all the accomplishments and contributions. We’re sorry to say there’ve been many of the former, far fewer of the latter.
~~~snip~~~
We’ve been thinking about our eulogies lately because this is not only our memoir, it’s also our suicide note.
~~~snip~~~
We always knew we’d die by our own hands sooner or later. Sooner has now come a-knocking.

This happy chat went down by page seven. A perfect example of why I should read the first ten pages – NOT just the blurbs on the back cover – BEFORE I bring a book up to the register.

Did I ? Course not. I took the word of an author I’ve never read who said:

“The Alter sisters are mordant, wry, and crystalline in wit and vision; it is a tremendous pleasure to rocket through generations of their family histories with them.”

Mordant? Wry? Crystalline in wit and vision? Either this particular blurb-smith is WAY overstating because she's pals with the writer OR she’s got a mondo overdeveloped, hair trigger thing for dark “wit and vision.”

Then, on page eight, one of the sisters provides a helpful spreadsheet on how relatives who’ve come before these three, offed themselves. Clearly this is a family tradition.

I flipped to the back of the book to see which method the sisters chose. Turns out they’d decided against jumpin’ on that last train out BUT I’m still not keen on spending time with the gloomy Alter sisters. Not yet anyway. Mebbe after the winter, when there’s more daylight and temps are reasonable once more. Or not. I found holes and inconsistencies that really bugged me:

1. One of the sisters is the story’s narrator but she refers to all in the 3rd person. 
2. The eldest was married. The ex is played up as seeming wonderfully sensitive. What happened? Why did they divorce? No reason is given and that seemed kinda pertinent to the story line. Granted, I stopped reading at page 20. It may have been explained later.

Ahhhhh no, I did NOT mark my place.

Instead, I picked up one of my old faves – Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Ya know, sometimes I just gotta go with the dependable, tried-and-true. Plus, Jen, Oni and I just finished watching the BBC mini-series. I’m all psyched to see what was different from the book and shit.