Eireann Corrigan
Push
Release date: August 1, 2008
List price: $8.99 (336p)
ISBN: 978-0439832441
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Review - "Ordinary Ghosts"
Reviewer: Cori Vella
Rating:
I have a confession to make. I really, really, really hate reading fiction in present tense, so much so that it requires three "reallys." There's just something about it that makes me want to bash my head into the wall.
Keeping that in mind, you can imagine my reluctance to read 336 pages of it in Eireann Corrigan's Ordinary Ghosts. I put it off for a great deal of time, letting the book collect dust in a box, but when my other review options proved to be even more painful of a start, I cleaned off the cover and got started.
Ordinary Ghosts is about Emil Simon, a student at a private school who is utterly alone. His mother died, his brother took off, and his father is continually absent, both emotionally and physically. On the first page, we found out that Emil has inherited a piece of his school's history: a key that opens every door on campus. The key is passed down from cool kid to cool kid, and its never to be known who has it any particular year. Emil makes it clear that he didn't inherit the key — he took it from his older brother's room after he left.
While his father is away on a business trip, Emil sneaks into the school to do some exploring. It is during his exploration that he meets Jade Larson, a girl much too old and troubled for him, but that doesn't stop him from falling in love with her. In his quest to learn more about Jade and her past, he also finds the answers he's been seeking in his own life: why his brother left, and the role he played in their mother's death.
Admittedly, there is not much of a plot, and even less of a story. The majority of the book consists of Emil's inner monologues, with very little action. It reads a bit like a mood piece rather than a novel, and is very much on the "tell, don't bother to show" spectrum of things. Even so, it was a good read, well-worth the time I put into it. Corrigan immerses the reader in the mind of a teenage boy, and does it to great effect. The detail Corrigan provides is lush and just-right, never stepping into melodrama, purple prose, or "I'm an adult trying WAY too hard to be hip" territory. In this case, telling instead of showing works, and I'm not quite sure why — only that it does.
Ordinary Ghosts is a book that has found its way onto my bookshelf, and believe me, that bookshelf is so crammed that it takes a very special kind of book to make it there. It is one of only two written in present tense, part of a tiny collection that will probably never grow because I can't stand to read it. It is worth a read-through, at least once, if only because Corrigan gets so many things right. In a day that sees trash fiction published and flying off bookshelves, it's refreshing and relieving to find something floating around that is worth taking time out to read.
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