Ghost Town
A Novel
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
A gripping and darkly nostalgic tale, “Perrotta at his finest” (Ron Charles), about a tumultuous summer in 1970s suburban New Jersey, from the perspective of a middle-aged writer looking back on a series of events that changed his life—and the story he finally has the courage to tell.
Jimmy Perrini lives in 1970s suburban New Jersey, a few miles from Manhattan, but a world apart. At the end of eighth grade, after tragedy strikes, Jimmy finds himself lost in a fog of grief that alienates him from friends and family, drifting instead into troubling friendships with two older teenagers: one a notorious local burnout with a fast car, an endless supply of weed, and a shaky grasp of reality; the other a smart, eccentric girl, whom Jimmy finds himself drawn to as they become entranced by her Ouija board, which may just offer the only salve to their grief.
As a fateful public drama unfolds, Jimmy is torn between the occult beyond and the cold realities of the place he has called home. Narrated by a much older Jimmy, a literary-turned-commercial novelist, Ghost Town is an “emotional wallop [that] nails the restless ennui of adolescence” (People), revealing how the past haunts the present and the way our ghosts are always with us, even when we think we’ve left them behind.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This quietly unsettling coming-of-age novel turns a suburban New Jersey 1970s summer into a wistful story about grief and memory. At the end of eighth grade, Jimmy Perrini is reeling from his mother’s death and drifting away from his family and friends. As he hangs out with an older misfit kid and grows close to an eccentric girl who shares his fascination with Ouija boards, he tries to make sense of his new life. Author Tom Perrotta has always been brilliant at exposing the ache that often lurks beneath the surface of everyday life, and the hazy, marijuana-fuelled atmosphere makes Jimmy’s confusion and loneliness feel all the more vivid. There’s a supernatural vibe, adding an eerie charge without overwhelming the book’s emotional core, and the older Jimmy’s perspective gives it an added layer of melancholy and hard-won clarity. Ghost Town is an absorbing story with currents of emotion just under the surface.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A middle-aged man makes peace with his childhood trauma in Perrotta's stellar latest (after Tracy Flick Can't Win). Accomplished novelist Jimmy Perrini looks back on his youth in bucolic Creamwood, N.J., after receiving an invitation to a building dedication ceremony in his father's name. He still hasn't fully processed the tragic summer of 1974, when, at 13, an unexpected death shook him to his core and left his family unmoored (the details come out late in the novel). Left with "an endless bad dream," Jimmy stumbled through the rest of his boyhood, which took another dark turn after he struck up a volatile friendship with Eddie, an older boy who smoked weed and drove a Chevy Vega with racing stripes, and Olivia, a high school valedictorian who introduced him to the mysterious magic of a Ouija board. The story lines run parallel as Jimmy's present-day indifference about returning to Creamwood collides with intense memories of that fateful summer. Perrotta is a confident storyteller, and he packs a great deal of heart into this tale of moving forward amid crushing grief, in which a writer finally gets a chance to exorcise "the demons you think you've outrun." This is sure to resonate with Perrotta's longtime fans and win him new ones.
