The Ghost Writer by John Harwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Gerard Freeman grew up in Australia with an over-protective English mother and a caring but reserved Austalian father. His mother has an anxiety disorder and needs to constantly know his whereabouts. She is frantic if his is even thirty minutes late from school. Gerard is an only child. His parents live very separate lives. His father goes to work and works on his model trains in the evening. His mother keeps house and reads. She talks about how idyllic her life in England was as a child. His parents each have their own bedrooms but seem content with their lives.
Gerard is a curious kid and wonders why his mother keeps a locked drawer in her bedroom. While she is napping in the sunroom, he discovers the key to the locked drawer and finds a manuscript and a photo. His mother surprises him and is furious, giving him the beating of a lifetime. She refuses to ever talk to him of her childhood in England again. He does not see the photo or manuscript again for many years.
When Gerard is thirteen, he begins writing a "pen friend" in England. Over the years, Gerard moves from a school boy crush to being madly in love with Alice, his pen friend. Alice is disabled from a car accident and does not want to meet Gerard in person, fearing that he will not care for her if he sees her in person and realizes the extent of her disability. After graduating, he saves his money and decides to visit her anyway. He has been writing her through the pen friend agency all these years and comes home without finding her and bitterly disappointed.
Throughout the story, other stories are introduced. You begin wondering what is actually part of Gerard's mothers history and what is incidental. The stories becomes terribly entangled and then you think they are clearing and then become entangled again. The more you read, the more rivetting the story, and the more engrossed you become.
Without giving away the ending, I am not sure how I feel about the way the author leaves the reader hanging. The story climbs to an incredible crescendo...and leaves you there!
I did not want to read other reviews until I had read the book. Now I do. I want to see how other readers felt about being left hanging. What did you think of the ending???
View all my reviews
