26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful and much better than I expected!!!, April 6, 2007
I bought this book for my two older daughters to read due to the reviews and the subject matter being similar to other books they have enjoyed. However, I read the book before they did just to see what it was about, and I am so very glad I did! At the end I was just crying, but in such a good way.
I don't consider myself religious, more of an agnostic. Even though the book spoke about heaven, etc., it wasn't in such a way that made it overbearing. It actually questioned certain beliefs more than anything, so I did not think there were any sort of religious overtones in the book that tried to explain life, death, and what comes after in an arrogant, this-is-the-way-it-is-so-do-NOT-ask-questions-or-doubt-it-in-any-way tone.
What it was is an extremely touching, moving book with such a great conclusion. I most definitely did not think there should have been more, it was, as another reviewer called it, beautiful. It is an atypical love story which shows the power of forgiveness, all in a story that teens and adults can relate to.
Really, this is a wonderful book, you just have to read it. I know my children will love it, although since they are not adults, as the characters in the book are, they may not be able to relate to some aspects of the story, like how strong a mother's love is and why you would punish yourself for things you thought you had done wrong.
I hate to think there are people that think this book is only for older teenagers. If your kids are allowed out in the real world at all without earplugs and blinders, the sex, language, and drug references in this book are *not* going to surprise them. Sorry for having to say that, but it isn't cynicism, just unfortunately, reality.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
46 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Richie's Picks: A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT, October 1, 2005
"The pain, once I was dead, was very memorable. I was deep inside the cold, smothering belly of a grave when my first haunting began. I heard her voice in the darkness reading Keats, 'Ode to a Nightingale.' Icy water was burning down my throat, splintering my ribs, and my ears were filled with a sound like a demon howling, but I could hear her voice and reached for her. One desperate hand burst from the flood and caught the hem of her gown. I dragged myself, hand over hand, out of the earth and quaked at her feet, clutching her skirts, weeping muddy tears. All I knew was that I had been tortured in the blackness, and then I had escaped. Perhaps I hadn't reached the brightness of heaven, but at least I was here, in her lamplight, safe."
It was more than 150 years ago when the dead woman's tortured spirit became a "prisoner on leave from the dungeon." Helen can not be seen, nor heard, nor felt, although her emotions can occasionally send "a ripple into the tangible world." During those years, Helen has cleaved to a series of unwitting hosts, learned through trial and error the rules by which she must abide in order to prevent a return to her hell, and has periodically chosen another acceptable and convenient person to haunt (preferably one with some tie to literature, which she so loves) for when her current host grows old and dies.
The latest of Helen's hosts is an English teacher, Mr. Brown, and it is in his classroom that it happens:
"Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead. I was with my teacher, Mr. Brown. As usual, we were in our classroom, that safe and wooden-walled box--the windows opening onto the grassy field to the west, the fading flag standing in the chalk dust corner, the television mounted above the bulletin board like a sleeping eye, and Mr. Brown's princely table keeping watch over a regiment of student desks. At that moment I was scribbling invisible comments in the margins of a paper left in Mr. Brown's tray, though my words were never read by the students. Sometimes Mr. Brown quoted me, all the same, while writing his own comments. Perhaps I couldn't tickle the inside of his ear, but I could reach the mysterious curves of his mind.
"Although I could not feel paper between my fingers, smell ink, or taste the tip of a pencil, I could see and hear the world with all the clarity of the Living. They, on the other hand, did not see me as a shadow or a floating vapor. To the Quick, I was empty air. "Or so I thought. As an apathetic girl read aloud from Nicholas Nickleby, as Mr. Brown began to daydream about how he had kept his wife awake the night before, as my spectral pen hovered over a misspelled word, I felt someone watching me. Not even my beloved Mr. Brown could see me with his eyes. I had been dead so long, hovering at the side of my hosts, seeing and hearing the world but never being heard by anyone and never, in all these long years, never being seen by human eyes. I held stone still while the room folded in around me like a closing hand. When I looked up, it was not in fear but in wonder. My vision telescoped so that there was only a small hole in the darkness to see through. And that's where I found it, the face that was turned up to me.
"Like a child playing at hide and seek, I did not move, in case I had been mistaken about being spotted. And childishly I felt both the desire to stay hidden and a thrill of anticipation about being caught. For this face, turned squarely to me, had eyes set directly on mind."
So begins the teenage love story of the year, and a supernatural one at that.
The young man who can see and hear Helen is Billy Blake, a human whose body has been taken over by a ghost named James at the moment its drug-addled teen owner checked out.
The two main difficulties facing Helen and James are:
Can Helen get a body of her own?
What happens when you suddenly become a troubled teenager but are not familiar with those thousands of details about the life you've supposedly been living.
Here this scenario takes on a whole different dimension from THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER.
Alternating between sensual, gritty, dark, delightful, and frightening; between atmospheric fantasy and down-and dirty contemporary YA realism, A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT is absolutely awash in literary quality and an award winner waiting to happen.
You'll be seeing this one on my Best of 2005 list later this year.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
