The Ghost of Bridgetown [Hardcover]

Debra Spark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2001

A duppy, he explained, wouldn't enter a building without first counting all the grains of sand at the door, and, math whiz or no, your average duppy couldn't do that before daybreak, the hour when all duppies are due back at their graves. But the ghost of Bridgetown-- apparently, he hadn't so much as flinched at the sand. He'd stepped right over the pile and into the bar. He'd ordered himself a beer and insisted, once again, that he'd never died.

When Charlotte Lewin's grandfather offers to send her to Barbados on a special mission, he believes he is sending her on a much-needed vacation, following the death of Charlotte's sister. The mission seems simple enough: to return a long-forgotten, jewel-encrusted menorah to its rightful owner on the island. However, Charlotte soon finds herself navigating her way through unsettling racial tensions-- between white Jews, black Jews, and the native community.

In the oppressive Barbados heat where the body can't hide its own discomfort, Charlotte ends up sitting side-by-side at a bar with the ghost of Bridgetown himself. And when the startling ramifications of a bizarre parachuting accident threaten to unravel the precarious peace, it is Charlotte who struggles to find the answers. Her emotional entanglement with the people of the island leads to a search, not just to find a home for the menorah, but also for her own place in the world.

The Ghost of Bridgetown is a powerful second novel, a worthy offering to what the Boston Book Review calls Spark's "broad and devoted following of readers."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her ponderous new novel, Spark (Coconuts for the Saint) takes on black/Jewish relations in Barbados. Charlotte Lewin is a smart, self-critical 30-ish woman who works at an arts museum in Boston. Asked by her ailing lawyer grandfather, Howard Weinsten, to travel to Barbados to find out who holds proper claim to an ornamented menorah owned by Howard's Massachusetts synagogue, she sets out despite misgivings. Apparently, the menorah had once belonged to a sect of Sephardic Jews in Bridgetown, Barbados; the current synagogue in Barbados wants it back, but the island's Bajan Institute believes it was made by a slave and therefore belongs in a museum. Single, lonely Charlotte, who is reeling from her sister's recent, untimely death, wants neither a vacation nor the responsibility of asserting herself in a strange, hot and seemingly hostile country. But once she arrives, tales of a local ghost intrigue her, while a drunken sexual encounter in a bar bathroom ties her to the son of the local prominent Jewish family, the Lazars. Spark, in a roundabout, long-winded fashion, reveals Charlotte's obsession with her own blankness, and it becomes evident that contact with the inhabitants of Bridgetown in an attempt to understand their needs is supposed to cure her of her inner fears. Yet Spark cannot decide whether she even likes her jumpy heroine, and the supporting characters, with the exception of her Barbadan counterpart, the downtrodden Wayne Deare, are curiously uninteresting and unsympathetic. A parachuting accident concerning another of the Lazar sons and rumors of anti-Semitism add suspense, but the island feels airless and excessively manipulated not a paradise or even a compelling mystery setting. (Sept.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In Spark's (Coconuts for the Saint) second novel, Charlotte Lewin, a young Jewish woman from Massachusetts, is charged with hand-delivering a jewel-encrusted menorah to Barbados. The trip, sponsored by Charlotte's sick grandfather, is somewhat of a ruse: he wants her to take a vacation from her heavy work schedule in the hope that it will help her recover from her grief over her sister's recent death from cancer. The trip, which centers on finding the rightful owners of the Hanukkah candelabra, has its merits, but Charlotte becomes enmeshed in the island's atmosphere of oppressive heat, lush vegetation, drinking, and gambling. She also learns of its ghost. This is a novel of cross-cultural currents among white Jews, black Jews, and the native community in Barbados. The menorah here is not exactly a Holy Grail, but it does spur Charlotte and the reader on a journey of much discovery and self-realization. Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (July 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555973523
• ISBN-13: 978-1555973520
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.7 x 6.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,938,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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