Puccini's Ghosts [Paperback]

Morag Joss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2007

CWA Silver Dagger Award winner Morag Joss peers into the soul of a wounded family in this haunting, harrowing masterpiece of psychological suspense. With equal parts subtlety and menace, Joss takes us on a dizzying journey toward a collision between fantasy and reality—and an astounding moment of revelation that shatters illusions, hopes, and lives forever.

The year is 1960. The place is a Scottish seaside town utterly devoid of culture and charm. Here, Lila lives as the third player in her parents’ dramatically embittered marriage. Until her flamboyant, irrepressible uncle George shows up from London and her family decides to squander a windfall on the most preposterous of causes: a civic production of the Puccini opera Turandot.

Lila knows nothing of opera and little of her uncle or the dashing young man he hires to sing the role of Calaf. But Lila does know passion. Because it’s coursing through her veins—and rushing blindly, wildly all around her. Now a girl on the verge of womanhood is about to blunder into a grown-up world where secrets are kept and exposed, hopes soar and wither, and where crimes petty and great exact the most chilling punishments of all.

Masterfully paced and spellbinding till its final, haunting scene, Puccini’s Ghosts is a piercing look into the fierce darkness that lurks behind seemingly ordinary lives.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The death of her father brings opera singer Lila du Cann back to her childhood home in a small town in Scotland. Although she has tried to block out recollections of growing up with diffident parents, memories of her fifteenth summer, her Turandot summer, overwhelm her as she goes through the family's possessions. It was the summer of her operatic debut in a village production of Puccini's opera; the breakup of her parents' sad marriage; her first desperate crush on a boy; and her discovery of her energetic, optimistic uncle George having sex with her boyfriend. Relationships between characters unfold slowly, as perceived through the eyes of naive, angry Lila, whose actions precipitate the family's downfall. The story of Puccini's opera frames the novel, reinforcing a sense of the tragedy that Joss lays out for her own characters. The author's richly detailed backdrop and memorable characterizations pull readers into the sad novel, which gradually spins out into a wrenching, sharply delineated climax. Give this to readers who like Minette Walters. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Morag Joss has been compared to those other two premiere weird sisters in crime, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine and Minette Walters. Such compliments are tossed about all too lightly in the publishing world, but this one is so justified that it seems like an understatement.”—Washington Post Book World

"A cast of expertly drawn characters."—Publishers Weekly



From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Delta (July 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385340907
• ISBN-13: 978-0385340908
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #368,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Visit Morag's website at www.moragjoss.com

Morag Joss grew up on the west coast of Scotland. She read English at St Andrews University and then studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London.
In 1996 she won an award in a national competition with her first short story. Starting to write was, she says, "discovering a lifelong ambition I didn't know I had."
The first of her three Sara Selkirk novels, FUNERAL MUSIC, was nominated for a Dilys Award by the American Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. She's also the author the 2003 Silver Dagger winner HALF BROKEN THINGS, which was adapted for UK national television and starred Penelope Wilton (available on DVD), and of THE NIGHT FOLLOWING, which won an Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination for Best Novel 2009.
Morag Joss was a Heinrich Böll writer in residence on Achill Island, Ireland, in 2008, where she wrote part of her seventh novel, AMONG THE MISSING, due for USA publication in autumn 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars That Summer, October 4, 2006

By 

Tom S. "filmfan3" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Puccini's Ghosts (Hardcover)

An unhappy middle-aged woman, estranged from her family, goes home after many years for her father's funeral. While putting his effects in order, she recalls the long-ago summer of 1960, when she was a reckless, dreamy 15-year-old. Piece by piece, memory by memory, we witness the devastating series of events that destroyed her and her world.

This is my favorite kind of mystery--a psychological suspense story of the heart and mind. The main character, Liza, is a vivid creation, and her family is unforgettable. PUCCINI'S GHOSTS is a haunting, heartbreaking, peculiarly British tale in the style of Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters, by one of the best new voices in mystery fiction. (Her previous novel, HALF BROKEN THINGS, is also excellent.)

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Musical madness, November 29, 2005

By 

Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Puccini's Ghosts (Hardcover)

Retired opera chorister, Lila DuCann, returns to her home town to bury her father, after an absence of many years. The unexpected grief she experiences causes her mind to slip back and forth between the present time and the time when, as a 15 year old, she took part in what was to be a local production of Puccini's opera, Turandot. Her uncle George conceived the crazy plan of producing the opera in a large, local barn, using untrained locals as singers and musicians, with Lila's mother Fleur, a former small time singer, in the lead role and Lila in the secondary female role. Fleur, always an unstable wannabe, sees herself as an undiscovered diva and behaves accordingly, while Lila discovers that she has an undiscovered talent as a soprano. Geoge introduces Joe, a friend from London, as the male lead, who immediately becomes the object of Lila's first major crush. The ensuing fiasco highlights the entire family's terrible unhappiness, and results in tragedy and misery all around. It's not a happy book but is certainly a brilliant piece of writing.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Redux of previous novel, April 7, 2009

By 

J. Chad Davis (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Puccini's Ghosts (Paperback)

Morag Joss's previous novel, Half Broken Things, was a well-written, entertaining psychologic thriller from the alternating perspectives of an omniscient narrator and the primary protagonist. In that book, the protagonist was an elderly woman with significant emotional trauma from her childhood which was gradually revealed through the book.

In Puccini's Ghosts, the protagonist is an elderly woman with significant emotional trauma from her childhood which is gradually revealed through the book. In a nearly identical fashion to the previous book, chapters alternate - including changes in font - from the present to the past and change from the protagonist's viewpoint to that of an omniscient narrator. In this story, the climax is significantly less compelling than in the previous book, and the prior trauma is likewise less attention-getting. While the prose is excellently written and entertaining, the literary device is identical to the previous novel while the novel itself is much less worthy. If you simply enjoy this type of novel, then it won't be a waste of time to read it, but if you're looking for something compelling and markedly different than the prior novel, this isn't it.